Hello dancers and contacters!
We are very happy to announce our 4th international dance festival 'contact meets contemporary', which will happen again at the lovely venue we found last year in Goettingen with lots of Green within walking distance to the city, a pool, a thermal bath and a lake not much further!

The festival is from 6.-11.8., right in between the ECITE (Bern) and the Freiburg Festival. A good opportunity for festival hoppers. The intensives have changed a bit compared to our first flyers. The ones who came last year might be excited to see that Paul Singh is teaching one of them. Ka Rustler (Berlin) and Ruslan Santah (Kiev) are teaching the other two. The core teacher team is clear, and the energy of getting connected and engaged in the festival is remarkable: Christine Mauch and Nina Wehnert from Berlin, Christoph Schuetz (Goettingen), Johan Nilson (Sweden), Günther Klingler (Freiburg), Alyssa Lynes (USA), Sabine Parzer (Vienna), Kristin Horrigen (USA), Markus Hoft (Bremen) and some more inspired teachers will come. We wish you a happy planning of your summer that lightens up the greyness of the winter. Happy to see you in Goettingen!
Joerg, Daniel, Gabi and Pen

For more information check out www.contact-meets-contemporary.de or continue reading...



Contact meets Contemporary
is a Contact Festival that invites and includes the knowledge from other contemporary dance forms. It will give tools to open the contact duet for solo, trio or group improvisations and performances. And it will provide space for contemporary movement technique to be purely danced with others. The common ground where we meet is improvisation.

Intensives:
Paul Singh (USA)
Ruslan Santah (Ukraine)
Ka Rustler (Germany)

The intensives give a sense of continuation - happening every day with the same teacher and the same group, mainly in the morning. Each teacher will give a certain personal mixture of CI and Contemporary Dance Technique with a main emphasis on one side. All three intensives will focus on fundamental principles, in a way that is accessible for people with basic skills but at the same time provides opportunity for the more advanced dancers to deepen their knowledge. The themes will be announced probably at the end of February.

The other classes are single classes with one specific focus. Each time there will be one class focusing on fundamentals in CI. The teachers will share what they found to be essential and still inspiring. The other two classes will be more specific or advanced and create links between CI and contemporary dance technique. A focus on Improvisation and the desire to give tools and inspirations to be tried out in the Jam Session and the performance frames will be the link between all classes.

One2ones: One session will be dedicated to this wonderful and efficient way of individual learning in a big group. The original idea is that each participant will get a 20 minutes private lesson with a teacher. But we want to mainly use this structure as a starting point for different ways to learn together and from each other.

Jam session: We imagine a space, where CI can be practiced and contemporary dance can be actually danced (instead of being only a preparation for the dance on the stage). We are curious how the classes, performance frames and interludes will inform the jams sessions.

Performance frames: The traditional performance night is re-defined as the 'favorite bits presentation', where we want to create space to share dance connections, physical questions or other revelations that arose on this festival. A group score on another night will provide a low pressure frame to share the dance and to support it by witnessing. We'd very much love to keep ego issues out of this space if possible.

Action & reflection: This years festival will have an extra focus on reflecting what we are doing. For that we will provide 30 minutes time after each intensive session and a daily one hour long format called 'action & reflection'. We want to create space for not just going from one experience to the next but to give our body-mind systems moments of digestion. We also wish for some stimulation for the mind that inspires us to look at familiar practices and attitudes from a new perspective – like lecture demonstrations or formats that combine listening, questioning and 'doing'. We want to give a light spirit to it that supports the rather focused but light-hearted atmosphere of our festival.

Do what you need: This years festival is a day shorter than usual. We only put our 'do what you need' slogan once into the schedule to remind us, that this should be the main attitude for the individual journey through this festival.

More information: www.contact-meets-contemporary.de

Contact: info@...