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CDA CONTACT IMPROVISATION STREAM

A Contact dance is is born when two or more people share a moving point of contact. Remaining in touch, but dancing independently, a third entity is created between them. This third entity is Contact Improvisation (CI).

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At CDA we offer a CI stream of workshops that create an experience for every 'body', whether newbie or advanced, to cultivate more confidence and safety in this often 'edgy' practice.

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We have a stellar team lined up to help facilitate this journey... let us introduce them to you.

WORKSHOP 1 withJooske Honig Ross Inness-McLeish 

An Introduction to Contact Improvisation

Jooske and Ross weave together somatic mindfulness, embodied listening, and a foundational movement vocabulary to offer you a doorway into the wonderful world of Contact Improvisation. Connecting with one another through moment-to-moment feedback from our sensing bodies, we will journey together through somatic awareness, dynamic movement, leading and following, the rolling point of contact, and more. We will invite opportunities for you to discover & deepen into the tools necessary for safe, curious, and confident engagement in contact improvisation dances.

WORKSHOP 2 with Jooske Honig and Miriam Marler

Meeting and Being Met: risk experiments & sharing weight in contact improvisation

Trust and self awareness are keys to listening to your body's wisdom & to connecting on a deeper level with other dancers. In this warmly-held, mindful container, Jooske and Miriam will guide you through playful inter-actions & physical experiments. We will invite you to explore your inner dialogue, to notice your responses and the patterns that arise. Our points of interest are weight sharing, trust, risk-taking & momentum. We aim to help you become curious about your comfort-edges, build confidence in your shared dances, feel inspired, and notice how life patterns are embodied or reflected in the dances you create.

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  • Emotional risk: 6/10

  • Physically Active 8/10

  • Physically Restorative 6/10

WORKSHOP 3 with Miriam Marler and Ross Inness-McLeish 

Touched: Awakening Embodied Connection

Grounded in a trauma sensitive, somatically-informed lens, Miriam and Ross will invite you into an inquiry exploring the wisdom of your body-as-organism, and its innate potential for growth and transformation. Through the power of touch, movement & community, we will draw on embodied mindfulness, trauma theory, and the principles of contact improvisation to explore our somatic capacities for resourcing, resilience, and life forward direction.

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  • Emotional risk and exposure: (5)

  • Physically Active: (7)

  • Physically Restorative: (4)

WORKSHOP 4 with the CI teacher team - exact configuration undetermined

The Underscore: Space for You

This dance-space is an opportunity to move with your own process in solitude or to reach out and make contact with others. It is a held container for integration, reflection, play, tenderness or resourcing to happen. It is an opportunity to digest -or be with- all that you hold at this point in the festival. The session will open with a circle, be performed in silence, and close with an opportunity to harvest and share the fruits of your experience with community.

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  • Emotional risk: 5/10

  • Physically Active 5/10

  • Physically Restorative 6/10

You can select this workshop as your preference when you close this window and return to the festival line-up page

MEET THE TEACHING TEAM

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ROSS  INNESS-MCLEISH

Ross Inness-McLeish has been a passionate Contact dancer since first encountering it in Melbourne nearly 10 years ago. In the last year Ross has been organising Contact related events in the Nelson/Tasman region, and regularly co-hosting and teaching a vibrant C.I community in Motueka.

 

He draws upon his background as a sports coach, educator, mindfulness practitioner and curious human animal to share safe and joyful pathways into the practice of C.I. He is currently training as a counsellor, a Focusing teacher, and in mindful and somatic approaches to trauma healing.

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MIRIAM MARLER

As I'm drawn more and more into the world of Mindful Somatic Therapy, the tools I bring from my history in movement & bodywork are being seen with new eyes as resources to support healing & regulation.

 

With a background in Contemporary Dance where choreography and performance were highlighted, I soon became deeply engaged in more process-based approaches like Somatic Movement practices, Contact Improvisation, Butoh and Body Weather.

 

Today, facilitation is my creative practice- I offer Conscious Dance, Somatics, & Contact Improvisation to the gorgeous community down in Otepoti Dunedin.

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JOOSKE HONIG

Jooske Honig came to the practice of contact improvisation through her passion of Acro yoga (since 2011). Over the years she developed a particular curiosity to explore transitions, fluidity in combination with alignment and quality of touch. With her background in Holistic massage and Mindful Somatic energy guidance she holds a gentle present space to explore. Based in Otepoti, Dunedin, where she has her own private practice In-Spiral.

 

She offers online and in person deeply transformative 1:1 Mindful somatic counseling, Holistic massage treatment, couple counselling, Attunement therapy groups and tuition in the field of creative intuitive development. Over the years she facilitated many workshops at festivals offering; Acroyoga, partner therapeutics, conscious contact. The development of conscious contact started together with Miriam Marler in 2018.

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