FUNDAMENTALS WORKSHOP
Saturday, September 21, 2024
1 - 5pm
w Anne Cooper

Early Bird: $60 when you register by Aug 30th ** DEADLINE EXTENDED ** register by Sept 3rd
Regular: $80
Registration required, no drop-ins.

For beginners and those who are brand new to Contact.

This workshop will introduce Contact Improvisation basics, and will provide you with the fundamentals to begin your practice. If you are new to Contact, this workshop is for you!

We will look at the basic underlying movement principles of Contact Improvisation giving us a shared physical understanding from which to play, develop and experience our dances together.

Contact Improvisation (CI) is a duet improvised movement form that plays from an underlying structure of movement principles and physical training which sensitizes us to the sensations of our bodies involved in gravity, momentum, rest, stillness, energy, mood, buoyancy, reflexivity etc., through our own bodies and in touch with another.

Practice includes rolling, falling safely into and out of the floor, 'the Stand', accessing momentum, counter and inter balance, sharing degrees of weight, sharing weight while moving, listening and improvising.

Contact Improvisations are always different yet playing from similar kinesthetic elements; depending on you and your partner they may be quiet and focused, buoyant, playful, athletic, profound, simple and many other possibilities.

Please email info@edamdance.org if you have any questions about attending this workshop.

Our Fundamentals Workshop is held three times a year in September, January and April. Please email us if you would like to be notified when registration opens for our next workshop. If you missed the most recent workshop, our Thursday evening classes are also a good place for beginners to start! Read more and register for classes here.

ADVANCING YOUR FUNDAMENTALS TO FLY AND CATCH
Saturday, October 26, 2024
1 - 5:30pm (includes a half-hour lunch/snack break)
w Anne Cooper

Early Bird: $67.50 when you register by October 9th
Regular: $90
Registration required, no drop-ins.

INTERMEDIATE WORKSHOP*

This workshop gives the participants tactile approaches to experience contact improvisations that expand into buoyant, upward, energetic dancing. We will practice meeting the dance and our partner with appropriate-to-the-moment support, as well as recovering ourselves. We’ll explore sending ourselves with the accuracy to be caught from low or higher lofts and learning how the body works dynamically to align into support to assist with soft landings. The workshop weaves warm-up, essentials, movement designed to open us to the possibilities and the time to experience our dancing. Rest, reflection and witnessing can all be aspects of participation. There will be a half-hour break; please bring your lunch or snacks, tea will be provided.

*Comfortability with Contact Improvisation fundamentals or other movement training that would prepare you to work safely with this material is needed.

photo: Anne Cooper and Rick Nodine by Patrick Beelaert, contactfestival freiburg, 2024

Anne Cooper has danced with EDAM since 1994, studying Contact Improvisation with Peter Bingham and performing in EDAM's work, both structured improvisations and choreography. She has researched and performed with Nancy Stark Smith through Nancy's 'Glimpse Performance Installations' in the U.S.A. Anne has taught/facillitated CI since 2001 in Vancouver and other locales through classes, Jams and workshops. She has created and performed her own work and has danced with many Canadian companies/choreographers. Anne has trained in contemporary dance and CI; her CI teachers include Peter Bingham, Nancy Stark Smith, Jaci Metivier, Andrew Harwood, Chris Aiken, Ray Chung and others and some study with Steve Paxton (Material For the Spine) and recently, Nora Hajos (Material For the Spine). Anne is grateful to live and work in Vancouver, BC, on the ancestral and unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsliel-Waututh First Nations.