Marie is a dancer, choreographer, contact improviser, teacher and massage therapist who has performed and taught on a global scale for 18 years. She has been teaching and curating CI events in London and Germany for the past 7 years, either independently, in institutions or professional settings.

Her main research explores relational identity in improvised creative practices. She is the co-founder of The Godets, a multidisciplinary company working with CI, text and music. She curates the event ‘Women’s Touch’ aiming at empowering women and non-binary and creating safe spaces. She organises and curates the Monday Ci Jam in London.

She has a BA in contemporary dance and a Master of the Art in Creative practice. She received the Gill Clark bursary and the Leverhulme fund.

I see CI as a relational practice: how do I relate to myself, to others, to gravity, to my environment? I try to bring a sense of autonomy, agency and empowerment in my teaching.
I like to be playful and not take things to seriously, so everyone is comfortable.
I like to invite people to cultivate care and compassion and create a safe and playful environment.

As a facilitator, I also see myself as a choreographer: proposing scores and frameworks that deal with space, time, inter-personal dynamics, inviting people to play their part and co-create the space.

I'm also a Buddhist and I think this philosophy is really in line with CI values of inter-dependency, self-responsibility, care, compassion...

Warm-up into a jam:

• Breath, weight and spirals

Beginners:

• Landing landscapes

Improvers:

• Spinal agility: suspension and lightness

Asher is based in Dartington and loves being and interacting with the land and elements; he’s practised Contact Improvisation, dance, physical theatre, teaching and leading workshops for a quarter-century. These are interconnected. He's taught CI internationally since 2008.

In CI, I’m curious about what is mutually available to us in any arising constellation. I love to play with the dynamic spectrum, from acrobatic to almost still. Jamming, I welcome solo, duet, trios…whole group arisings. I'm interested in the relationship between intimate, aesthetic, and environment.

I love being a Great Ape. I am at home in Totnes, love to travel and return, and love being and interacting with the land and elements.

I've practiced CI for 30 years. I lead CI classes, weekends and longer courses, as well as workshops at festivals in the UK and internationally.

In CI dance, play and being, I love the practice of trusting ourselves and others (while keeping safe) – I am open to feeling creative within the context – to inhabit the realm as mine (and ours) and explore the unknown. I enjoy re-seeing the known afresh.

I focus on being off-balance - from where surprise, connection and magic can happen - and free - yet focused and caring. I am particularly interested in the interplay of spaciousness and intimacy - whole group scores and solo, the partner or trio…, within the social and physical environment.

I focus on re-investing dynamics into a dance flow – horizontal to vertical, flying to rolling on the ground. I also play (interrupting flow). I am also loving slowing down, feeling the finest vibrations and the smallest of dances – exquisite.

"Ooh, I just love it.

Muses: Travelling across space (especially doing and encouraging that with an intimate partner)- being at home being homeless, realising how much our changing relationship with the environment (from changing place), changes the dance. Horizontal momentum into ups and downs.

Intimacy and spaciousness.

Larger constellations.

Characterful Contact.

Meeting whoever I dance with. I have heard recently 'I'm increasingly discerning. I only want to dance with good dancers'. Well, that person is missing an area I love - to find where I CAN have a great CI experience with whoever I meet - limitations are a wonderful thing! The more able we are - the more able we are to adapt and be inviting.

I've also seen able dancers with big egos proving a point. Particularly man to man. It may give a little cheap thrill to show someone 'You are not able to do this, you are not able to keep up. Yet, how much more wonderful to show someone 'You are sooo able, I value what you're offering, your presence, your listening'.

Listening and being - paying attention as priority over any pathway or tricks, goals or other desires.

Dancing with the 'Judge'.

Flying techniques."

Morning Practice:

• Contemplative Dance Practice

Warm-up into a jam:

• I'm a great ape, and so are you!

Improvers:

• Finding the Hidden Falls

• Earth Patterns and Flight Paths

Referred to as the ‘dancing bass meister’, by Barre Philipps, David Leahy has dedicated the last 20 years to navigating the area between music and dance. Originally from New Zealand, David works as an improvising double bass player, contact-improvising dancer, composer, educator, and researcher. He is a prominent member of the London free improvised music scene and is a long-standing member of the London Improvisers Orchestra, as well as various other improvisation ensembles across Europe.

David's PhD, Musicians in Space (2020), explores what happens when the performance of free improvisation expands outwards into space, so as to remove the physical separation between the performer and the audience. David works as both a lecturer and dance musician in the dance faculty of Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, in London. For further information, please go to www.dafmusic.com.

The Underscore, devised by Nancy Stark Smith, is a framework CI that takes the dancer through many of the commonly occurring states of awareness that occur during a jam.

The Music-based Underscore is my translation of the practice for improvising musicians and I always look forward to facilitating a combined underscore where the two disciplines work through the practice together.

Experienced:

• Focused Underscore

Klara is a dance researcher, improviser, curator, and facilitator working at the intersection of CI, embodiment, and psychology. She holds an MA in Choreography and a PhD in psychology, exploring creativity and flow in dance improvisation. She curates Warsaw CI Flow, co-organizes CI Totnes Jam, and creates improvised performances in theatre and site-specific settings. Passionate about ensemble dancing, relational intelligence, and dancing with landscapes, she researches touch, communication, and the transformative effects of dance. Since 2018, she has collaborated with the Institute for Studying Somatic Communication, led by Nita Little, and continues living, dancing and researching between Plymouth and Warsaw.

This is a space for exploring our embodied experience. There is no single 'right' way to dance or teach—each of us is different, and we can learn from one another by sharing our unique approaches.

This is a place of care:
- we care for ourselves—our physical and psychological well-being
- we care for each other—being mindful of others' experiences, boundaries, and (access) needs
- we care for the space—its physical appearance and collective atmosphere

This is a place of bravery, CI practice challenges us not only physically but also in terms of social and cultural schemas and our emotional responses. The friction is to be expected and approached with care.

We all have various needs, and not all practices can be accessible for all (e.g., some of us thrive with loud music while others get easily overstimulated). Yet, by listening closely, we can find ways to accommodate different access needs while preserving the essence of our practice. A clear framework and open dialogue about needs are essential for the self-regulation of our practice.

CI is a social practice—we co-create both the form and the dance itself. It has experiential and performative aspects, both essential for its vitality.

Morning Practice:

• Contemplations of Gravity with Steve Paxton

Improvers:

• Trio – Navigating Between Contact and Space

Experienced:

• Ensemble Scores

  Lab & Performance

Soledad de la Hoz trained at the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance.

She has performed extensively in opera and theatre productions (ROH, Royal Court Theatre, Glyndebourne, ENO) as well as immersive dance and screen productions, working with notable choreographers such as Aleta Collins, Anna Morrissey, Maxine Doyle, Marie-Gabrielle Rotie, Scarlett Mackmin, Jennifer White and Lisa Welham.

In addition to her professional dancing, Sole is a trained Thai massage therapist and has a deep love and interest in Contact

Improvisation has an immense positive benefit on her movement practice and well-being. She is very happy to continue developing in this field by training and teaching.

I love that it invites an immediate body presence and awareness through the connection to others. For my own practice, I find that it awakens pathways and new possibilities in my movement. I love the improvisation, creativity and playfulness side of it as well as the more physics exploration. What I love about teaching is sharing this passion with other people and offering what I find that has helped me in my journey. Also, I love watching people dance

Warm-up into a jam:

• Witnessing - Presence in Contact

Beginners:

• CI Fundamentals

Jamus is curious about our unfolding as human beings, the embodied arts are excellent landscapes in which to play and explore. In fact, exploring is deeply rooted in his teaching and inquiry work. In recent years Jamus has focused on developmental evolution through dance and anatomy. Frequently returning to a softness that we had as babies, finding a deep sense of rest and relaxation, whilst allowing our senses to reach outward and inward, letting movement reveal itself so that we are moved as much as we move.

Jamus has been dancing since 1995, initially exploring contact improvisation, Body-Mind Centering® and The Feldenkrais Technique in later years he added to this mix an inquiry into moving out in wild places and tuning into the more than human conversations there. What does the land remember and how can we participate in these older, wider meetings? In 2000 he took two years away from the UK to study somatic dance practice in Outokumpu in Eastern Finland. It was a deep and rich time to submit to somatic practice, particularly Body Mind Centering and The Feldenkrais Technique. These days you will find Jamus out on the land as much as you will find him in a dance studio, yielding, resting, playing and relating to the land around him.

I dance, I explore and I have an innate curiosity for life. Deeply influenced and rooted by the practice of embodied arts, explorations into The Land and Embodied Consciousness. Currently, I am exploring the more than-human relationship within Dartmoor and the question of what does the land remember.

Improvers:

• All Arms And Leg

Jocasta is an experienced Contact Improvisation teacher, a Body Mind Centering practitioner, a Creative, a tecaher and a healer/bodyworker. She has just completed her BA in Fine Art at Bath Spa University.

Jocasta teaches a weekly class in Stroud but has been part of the bristol CI community for over 25 years! She is intuitive, playful, loves bringing us into our animal body. She is also a meditator, a temple preistess, a mama, a tribal gatherer and is a little bit witchy.

The heart is the jam. Principles above fundamentals. From either or, to BOTH and AND...

Morning Practice:

• Synovial Fluid warm-up

Improvers:

• Deep slow slough workshop

Jan-Ming was born in London, UK. She is a dance artist & somatic bodyworker; and has danced C.I. for 20 years. Her background is in performance and facilitating through a somatic trauma-informed approach to care. From the age of 3, she studied dance; since 2017 she practices The Pantarei Approach; since 2020 she has been practicing the Daoist water tradition of energy arts and ancestral healing. She brings her passion to hold spaces for sensitivity, bravery, fragility and collective care. Her C.I teaching reflects the space of her practice: cultivating the courage to suggest, ask, redefine and clarify what we share.

Currently what is exciting me is the connection I feel between CI, martial arts and witnessing. For example, I’ve been using my internal Daoist energy arts practice to support me to feel the quality of connection of others, through listening and responding to the energy information through our touch. It helps to create a more consensual landscape both through physicality, emotionality, and mentality. I believe that this aspect is fundamental to CI, and believe that it can be as accessible to beginners as it is for more experienced dancers. I’ve also been exploring performance as a way for people to witness ci, sharing the practice not as a perfected external spectacle but inviting the audience into the immersive practice, from arriving to ending together.

Improvers:

• Scaffold, Off-Centre, Lean

I'm Eréndira and I've been dancing CI since 2009. I started teaching in 2022, curious to bring this practice to create community through movement and joy. I'm fascinated by the many levels of approach to CI, be it from a pure physical and technical practice, to a deep somatic experience. I'm in a constant movement research in different countries and international environments, fascinated by meetings through CI dance and the power of community happening thanks to it. I love teaching beginner level, offering the technique and listening skills that are needed to dance with curiosity and confidence.

Softness, care, playfulness and sense of humour are my core values. Because of my high sensitivity, I've hurt myself a few times dancing CI and that has inspired me to investigate techniques and a dance where there's care for ourself and another. Inclusivity is highly important in my teaching, mentioning as an example that a 72yr old man is the most regular dancer in my classes

Beginners:

• Falling in Love with the Ground

I have been dancing CI for over 20 years mostly in the U.S. One of the aspects that continue to inspire me in the form is how by letting go into uncertainty the dance has a greater capacity to lead itself and surprise us with what may unfold through uncontrolled relationships. This practice of working with a 'beginner's mind' in relationship to another, to oneself or with the land continues to be my learning 'edge' in dance and in life.

I enjoy it when people discover new embodied pathways of learning that bring greater freedom and creative possibilities that were undiscovered before. My own learning edge that excites me and has done so for many years now is remembering and allowing the body rather than the mind to lead the dance. The possibility of staying with uncertainty and finding something arising through the relationship with another that neither could have predicted.

Warm up into a jam:

• Grazing into Contact

Richard has been developing his skills and knowledge as a Contact Improvisation (CI) dancer since 2006. Over the years he has extensively trained with many amazing international teachers within CI including Karen Nelson, Lisa Nelson, KJ Holmes, Nita Little, Andrew Harwood, Ray Chung, Martin Keogh, Scott Wells, Benno Voorham & Joerg Hassmann.

Since 2011 he has shared his teaching of CI within Professional, Educational, Festival & Community Organisations as well as organised his own CI Festivals, Retreats and Camps.

“A true love for the form and genuine investigation is at the heart of Richard's teaching. He plans and delivers material in a thoughtful, reflective and thorough way, each exercise leading on to the next fluidly. His gentle, clear and encouraging manner gives students the confidence to push their practice further and his commitment to staying true to the form ensures that others can continue to discover and enjoy the beauty of the dance.”

I am passionate about the relational and deeply human experience that can be revealed through Contact Improvisation. My workshops are a refined balance of skills, creativity & free exploration, taking participants on a journey into the co-creative wonders of this practice, which always includes a healthy dose of safety and care for one another.

Through a grounded and easy-going approach, I love sharing both my detailed and extensive understanding of the principle movement forms within Contact Improvisation alongside the subtle nuances, helping people to truly embody the fundamental aspects of the dance. Most importantly creating a sense of relational awareness and a sense of togetherness as we co-create within the dance space.