Course: Contact Improvisation as Practice
Fri 16.9. from 17.00 to 19.30
Sat 17.9. from 10.30 to 14.00, including a 30-minute break
Liisa Pentti +Co’s Studio, Laivakatu 5 K, 4th floor, Helsinki
Price of the course: 50 eur
Language: Finnish / English
Register by email at info@liisapentti.com by Monday 12.9.2022 the latest
Maximum number of participants is 12, places are filled
by order of registration.
Contact improvisation is a partner dance practice initiated by Steve Paxton
in 1972 which has since evolved and spread into many contexts, gaining various
forms in different environments and cultures. The basis of contact
improvisation is working with gravity in contact with the partner as well as
exercising different levels of perception and focusing of attention that are
needed in working with a partner. On this two-day course, we will be focusing
on exercises related to basic concepts of contact improvisation. Touch, being
touched and weight transfer in movement, disorientation and unusual
trajectories, non-movement, touching and sensing the space around you and
exploring your own movement language through pair work are the themes on which
the course is built.Choreographer Liisa Pentti has practiced contact improvisation since 1981, when she worked with Mary Prestidge (UK) and a few other Finnish dancers for a year in Helsinki. In the years to come, she studied contact improvisation with its initiators Steve Paxton, Nancy Strak-Smith, Nita Little, Karen Nelson, Daniel Lepkoff and other teachers. Liisa Pentti has been teaching contact improvisation since 1985, and the questions arising from the practice have been an important part of her artistic practice.
The course suits anyone with prior experience from contact improvisation, or an interest in its potentials in the work of a performing artist.
Photo: Vesa-Pekka Grönfors