8th Water & Land Contact Festival in Thailand

Dear friends! From 9 to 19 March 2019 we meet one more time in Koh Chang, Ranong Province (Near Phuket), Thailand. One of the not many places on Earth, where you can find the conditions for a festival like this to happen. A small wild island with the calm and warm waters of the ocean and the fresh sweet water of a blue lake in the middle of the island. The perfect scenario for our water and land activities. Cashew trees and tropical wild vegetation all around you, the Buddhist monastery just on our side, and the quietness of an almost engines and technology free environment. All the info and more details you can find them in www.Ci-Thai.com 1. THE PROGRAM ARRIVING INTENSIVE EMBODYING 2. ACCOMMODATION & FOOD 3. REGISTRATION 4. WORKSHOPS 5. TEACHERS 1. THE PROGRAM We divide the program into 3 differentiated parts, ARRIVING, INTENSIVE and EMBODYING. During the first and second parts (ARRIVING - INTENSIVE) there are intensives for those just arriving at the CI practices as well as for those who want to practice more advanced skills. The third part (EMBODYING) is to dive deeper into the somatic explorations or artistic expression and to propose and join labs for anyone to bring ideas and questions. And regardless of which phase of the Festival we are on every evening, we have a JAM on the main floor. ARRIVING The first three days of the festival ( 9-11 March) is the time to arrive on the island and to the dance. We begin with 3 days intensive for newcomers: 9-11 March ”Let’s Begin Together!” (Maria Grudskaya) 10-11 March Freediving classes (Kirill Popov) INTENSIVE During the following 5 days (12-16 March), we dive into the festival. 3 days (12-14 March) with two parallel intensives on land in one half of the day, and two parallel intensives in the water on the other half. Then, a free day (15 March) to have some rest. The last day of this part of the festival (16 March) is for jamming and closing of the water intensives.a 12-14 March “The SAMURAI and the BIRD” (Luca Carco Pacella) 12-14 March “Listening, shifting and evoking” (Minori Nagai ＆ Ryuhei Uemoto) 12-16 March "Dance with the Water" (Sasha Bezrodnova & Mario Blanco ) 12-16 March "Intensive of Contact Improvisation on the Border of Two Elements" (Anastasia Saevich & Yana Sutina) EMBODYING The last three days of the festival (17-19 March) are the time devoted to the assimilation and the embodiment of the festival. These time will be busy with Somatic explorations, Bodywork Practice, Labs and exchanges. And finally, the closing circle of the Festival. 2. ACCOMMODATION & FOOD The festival fee does not include accommodation and food. Accommodation on the island around the festival area ranges from 8 to 17 U$S, or 7.50 to 16 €, for some nice and cozy bungalows. Information for booking is available on the festival website. You can usually find someone to share once you´re there. Food is really cheap and Thai tasty, and the festival offers fruits and drinks in the evening at the jams. 3. REGISTRATION The registration IS OPEN! EARLY BIRDS! Making Prepayment before 1 January 2019 – 290 $. After the 1 of January, the festival registration fee is 340 USD. Prepayment = 100 USD The fee includes participation in the festival program activities (intensives, jams, labs, freediving classes, etc.) evening fruits, water, and tea. You may register to the festival through the website http://ci-thai.com/registration/ Or you may write us an E-mail: [email protected] 4. WORKSHOPS 9-11 Мarch Maria Grudskaya ”Let’s Begin Together!” We have three days at the very beginning of the festival to arrive in the land, water, and people of our amazing island. For some, it will be the first meeting with contact improvisation… Uuu, exciting! For some, it will be the first experience of dancing outdoors in a hot country, and for sure for everyone, it will be the first meeting with each other. We have enough time to really launch the festival together! I am happy to share some ways into CI, which I’ve practiced more than 15 years. I invite everyone to come to the class with curiosity and probably even specific questions about the practice, and I invite everyone to leave the class with new curiosity and questions 🙂 We might even dance in water in this workshop… nothing has to happen and everything is possible! Themes that we’ll explore: · Moving from/with/to the center of the body, radiating into the extremities, finding the center of inner space, inhabiting the outer space · Leading and following and somewhere in between · Point of contact – what happens there? · Flow of weight, directions of weight, weightlessness · Support, easily giving, easily receiving, soft inner support 10 Мarch Kirill Popov "Freediving class" Freediving is a dream of flying that comes true! Hold your breath, dive underwater – and you can move in any direction. You can find effortless movement and enjoy your presence at the moment here and now. Water is a natural environment for a human being, our body has evolutional knowledge of how to exist in water. And freediving is one of the best ways to make water your friend if you have any fears of this element, or strengthen your connection with water. The skills and experience you’ll get at the workshop will help you to interact with water in a more soft and conscious way and this will be a good foundation for dancing in the water. We’ll study the basic theory of freediving to thoroughly prepare or understanding of the practice: pressure, physiology of breathing and immersion while holding your breath, mammalian diving reflex etc. Our practice on land will include yoga, breathing exercises, and release techniques. Our practice in water will take place in shallow water on the beach. It will be static apnea (holding breath for a certain time). Deep immersions are not included in this workshop! 12-14 March Minori Nagai ＆ Ryuhei Uemoto CI Intensive for all levels: “Listening, shifting and evoking” The main focus of the workshop is to enhance a “listening” state to sense movements within the body and staying in the constant process of shifting in relation with others. We start from tuning into our own body while noticing that you are surrounded with other people. Then we will use touch to stimulate body awareness and explore the flow and weight of the body. We notice what is moving inside of the body as well as how it is moved by others. We will experiment and play various movements under the simple rules and tasks together. Through contact with other, instinct behaviors as a person with various feeling like hesitation, excitement, intimacy is evoked, and it integrates into abstract movements. This whole process enriches the color of dancing. 12-14 March Luca Carco Pacella CI Intensive: “The SAMURAI and the BIRD” Foundations: We are dancing anomalies. A moving body creates a universe of asymmetries and balances that makes unique his dance. Becoming a samurai: looking for decisions, geometries, and directions, Stimulating a watchful eye to perceive rapidly the context, the bodies and the momentum of a dance.�Becoming a bird: falling toward the sky, inhabiting the invisible l flight that allows us researching lightness and weight, looking at how physicality is transformed by imagination and perception. Aims: The aim of these classes is learning to look to oneself the other way round, to perceive the invisible, to listen to the connections between. Starting from the solo and from the idea that expanding our perception and concept of the body is the first step to let grow the possibilities of our dance, we’ll explore the improvisation, the contact, and the weight as essential elements of our dance. We’ll study the human and animal mechanics: the circulation of the movement and of the weight through the pieces of the body, integrating them in the totality we are, let us becoming agile and quick, like animals. 12-16 March Sasha Bezrodnova & Mario Blanco Martinez. CI in Water Intensive: "Dance with the water" In water, most of us recognize that sensation of weightlessness, like gravity is absent and now we can move effortlessly. Tuning just into this sensation, we simplify the phenomena, and we incorporate it into our terrestrial model of the world. However, in the water Earth gravity continue exerting its constant pulling, just the same as on land. That what is different is the element. Between the solid ground and the gaseous air, the liquid water. Unlike the floor, water flows and gives us space to enter it, and unlike the air, she doesn´t disperse and keeps us in her supportive embrace. In this intensive, our invitation is to dance "with the water" instead of "in the water". To tune into the water as an element, an entity, instead of just a place or a different landscape. For some moments, to withdraw from the conditioning of our terrestrial mind-body and welcome our aquatic mind-body. This intensive takes us into dance following a course of technical exercises, meditative experiences and poetic inspirations. Expanding the intimacy of our relationship with ourselves to our relationship with the element, and eventually to our relationship with others... And integrating all in one singular experience. 12-16 March Anastasia Saevich & Yana Sutina. "Intensive of Contact Improvisation on the border of two elements" Soon to be updated 5. TEACHERS MINORI NAGAI ＆ RYUHEI UEMOTO (JAPAN) Minori met CI during her study in BA dance degree at Middlesex University in U.K. After coming back to Japan, she participated in CI festival in Tokyo organized by C.I.N.N. in 2007 and became a member to support its annual festival in 2008. Ryuhei got to know CI in the process of learning contemporary dance in Japan. Ryuhei founded AAPA as an experiments performing arts project based on our daily life in 2004, and Minori joined AAPA as a dancer in 2007. For us, CI is a good practice for sensitive “listening” state to the body through the physical experience without judging right or wrong in the head. In 2013, we opened “Hinodecho Danchi Studio” in Tokyo, aiming at creating a space where anyone can come and deepen their own body and dance regardless of dance carrier. We teach regular improvisation classes and CI workshops as well as organizing various workshop from different disciplines such as martial arts, mask, and juggling. We have been invited to “Asia Pacific Impro! 2” in Malaysia in 2015, and CI festival in China in 2018. Links: Hinodecho Danchi Studio　http://minori.aapa.jp/ AAPA　http://aapa.jp AAPA Facebook https://www.facebook.com/AAPA.jp/ C.I.N.N. http://contactimprov-nn.com/ LUCA CARCO PACELLA (ARGENTINA) Biologist, I start to explore the movement in 1998. Actually working in the platform CabraCru Physical Theatre, www.cabracru.com , giving workshops and playing performance and shows in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Cuba, Italia, Spain y Finland: I worked with different dance and physical theatre companies in Italy and Argentina: Levelibular, Impacto teatral, Lunaif. I worked as the assistant of choreography in “Metal Liquido”, video dance realized by Dinah Schonaut. I’m practicing Contact Improvisation since 2006 with different and incredible masters. I knew Butoh Dance in 2008, while I have danced Capoeira since 2000. Capoeira, C.I., and Butoh are my principal references in dance and improvisation. Since 2005 I have explored Biomechanics and lately Teatral anthropology. In 2010 I have started my adventure with puppet and mask theatre. In the last years, I have investigated the movement for itself, the human and animal mechanics. Since years ago I have explored the possibilities that offer the C.I. in the creative processes, in the plays and performances, in particular merging itself with others languages like Butoh, Physical theatre and puppet and mask theatre. MASHA GRUDSKAYA (RUSSIA) Has practiced CI, dance and somatic movement for over 15 years. Around 10 years has been teaching CI and since 2016 is a somatic therapist if IBMT Institute (UK). Co-organizer of IBMT Program in Russia, CI Center in Moscow and international CI festivals. Teaches in Russia and around the world – Europe, Israel, Thailand, Japan. Co-organizer of Creative Farm «Bobry» in Moscow Region. In Somatic Movement and Contact Improvisation, I find a great resource for life, work, and dance. I live partly on the forest farm, partly in the big city and my natural interest is how body and mind live in nature in direct interaction with earth, water, air, and other elements, how the experience in nature and in the city differ, how adaptation and recharge happen in the body-mind. ALEXANDRA BEZRODNOVA (RUSSIA) By education, I am a social psychologist. In last years CI has become my main interest and direction in life, which I am very happy about. I practice CI and Authentic Movement since 2002, teach regular classes in improvisation and performance group in Praktika theatre in Moscow, as well as jams, labs, workshops for newcomers and advances in different cities and countries. I participated in performance projects with Steve Batts, Karl Frost, Konstantinos Mokhos, Andrey Andrianov. I am happy to be a part of Moscow Festival team. Themes and focuses interestingly to me now are: • Anatomical and structural fundamentals of movement • Evolutional patterns and animal movement in CI • CI for parents and kids, CI for kids with special development • CI on the lawn, on the sand, in the water, on the stones….. Teachers who influenced my vision of CI are Angela Dony, Steve Batts, Natanja Den Boeft, K J Holmes, Danny Lepkoff, Nita Little and Arye Burstein. ANASTASIA SAEVICH (RUSSIA) I dance CI since 2007. CI changed my whole life, I met my husband in CI community, and now we have two sons and we all dance together 🙂 I teach classes and workshops in CI, somatic movement, Authentic Movement. I develop my approach “Authentic way of witnessing kids”. Organizer of CI festivals at Ladoga lake, Thailand, Saint-Petersburg. Dance-movement therapist graduated IBMT Somatic Movement Program. MARIO BLANCO MARTINEZ (SPAIN – ARGENTINA) I come from a Yoga background, practiced and taught Yoga for some time so I got used to steadiness and stillness in order to recognize body and mind states. Later I studied Zen Shiatsu, I realized how soft touch, reflective listening, and attentive contemplation makes body and mind reveal. I got into CI in Argentina, mostly in the National Arts Institute (IUNA) and with the Contemplative Dance Laboratory, regularly dancing and performing. I was so lucky to meet CI in a place where festivals, meetings, and events were going on all the time, Buenos Aires, Rosario, Córdoba, Brasil, Uruguay, Chile. I see CI as a free and beautiful way to go into dance and movement, for sure brought those qualities to me. Maybe for the previous imprints, I also find in CI an amazing way to know about myself and others and at the same time to open attention to the enormous surrounding. I don`t see water as a different element of the world, instead, I see it as another dimensión, in which it`s needed to learn everything new. I notice I can barely rely on my usual senses for spacial information since they are totally distorted. On the other hand different inner sensations seem to get stronger and clearer, the diaphragm, the organs. And touch, it`s such an extraordinary event in that water homogeneity. I believe Dance is an amazing vehicle for exploring this water dimension and at the same time water is an amazing place for exploring dance. In this Water/Dance/Sense exploration I`m excited just by thinking in the overwhelming possibilities. KIRILL POPOV (RUSSIA) Since childhood, my relationships with water haven’t worked well. I grew up in the region of semideserts, with no place to swim, so it was quite late when I learned to swim, or rather to float in water. Then contact improvisation came into my life, after that – diving, and later – freediving, and CI in water as a blend of all these things. I was driven by freediving so quickly and strongly, that it has been the main occupation in my life for four years already. My relationships with water are so close that I can’t imagine my life without the sea. At first, I learned to dive. 20 meters, 30, 40,… After I learned to swim well and now I am keen on taking long swims for several kilometers in open water. I am constantly moving to different countries and continents in search of new exciting places for freediving. Immersing along coral walls; diving with graceful manta rays; swimming with whale sharks; practicing deep-water dives, when you see only the rope passing by; dynamic and static apnea… Freediving is very diverse! Everyone can dive! And everyone can find his/her interest in all this diversity. Freediving is a fascinating world and I want to help others to enter into this world.