A Week Intensive Residency With Erica Kaufman : PLAY PRACTICE RESIDENCY

DIVING INTO THE UNKNOWN A week intensive residency with Erica Kaufman DATE : 26TH MAY TO 31ST MAY Timings: Intensive : 10am to 9pm ( schedule is updated soon) REGISTRATIONS: please send email to : [email protected] FEES: Registrations before 15th April : 5000rs Registrations after 15th april: 6000rs Accommodation: there are few places in the residency space, please send an email to enquire about accommodation This intensive offers us the chance to discover the power of a deeply focused intimate dance. With essential principles of Contact Improvisation as our base, we will explore duet, trio, and group forms. We will build technical skills to ready the body/mind for changing landscapes of touch and weight. Daring to move out of familiar movement patterns and responses while trusting the intuitive physical state of an informed technical body, we will work with eyes open and eyes shut and expand our dances to move smoothly from contact, to proximity (no touch) and back to contact. Contact Improvisation, Movement Improvisation, Composition...will all be explored. This kind of focused dancing yields a beautiful quality. We will allow ample time to fully explore these dances without rush and to see/witness them from the outside with an interest toward spontaneous composition. Erica Kaufman, USA BFA, MFA, E-RYT500+ I am legally blind (can see basics…no details) however somehow I manage to ‘see’ with great clarity. My visual handicap has opened me to a wealth of investigation into the realm of touch, sensation, and awareness within the calm, alert body-mind. As I travel around the world teaching, learning, being, I continually discover new tactile listening skills to share and inspire with dancers. My teachings are marked by my extraordinary love of creativity, and my respect for sophisticated gutsy openness. Free of inhibition or ambitions, I like to inspire dancers into a focused state of engagement with clear minds and responsive bodies. I began practicing yoga at the age of 9 and 10 years later discovered Contact Improvisation and have continued to live both ever since. Fascinated with the relationship of CI to communication between people, I joined collaborative groups of artist using CI & experimental theatre to create performances; Performing and teaching enabled me to tour Eastern/Western Europe, Israel, Southern India and the USA. In 2008, I joined Nancy Stark Smith, Ray Chung, and Martin Keogh to coordinate CI36 —the 36th birthday celebration of CI which I hosted at Juniata College. The event was attended by over 300 hundred dancers from 29 countries and many distinguished veteran CI dancers, including CI instigator Steve Paxton. I danced, performed, and taught in many places I can not remember, but a few you might recognize...the Akademie der Kunste in Berlin, Bewegungs-art in Freiburg and at the Freiburg Contact Festival, the Brietenbush and Moab Jams in the USA, and the Israel Contact Festival. I am the founder of the Lila Yoga Institute (USA), a center for yogic learning, contact improvisation & somatic studies.