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Making performance integral
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Visibly Unstable
C o n t a c t I m p r o v i s a t i o n I n t e n s i v e
Teachers
"For forty years I have been engaged in a dedicated practice of dance improvisation. My encounter with this work in my early twenties transformed my life. As an earnest young student in a beginning improvisation class, I understood in a flash of insight that everything I would ever need to know was already present within me."
Kirstie Simson
Kirstie draws from her extensive experience of Contact Improvisation, dance techniques, the Alexander technique, Aikido, meditation, and her broad knowledge of improvisation in performance. She shares her work through facilitated exercises, open time for play and exploration, movement scores, observations, discussion, and humour. Much of the work is experienced through partnering, respectful touch, and connection with others, balanced with solo time for processing and reflection. We will also explore scores that take us outside. There is deep inspiration and rigor in a practice of improvisation that posits vulnerability at its heart. Developing the skills to be able to care for, engage, respect, and respond to that state of openness in oneself, others and our environment generates creative work that is powerful and transformative. Learning from a place of interconnectedness can give us the resilience and insight to face into life’s challenges and complexities. In this workshop Kirstie shares the movement practices and underlying philosophies she has developed over forty-five years of committed involvement with dance improvisation as a ‘life-practice’ that has helped her negotiate life with all it's complex challenges, adventures and surprises.
Laura Doehler
Laura Doehler began her Contact Improvisation practice in 2004 with Kirstie Simson and soon connected to the wider international CI community, learning with pioneers such as Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark-Smith, Karen Nelson and many others who expanded the form into poetic, political, and somatic inquiries.
She is a London-based dance artist having studied dance and performance making at Trinity Laban (2004) and Goldsmiths University (2012) and she is a recipient of the Trinity Laban scholarship.
Her work as dance artist and director of Exit Map is firmly rooted in CI and improvisation. Her work is collaborative and participatory in nature and explores collective agency, scores of co-existence and care and proposes new socio-environmental relational practices such as outdoor dance events, rituals and embodied co-working spaces. In 2012 she co-founded Shared Practice with Anne-Gaelle Thiriot and Tania Soubry, which is an ongoing improvisation research project that she facilitates besides teaching in Higher Education at National Centre For Circus Arts and independent workshops across Europe. Over the past years she connected to community organisations that work with CI and involve rural land practices. Recent residencies include Radical Inclusion and Architectures of Togetherness with Ponderosa e.V. in Germany, Catalysing Collective Action at The Place in London 2024 and in summer 2026 with Larret En Mouvement as part of Larretude a research around Agentic Assemblages (FR).
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