Contact Improvisation – Page 4 – Creative & dance journal

Dance in the face of coronavirus

The outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic in March 2020 caused the suspension of our dance and class sessions at Oxford Contact Dance. Assembles were unlawful, ‘social distancing’ the new normal, and most people were isolated at home. We couldn’t dance together. What could we do?

Embodied decision-making?

The University of Oxford has been using the humanities for leadership training – mostly for leaders in business. Acting and singing are two humanities featured in their programme but what about movement or dance? I draw-up a two day course based upon my movement practice of contact improvisation. [Research by Fiona Bennett]

C-12 Emerge Dance Festival 2020

Dance artist Jo Dyer with whom I worked last year, is performing a new dance in London and you’re invited! Save the dates: 3-7th March at The Space, 269 Westferry Rd, London E14 3RS. Tickets are available.

Stage dancing : Christmas Lights 2019, Oxford

On Saturday 16 November, dancer Jo Dyer, cellist Josie Webber and I, took to the stage in Oxford at the Christmas Lights Festival. We performed a revised version of the ‘In-between’ dance created earlier in the year.

Freiburg Contact Festival 2019: My Scrapbook

I attended the Freiburg Contact Festival 2019. Afterwards, I made a scrapbook using entries in my dance diary and accompanying photos. You can see it here (PDF).

I also photographed the Freiburg Contact Festival too.

Patrick Beelaert was one of the photographers at Freiburg 2019 and he has a great album of photos on Flickr which show people dancing.

Freiburg Contact Festival 2019: Dance the light fantastic

This summer, I attended the Freiburg Contact Festival in southern Germany. The festival is now in its twentieth year. The dancing and dancers are well documented by dedicated photographers. But the place, its light, and its buildings where equally of interest and less explored.

Fountain: a dance

Ideas for dance rarely come from nowhere. A few years ago, I saw a fantastic image of a man throwing a handful of small sticks into the air. The photograph had caught the movement, and indeed the moment in time as the sticks were suspended in a ‘stick cloud’. That was my starting point for a dance involving buckets and water.

Category: Contact Improvisation