Team 2026

INTENSIVE

Susanne Martin, PhD (DE)

I perform, research, teach and publish in the field of contemporary dance and artistic research. I focus on improvisation and contact improvisation for the stage and in educational contexts. Festivals where my performances have been shown include: International Dance and Theatre Festival, Gothenburg; Aerowaves, London; Nottdance, Nottingham; Opera Estate, Bassano del Grappa; Tanec Praha, Prague; Potsdamer Tanztage. As a researcher I’m interested in how dance critically intervenes in our age(ing) culture and how dance improvisation influences the teaching and learning culture in universities. But most of all, I love to be in the dance studio and on stage. And I love to dance.

www.susannemartin.de

INTENSIVE

Kassol photography

Andrew Wass (US)

A dancer and researcher, Andrew Wass blurs the boundaries between empirical inquiry and embodied experience. With a background in Biochemistry and a PhD in Dance, he situates his inquiries in the intersection of philosophy, cognitive science, and process-oriented concert dance. He has taught contemporary technique, Contact Improvisation, and Ensemble Thinking for over two decades across Europe, Asia, and the U.S. He frames movement dissolving the divide between analytic method and lived sensation. Wass has performed with dance luminaries Jess Curtis, Ray Chung, Nancy Stark Smith, Nina Martin, Kirstie Simson, Ka Rustler, and Chris Aiken. TX. His performance work has been produced at venues such as Danspace at St. Marks, Martin Gropius Bau, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum for Contemporary Art, and La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art.

wasswasswass.com

lowerleft.org

INTENSIVE

Olivia Court Mesa (CH/IL)

Olivia Court Mesa is a Chilean–Israeli independent dance artist, choreographer, performer, and teacher. Her work explores partnering, real-time physical dialogue, and the body as a site of research. She tours internationally with her works, which have been presented at festivals in Europe, South America, and Israel, and have received awards in Israel and abroad. Olivia is the co-founder of The Common Body, an ongoing practice investigating communication through movement, weight, and perception, and she teaches internationally across professional, educational, and community contexts.

www.oliviacourtmesa.com

IG: olivia.court.mesa

INTENSIVE

Antoine Ragot (FR)

Antoine is a Berlin-based dance artist and educator whose teaching draws deeply from the Axis Syllabus, of which he is a certifying teacher, and from a lifelong practice of Contact Improvisation.

With nearly two decades of experience, he is known as an insightful and approachable pedagogue and passionate movement researcher.

He co-founded Movement Artisans in Berlin, leads research-oriented intensives, and teaches across Europe. Antoine also co-produces other grass-root dance events close to his heart such as the New Year CI Festival and the Summer CI gathering in Basel as well as the SuperJam in Berlin.

His work emphasizes the simple joy of dancing together, biomechanics, functional morphology and athletic skills as well as the intersection of Contact Improvisation with proprioceptive communication.

more
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Team 2025

INTENSIVE

Dorte Bjerre Jensen (DK)

Caring with - sensitizing oneself towards gravity

“You been swimming in gravity since the day you were born. Every cell knows where down is. Easily forgotten. Your mass and the earths mass calling to each other.”

As a dancer, artist, researcher and educator I am interested in our body ́s innate ability to respond physically to the environment, and the surprisingly ways we create relational matrices by composing our bodies in and with space.I wish to propose a practice of Caring with- sensitizing oneself towards gravity. Caring with in the attendance to others, with asymmetry of touch, friction, senses, and smells, caring with inside the unequal, messy and troubled situations. Caring with as deep listening.

Steve Paxton

INTENSIVE

Mirva Mäkinen (FI)

Horizontal falling

Contact improvisation is based on the communication between two moving bodies that are in physical contact and their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern their movement; gravity, momentum, inertia. The body, in order to feel these sensations, learns to release excess muscular tension and abandon a certain quality of willfulness to experience the natural flow of movement. This workshop will include rolling, falling, being upside down, following a physical point of contact, supporting and giving weight to a partner. We will aim towards movable support and gentle flying technique. This could be also called as horizontal falling.

Photo by Borys Boryshenko

Cristina Crippa (IT)

Class / Lab

ROOTING AND RISING

In this workshop, we want to explore the dual forces that are always present in our bodies: the downward pull of gravity, which allows us to feel rooted, while the other is the upward force that lifts us.

Can we be both grounded and able to move? When do we reach a state of suspension? Can we recognize it, experience it, stretch it, and ride it?

Through curiosity and exploration, we will seek a way to tune into our experiences, ground ourselves in the present moment.

My aim is to create an alive and safe space where we can work solo or with partners/groups and communicate through presence, touch, and weight.

Måns Erlandsson (SE)

Class / Lab

ROTATION and SPIRALING as tools and support

Discover your moving engines!

Moving in Contact- training of basic principles in playful scoores and labbing. Exploring movement and timing of physical touch.

Combining tools of using surface, weight and lever to find a non-muscular way of taking and giving weight. We can receive a sense of magic touch. This leads into dances where we can move others just by moving our own bodies. Dances where different kinds of touch and spiral work can make your motion fly both in an internal and external way. This workshop means training in different levels, from fish to bird, for moving in and out of contact, playing with weight that moves in a moving flow.

"My aim in teaching and performing Contact Improvisation is also to integrate each situation that appears in the dance, through presence, pleasure and playfulness."

Lab

Dance with the Forest

A dance journey in to nature, exploring terrain and landscapes, connecting to earth, trees, sky and wind. Contact Improvisation offers us amazing tools, to roll, jump, float and connect, to be silent, to become something more. Getting physical, getting dirty, climbing and falling, savouring textures of leaves, trunks and branches, of soil, sand and water. Reminding our bodies that we too, are nature.

We meet in the studio, and dance our way into the surrounding forest. Bring shoes for outdoor dancing along with cloth protecting your skin.

Pipaluk Supernova (DK)

Serhii Semichev (UA)

Class

The illusion of balance

The class will be of interest to participants with any experience. The class is dedicated to balance, losing and finding balance and counterbalance. We will find balance in any position with minimal use of muscle effort. We will explore how changing the position of different parts of the body changes the position of the body's center of gravity and loss of balance.

We will explore how the body organizes itself without unnecessary muscle effort in search of balance when the center of gravity changes position in space. We will explore how the partner's influence affects the position of the center of gravity in space. We will explore how the body organizes itself to find balance when the partner's influence. We will explore how the position of the partner's body changes the position of the partners' center of gravity and leads to loss of balance for both partners. We will explore how our bodies organize themselves in contact when losing and finding balance. We will explore the intensity and range of movement in losing and finding balance together with a partner.

We will explore how joint loss of balance and organization of the body to find balance in contact without unnecessary muscle effort can become a game and one of the resources of movement in dance.