HUMAN MOVES

Weekend Workshop 13 & 14.04.2024, 10am - 6pm

2 days of Playful Practice & Explorative Inquiry of Contact Improvisation.

My approach to movement practice is both technical and experiential - concentrating on building up a functional understanding of underlying physical principles and structures of Contact Improvisation whilst also widening the trust to one's instincts, impulses and intuition. 

The principal themes behind the work are organic, fluid and functional movement, tuning and sensitivity to listening through the body & deepening the awareness of the body in movement and in connection to other bodies.

The sessions develop slowly from inside to out. Often starting with individual floor-work, offering particular principles and tasks, and then gradually building up through the layers using the natural spirals of the body.  Material alternates between contact and solo tasks, and exercises that connect the group as a whole, creating an open, safe and exciting environment to explore. 


Within specific exercises we will  explore tools that are helpful to work in contact: sharing weight, center-to-center, leaning and supporting, rolling point of contact. 

Also using ideas around momentum, suspension, inertia & falling. To find effortless ways into weight transfers and lifting, leading and following, falling and spiraling…


Time will also be given to work with dance-scores, which allows participants to get into the flow of their own movement, giving time and space to integrate the learnt technique into their dance.

We will explore the idea of dancing open questions, such as;

Why do I move?
What do I feel when I am dancing?
How do I move with another person/other people whilst remaining connected to my own movement?
What impact does this practice have on how I choose to live my life?
Finding words to describe our dancing is sometimes not enough. Sometimes dancing our inquiries is the best way to get more informed about what is happening for us when we dance, and why it is so important to us to dance.

By giving time to stillness around the practice we will offer our nervous system (both individual and collective) time to integrate the experience of moving and learning together.

The tools we learn in the practice of this form can also be applied to how we relate to others in the everyday experience. The workshop environment can serve as a microcosm to understand ourselves more deeply or notice how we view ourselves and bring greater awareness to our habitual patterns - how we treat ourselves, how we relate to others etc. 

Noticing how intrinsically the mind and body are linked and giving space to the embodied experience of softening the mind through engaging the body in a relaxed & focused way.

We will also focus on how we sculpt space as a group, open our collective perception and look at how we move as a whole. How we frame dances by watching, giving space, feeling when to move, and when to be still. We will work with structures and scores to frame improvisation, and specific techniques for working in trios and larger groups.

Cultivating a deeper awareness of listening, breathing, giving, receiving, timing and moving as a collective.

Biography:

Hugh is a Contemporary Dance Artist specialising in Floorwork & Contact Improvisation. He has over 15 years of  teaching & performance experience. He began dancing when he was 15, training in Break dance and Contemporary. He went on to train at Northern School of Contemporary Dance, graduating in 2008. Since then he has worked with companies such as 2Faced Dance, Tom Dale, STAN Won’t Dance, and Wim Vandekeybus/Ultima Vez.

He has taught internationally at the Goa Contact Festival, Goa Dance residency, Thailand Contact and ecstatic arts festival, Berlin contact festival and Portugal Contact festival and for National Dance company Wales (NDCW) as well as organising his own workshops and retreats in Portugal, Germany and Israel. 

Within his teaching practice he combines his experience in Breakdance, Contemporary and Contact Improvisation to create a highly physical, technical and intuitive  approach to movement exploration.

He is also a qualified TMW (Tai Chi Movements for Wellbeing) facilitator. The principles of Tai Chi and Qi Kung underpin his approach to teaching and sharing movement.

Hugh Stanier 

https://www.hughmanmoves.com/