I’m interested in sharing my ongoing research based on applying the Feldenkrais Method to the practice of Contact Improvisation.

With the Feldenkrais Method, we direct our attention to internal sensations, without judgment, acknowledging the intelligence of the body and curious about new possibilities. We identify habits and clarify choices to promote efficiency, freedom and a sense of ease that involves our whole selves. This specific way of tuning in with what we are experiencing will magnify our senses, affecting the quality of our presence and alertness, bringing us to the present moment while engaging in self-discovery and authenticity.

The group’s shared somatic process will create trust and will support experimentation and imagination, while working with larger and more complex movement in solos, duets, trios and group pieces.

When engaging with touch and weight, we will find more sophistication in sensing, reading, and communicating during physical dialogue with our partner. When we dance, we meet someone else’s sensitivity, body structure, imagination, expectations, knowledge and movement habits. I’m interested in seeing how the Feldenkrais Method might help us question our habits and habitual patterns and pathways in Contact Improvisation.

This could emerge as a consequence of being fully in the present moment, as well as due to the re-patterned movement which normally happens with Feldenkrais. We will also intentionally use strategies from Feldenkrais to break the automatism of certain skills, changing speed, direction, reversing patterns and supporting unfamiliar pathways. We will see Contact vocabulary from another perspective that brings more enjoyment, rejuvenation and authenticity to the emerging of new dancing.