International Contact Improvisation Festival En Provence Summer - 19-25 July 2025 - Rustrel - 13th Edition
 
13th edition of the Festival of Contact Improvisation in the French Province, in Rustrel, one of the most beautiful villages in France, located north of Apt and at the foot of the Monts de Vaucluse. A unique opportunity of immersion for 7 days, for 35 participants, to experience an exploration of dance and movement with quality workshops, jams, live music and many other proposals to share.

Contact Improvisation, Composition and Improvisation, Workshops, Jams, Underscore, Live music, Nature.

THE PROGRAM => https://www.emotionbodies.com/events/76-festival-contact-improvisation-provence-rustrel-summer-2025.html#angles

• The event is open to all those who wish to share, learn or get a deeper experience in Contact Improvisation Dance. Space open to all levels, beginners and advanced and professional dancers.
• Days and hours: From Saturday July 19th afternoon to Friday 25 July in the afternoon.
  Places available: Limited to 35 and will be accepted in order of registration.
• Location: Rustrel (Provence). Professional dance space with a high quality wooden dance floor.
• Food: Vegan meals prepared with fresh, high-quality ingredients, sourced as locally as possible. Cristina Moncunill will be our chef, and her culinary talents are simply extraordinary.

Festival philosophy
This festival was born from an initiative between a brother and a sister and their passion for dance. Mercè Nebot, who has lived in French Provence for 20 years, and Pep Nebot, who lives in Barcelona, have joined forces to create this space for sharing dance, creation and beauty.
At each edition, people of different nationalities have gathered for the Festival, in particular from France and Spain, but each year other nationalities join us, which is very enriching and allows the establishment of a cultural bridge around art, dance and creativity.

In this festival we want to prioritize some approaches:
• Quality pedagogy in Contact Improvisation dance to promote better body awareness;
• Welcoming a small group that will live together for a week an intimate and profound human adventure. We want to generate a sense of belonging to the group and a sense of community, by creating an inclusive, generous and supportive environment;
• Contact with nature, surround yourself with aesthetic beauty and charismatic villages of the deep Provence;
• The cultural exchange between participants, locals and international visitors; We have already experienced on many occasions that, when people with different cultures and life experiences get together, we all grow in a spiral of creativity and self-knowledge;
• Live Contact Improvisation in its essence, with its living principles present at all times: self-respect and respect for the other, sense of group, security and creativity, movement in gravity, contact, attention and self-knowledge, among others.

The facilitators
Below there is a more detailed description of the participants and their workshop proposals. Here there is a short synthesis:

• Nica Portavia – Italy-Lebanon – Dancer, Teacher, and Somatic Researcher. I have primarily trained abroad with many teachers, including Steve Paxton, Daniel Lepkoff, Charlie Morrissey, Angelika Doniy, Asaf Bachrach, KJ Holmes, Anya Cloud, and Karen Nelson. I completed training in Material for the Spine by Steve Paxton, where I had the great pleasure of meeting and studying with him, deeply immersing myself in his research. I also undertook a three-year training program called Tatto Interno (Deep Touch), which explores the relationship between fascia and the nervous system. I am particularly interested in the biological-cultural dimension within dance practice and in the possibility of opening new perceptions and questions about the ways we feel and think about corporeality.

• Eryn Rosenthal - USA - Choreographer, director and social practice artist. Her classes investigate listening and empowerment, play and joy as forces that shift what's possible when we come together. Eryn's body-based work examines questions of democracy and social fabric, dreams and meaning-making within local and international contexts, grounded in ongoing collaborations with artists and activists in Chile, South Africa, Spain, and the US. She is also proud to be an active member of international contact improvisation (CI) teacher exchange networks, teaching and facilitating at the Freiburg Festival (DE), ECITE, the Market Theatre Lab (SA), La Universidad Complutense (SP), UMass-Amherst and elsewhere since 2003. Eryn’s trauma-informed practice combines contact improvisation, oral history, poetry and experimental performance to examine intimate and historical aspects of socio-political change. Her ongoing series The Doors Project investigates transitions–political, social, personal– through site-based performance in different doorways around the world. She is also a founding co-director of the Sedimento Collaborative in Chile/NYC, co-developing Sediment: Studies in Movement and Memory..

• Pep Nebot - (Barcelona) - Contact Improvisation dancer for 15 years, he has participated in workshops with Nancy Stark Smith, Martin Keogh, Leilani Weiss, Sveta Bird, Itay Yatuv, Leonardo Lambruchini, Ramon Roig, Carmen Alcalde, Lucía Sánchez, Kira Kirsch, Noam Carmeli and many others. He also professionally practices contemporary dance and acrobatics, and organizes festivals and professional acro-dance workshops. 

• Mercè Nebot – (Barcelona-Provence) – Passionate dancer and instructor of Wutao and free dance. With her own creation ORGANIK DANCE, she will offer us a workshop to reconnect with her interiority, her rhythm, her creativity and embark on a sensitive, jubilant and revitalizing dance journey.

• Sébastien Prats (France) : Vocal practice and Jam music. A self-taught author, composer and performer for over 20 years, Sébastien Prats offers an artistic originality that transcends borders. Close to nature and its energies, he draws his inspiration, his poetry and his ability to create magnetic, bewitching and singular sound spaces.

• Cristina Moncunill (Catalonia)– Vegan meals prepared with fresh, high-quality ingredients, sourced as locally as possible. Cristina Moncunill will be our chef, and her culinary talents are simply extraordinary. She says: "Vegan cuisine, instead of limiting me, has opened up a whole new culinary landscape that has enriched my dishes—not only visually but also nutritionally." In 2021, as head chef at Casa Albets, we earned the Michelin Green Star and the Bib Gourmand. My motto is: "Simple, local, delicious, and healthy." Bon appétit! 

Structure of the intensives

CONTACT IMPROVISATION INTENSIF – NICA PORTAVIA
WHY THIS SMALL DANCE IS SO BIG?

Where is the first perturbation? Where I can feel the smallest? How the smallest is becaming so big?

In this workshop we will take time to explore contact improvisation as a practice of inquiry , awarness and solidarity. We will approach the body as a community, a web of relations that is impacting the inner and the outer space, and how our story is impacting our steps.
We will explore a somatic-antropological approach that will give us access to the smallest, researching how a little impact can become a revolution in the way we percive and move on this planet earth.
We will research Contact Improvisation as a practice of sensations-revolutions-choices and small/big impacts.
Diving into our tissues, the skeleton system( approching Material for the spineby Steve Pacton) breathing and imagining togheter. Rolling, falling, flying, jumping - being ready for any changes and dancing any NOW.
We will dance cooperating with gravity, with the space, with the support that we recive living in this planet earth. Researching relations as a practice to soften our heart and make space to meet. We will practice CI as space of exchange, solidarity, support and revolution.
´When we do it togheter we can multiply and expand the impacts and soften our heart to make more space to recive'

INTENSIVE CONTACT IMPROVISATION - ERYN ROSENTHAL
Noticing the New: Contact Meets Composition

​​​Social psychologist Ellen Langer defines mindfulness as “the simple act of actively noticing new things.” In this intensive, we’ll explore both contact improvisation (CI) and composition as active noticing lab–a way of exploring finer-tuned, dialogue-based nuances of Contact and Improvisation. We’ll practice and build on basic principles of CI: sharpening our listening, sensory perception, and attuning of physical reflexes, and building more nuanced skills in weight-sharing, spirals, and physical listening. We’ll play with momentum, speed and tone: at different depths and at different orientations to gravity, in connection with the ground, our partners, and the group.

We’ll also apply and connect these CI skills toward honing compositional awareness: finding variations in group, duet, and individual composition. Examining both CI and composition as relational practice, we’ll practice flowing and tracking our attention and awareness, as we move in and out of different depths and degrees of proximity. If dance is movement and movement is change in time and space, we’ll study emergent dynamics, patterns, rhythm, roles, shapes and tonality, as we craft and practice dynamic containers for studying and stirring change.

What is the speed of delight? What are strategies for co-creating? Over the course of this intensive, we’ll gain agility in movement invention and creative, game-based spatial problem solving. We’ll also build our awareness and range of texture, speed, stillness, and other compositional tools to weave a collective tapestry and navigate shared authorship. Open and juicy level class geared toward beginners to advanced. All bodies, abilities, and backgrounds are actively welcome.

PRICES & REGISTRATION
Price WITH accommodation in Rustrel castle (ony 30 beds):

• Early Bird until June 10, 2025: €495
• After June 10, 2025: 535 €

Price WITHOUT accommodation in Rustrel castle:

• Early Bird until June 10, 2025: 415 €
• After June 10, 2025: 455 €

To reserve the place, you must pay the deposit of €100, and the rest can be transferred or paid in cash at the event.

What is included in the price:

Accommodation in Rustrel Castle in shared rooms. People will be distributed as they register. (for those who pay the price with accommodation).
All lunches and dinners, with organic vegetarian cuisine.
Use of the common spaces of the castle, dining room, bathrooms, terraces, etc.
All workshops and jams.
Liability insurance.

What is not included in the price:

Breakfasts (the dining room of the Castle will be available to all participants). However, coffee and tea will always be available to everyone. A refrigerator will also be made available to all participants.

Registration and payment information: https://www.emotionbodies.com/events/76-festival-contact-improvisation-provence-rustrel-summer-2025.html#angles