Contact Improvisation
an impulse for spontaneous partnership

Contact Improvisation is an approach, a context, a practice. Anyone who is willing can do it. The dance can be slow, low to the ground, intimate, athletic, fierce and flying within a matter of seconds or hours... Contact Improvisation thrives on deep listening, whole body respect and awareness, flexibility, playfulness, strength, mutual trust and joie de vivre. A basic suggestion is to follow an ever-changing point of contact (or place of touch) between your body and your partner’s body. We will follow this suggestion and expand the dance to include a wide experience of improvising in partnership: duo, trio, group, body and architecture, body and world.
I have been dancing with Contact Improvisation since 1979. The dance, like my body and the world around me, has gone through several phases and changes, styles and evolutions. I teach Contact Improvisation as an experiment in moving, as an impulse for spontaneous partnership and choreography, as an inspirational space where new ideas and actions can flourish.




Shamanic Improvised Presence
Improvisation and performance as potential shamanic action

A daily experiment to investigate the relationship between improvised dance, performance and shamanism. Exercises and experiences in presence, transformation, breath, altered states of being, trance, awareness, ritual, and performance.
I have been studying ritual, both ancient and contemporary, for over 20 years. I recognise the many continuations and disruptions between religious practice and the Western concert stage. Shamanism, in a general usage, refers to the ritual/spiritual practices of working with unseen forces, of energy, of transforming space and time, of shifting meaning and perspective. Performance often engages the same intentions.
Throughout the week we will, in action and conversation, question the concept of Presence. What is it? How do we experience it? Can it be choreographed? What can we learn about presence through improvisation?



Keith Hennessy
Keith Hennessy was born in a mining town in Northern Ontario, lives in San Francisco, and works regularly in Europe. Director of Circo Zero, he is a Bessie award-winning performer, choreographer, teacher and organizer. Hennessy was a co-founder of the San Francisco performance spaces 848 and CounterPULSE. Hennessy was a member of Sara Shelton Mann’s legendary Contraband, is deeply curious about improvisation, and has been queering bodies and stages for over 25 years. He is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at University of California, Davis.
www.circozero.org