Improvisation for Performers
practising instant inventiveness

The core of this advanced workshop will focus on movement structures which will encourage performers of various backgrounds to redefine and expand their solo and duet vocabulary and allow for experimentation with small to large group dances. Through various forms of improvisation, spatial design, images, states, chance procedures, tasks and games, we will practise instant inventiveness, refine our sensing skills and develop various compositional strategies, which in turn will become the framework for in-house performances that we will view and discuss. This entire process relies on the dancers willingness to listen deeply to themselves and each other, to take risks, to call upon their confidence and to allow their skills as interpreters to come into focus. Emphasis will be placed upon collaboration and communication, personalised performing, clear intention, trust and instinct.


Instant Instinct
entering the instinctive arena of the unknown

Each class will begin with a warm-up focusing on releasing and extending the body, awakening the senses and developing an awareness of inner/outer space. We then enter the rich and instinctive arena of the unknown with an open mind and a curious body. Simple directions and basic structures will help us harness our intuitive discoveries, share our current quests, and challenge our dancing's desires while we improvise alone/together. Throughout this practice, we will be encouraged to lower our expectations and accentuate our inventiveness. This will be a mixed level class, open to all levels of experience.



Tuning Into Contact
A workshop in Instantaneous Composition and Contact Improvisation

This workshop is intended to immerse participants in the practice of dance improvisation in a stimulating and supportive environment. Two complementary approaches to improvisation and composition will be explored in this workshop with Paula Zacharias and Andrew Harwood. The sensorial field of perception, which awakens and “tunes” the imagination while improvising will be combined with the physically interactive and spontaneous duet form “contact”, based on instinct and touch. Bodywork will complement the proceedings. Paula and Andrew have been touring internationally teaching and performing together over the past 18 months in Canada, the U.S.A., Australia, South America, Mexico and six countries in Europe.

Paula Zacharias's work will focus on opening the visual and sensorial field of perception for improvisation. This work is based on and influenced by the “Tuning Score” created by Lisa Nelson, a study of the ways we perceive and of choices that we make in the process of viewing which opens the senses to other realities. Simple observation affects action, while attention and intention complement each other to help break patterns drawing other senses into the creative process of movement. Through the awareness of visual and non-visual perception we can tune into our inner and outer world, observing and awaking the imagination for composition.

Andrew Harwood's work will focus on Contact Improvisation, which is a free play between two bodies in motion sharing weight, balance and energy, often leaving participants informed, centered and enlivened. Simple partnering work or deep release work, using anatomically sound sequences of movement, will lead us to a grounded internal experience of our weight in motion. Alertness is constantly encouraged in order to work in an energetic state of “beingness”. We will practice various skills such as rolling, falling, supporting, being upside down, pouring weight and catching. Deep relaxation, reflex and coordination games, sensory awareness, ki work and lots of dancing in contact with others will balance out this work.


Andrew de Lotbinière Harwood
Andrew de Lotbinière Harwood is a leading international teacher, performer and creator in the field of instantaneous choreography and Contact Improvisation since 1975. He is the artistic director of AH HA Productions, a project oriented company based in Montreal and dedicated to improvisation as a practice and a performing art.

Andrew studied extensively, taught and performed with Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith and Nita Little, the founding members of Contact Improvisation. He also has a background in gymnastics, athletics, Yoga, contemporary dance, Release Technique, somatic studies and Aikido. His work has been presented in numerous international festivals since 1980. Andrew danced for the companies of Fulcrum, Jo Lechay, Marie Chouinard and Jean-Pierre Perreault, and with the improvisational ensembles The Echo Case and Discovery Bal. He has also collaborated in performance with Marc Boivin, Peter Bingham, Lin Snelling, Benoît Lachambre, Chris Aiken, Kirstie Simson, Ray Chung, Lisa Nelson and Paula Zacharias among many others.

Additionally, Harwood has taught advanced workshops and performed at many major Contact Improvisation festivals in the past few years: Freiburg Contact Festival (Germany), Moscow Contact Festival, Israeli Contact Festival, Zip Contact Festival (Italy), Kontact Budapest (Hungary), Trans Contact Festival (Romania).He has also taught classes to the world renowned companies of O’ Vertigo and Marie Chouinard in Montréal as well as the fabulous Montréal Circus group called Les Sept Doigts de la Main. He is the recipient of the Canada Council’s Jacqueline-Lemieux award for the year 2000.