About me:

TEACHING: OFFERS & FOCUS
Performance work
Biography



 

Offers in teaching

As a freelancer I’m offering regular classes and 2-5-day-workshops in Switzerland (mainly in Berne) in Contact Improvisation and New Dance/Performance. Alternately I’m teaching alone and in co-teaching with colleges from Switzerland and abroad. Beside this I get regularly invited to teach workshops in different cities all over Europe or within international festivals.

It’s also possible to get private lessons as a single person or small group. This is a great opportunity to follow personal interests and needs.

Another part of my teaching activities happens in dance schools and for dance companies (among others KonzertTheaterBern, HKB - Hochschule der Künste Bern, Stadttheater St. Gallen, TIP - Tanz, Improvisation, Performance in Freiburg i.B.)

You would like to invite me to teach in your place? Don't hesitate to contact me directly. I'm used to teach in english, german and french.

My focus in teaching Contact Improvisation

In my teaching I emphasize the technique part as well as principals for improvisation. I’m deeply convinced that both are needed to get an real understanding of this dance form. I put the focus on the precise training of movement and perception. The bodies should get porous, supple and light and in this way being enabled to communicate with other bodies very distinguishedly. Like that even big acrobatic movements will be based on a fine tuning of the bodies and well trained skills instead of simple muscle strength. My fascination for Contact Improvisation comes mainly from this simple fact, that human body-mind-soul-entities are following physical forces and laws and by that creating a new kind of encounter and moving together. There should be always a place for the sense of humour, joy and playfulness as well as for liveliness and sincerity.
I consider Contact Improvisation mainly as a duet-form. Nevertheless moving in trios or bigger formations may lead you to an even deeper awareness for your body and a bigger commitment with time and space. And playing with dynamics and timing has the potential to enrich the dance in unexpected ways.

My focus in teaching New Dance / Open Improvisation / Performance

In my improvisation classes I’m working exclusively with the tools of an open improvisation. The goal is to create an „Instant Composition“ without any structural scores or agreements about the content or a theme. I’m using a wide range of instruments to teach this: exercises to differentiate the perception of the own body, the space and time, exercises to explore internal movement impulses and to connect the inner and the outer space as well as highly structured compositional tasks in order to recognize the various elements of an “Instant Composition”. Like that an intense training can be created including each’s individuality in combination with all the material that has been transmitted.

The participants should learn to balance there perception and there actions - and from my point of view only this will bring them to a state of presence and authenticity that will make the improvisation worth seeing and that has the potential to touch an audience. An improvised performance is something magical, because you can literally feel in real time what’s going on among the performers, you can see the connections and the communication, how cooperation and the courage for radical actions are coming together and how by that unexplainable things may happen - things that will go fare beyond your imagination!

The training in new dance technique is based - as well as in Contact Improvisation - on organic movement principals and aims to differentiate the body awareness, to be more porous and flexible in the muscles and joints, to strengthen the body and to profit from energetic aspects. The focus is on lightness, strength and dynamic as well as on simplicity and the orientation in time and space. The floor work is an integral part of the training.

Photographer: Mark Nolan; Dancers: Adrian Russi, Jacky Miredin, Charlie Morrissey