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teachers
Mei Li is a Taiwan-born independent dance artist and is a graduate of the London Contemporary Dance School. She worked with Kirstie Simson in the filming of International Documentary of Dance Improvisation and Dance Cambodia, and has been invited to perform in numerous festivals such as Colorado Dance Festival, Hong Kong E-Side Arts Festival, Contact Improvisation Festival Japan and Asian Improvisation Art Exchange. She has also been invited to various artist residency programs, such as International Dance Day (India), Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris) Kio-A-Thau Artist-in-Residence (Taiwan), and Taipei Public Arts Festival. Mei is a core member of Ku & Dancers. As a dance educator in Taiwan, she has organized workshops for Taiwan’s various communities and populations, from the physically challenged to opera singers to musicians. She has worked with the National Theater in Taiwan and currently teaches at National Taiwan University of Arts and at Dance Forum Taipei Dance Company.
Mei’s workshop will be based on contact improvisation as well as a somatic approach to improvisation that emphasizes tuning in to our inner silence, sensing the movement of life energy, and deepening our awareness of our interior space to access a fuller sense of self. Through opening up the self, the workshop leads us to harness our intuition and imagination. The workshop will invite us to explore the ideas of open space and space in sharing, with the aim of observing and sharing as we move. Contact improvisation partnering work through the somatic method looks at how the exchange of energy and the dynamics of weight can facilitate a fuller spirit in moving. The essence of Mei’s teaching is in exploring the freedom of body and mind and on how we can develop our sense of relationship and connection through dancing.
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 Photo by Dorothy Pang
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Li Yong Wei (Singapore) Li
Yong Wei graduated from Arizona State
University with a Master of Fine Arts (Dance) with an Outstanding
Graduate Student Creative Work Award and a Distinguished Teacher Award.
Currently based in Singapore, Yong continues to engage in work and
practice overseas. In 2011, he was supported twice by the Singapore
International Foundation – in presenting his work at Bates
International Dance Festival (US) and at Ilan, Taiwan.
Yong began to focus on contact improvisation in 2008 and has been fortunate to study the dance form with Nancy Stark Smith, Nina Little, Martin Keogh and Tim O'Donnell. He has since facilitated workshops and/or jams in the US (America College Dance Festival; Bates International Dance Festival; Dancers' Workshop, Wyoming; Buffalo, New York; and Arizona State University), Singapore (LASALLE College of the Arts and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts), and Taiwan (Ilan). As a dance practitioner, Yong’s interest lies in pushing the envelope of dance practices while continuing to challenge the limits of body physicality.
Engagement ✇ Contact
improvisation, a communication through touch and sharing
of weight, is a language that is at once tangible yet ambiguous.
Apart from sharing some partnering techniques/principles, the
workshop will also focus on exploring the concept
of 'engagement'
from solo improv into CI duet, drawing from some elements of
the Underscore, which is a framework for practicing and researching
dance improvisation that Nancy Stark Smith has been developing
since the early 1990s. While we will emphasize the physical practice in
CI duets, we will also study the interactions during the practice. This
will be done via observation, reflection, and the sharing of our
individual perspectives.
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Jacob Lehrer (Australia) Jacob has been a
CI practitioner since 1995. He is an organiser and facilitator of the
Australian Contact Improvisation Convergence which hosts 70-75 dancers
from around Australasia. He works nationally and internationally as a
performer, director, choreographer and teacher.
Jacob's passion for improvised performance has taken him to New York with his dance partner David Corbet to perform at Movement Research Festival. He was also a member of State of Flux dance company which was active in Melbourne 1996-2006 and involved in research, teaching, performing, community building and curating. Jacob is interested in real-time choreography and 'not knowing'. He approaches CI as a physical dance technique using natural philosophy principles (gravity, counterthrust, momentum, etc.) as his primary tools. States, Skills and Dancing During these sessions we will ebb and flow between somatic states and mechanical skills. We will play with the restriction of instruction and the freedom of finding the dance. Working through grounding, flying and disorientation we will create a fertile environment for exploration, fun and dancing. |
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Tsai Chia-Chun (Taiwan) Having studied dance for nearly 20 years, Tsai Chia-Chun began her early training in traditional Taiwanese folk dance with Taiwan’s acclaimed Lan Yang Dance Troupe. She first experienced contact improvisation during her studies at National Taiwan University of Arts where she graduated with a BFA in Dance. After university, she began her professional career, performing throughout Taiwan with several dance companies and also as a guest dancer with visiting international artists. Performances have taken her to Canada, France, Israel, Japan, Mainland China, Réunion, Poland and the USA, including participations in Asia Contemporary Dance Now, Dance Wave Fukuoka, Beijing Drama Festival, Taipei Fringe Festival, and the Asia-Pacific Choreographer's Workshop. In
addition to teaching dance in Taiwan and continuing to
perform, Chia-Chun established her own dance company, Gui-Zhi Theatre,
in
2008. In
2010, she organized the first in a series of CI workshops in her
community,
giving non-professional dancers the chance to experience the expressive
freedom
of contact improvisation. Making
Friends with the Body Chia-Chun's class will lay the foundation for us to become better friends with our own bodies. Exploring the relationship between our bodies and our sensations, we will become more aware of the natural beauty of our movements and how it relates to the space around us. The spontaneity of contact improv allows us to look inside and gain a greater awareness of physical and spatial relationships in a variety of environments. Making friends with the body through dance ultimately, can give us the mindfulness to create balanced relationships with others and our surroundings. |
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Yuenjie Maru (Hong Kong) Maru is an inclusive dance facilitator and a core member of Kongtact Square. He is also the artistic director of Symbiotic Dance Troupe (established by the Centre for Community Cultural Development in Hong Kong) and the founder of Symbiotic Dance Workshops. He has carried out workshops in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and the UK, and is one of two Certified DanceAbility Teachers in Asia. Maru is also a performance artist and has performed in Mainland China, Macau, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the UK. Contact Improv in the DanceAbility Approach DanceAbility is a method to study movement that does not discriminate on the basis of one's abilities or disabilities. It was developed from the principles of contact improvisation by dancer and choreographer Alito Alessi, the artistic director of Joint Forces Dance Company (US). The main modes of exploration are improvisation and the touch-oriented exercises evolved from CI. In this class, we will focus on making contact improvisation more inclusive via an equality and diversity-based approach. |
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last updated August 3, 2012 |
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