Katja is a Finnish dancer, teacher and dance maker, who currently works and lives in Frankfurt, Germany. She graduated from the Vocational Dance School in Outukumpu, Finland in 2004, and holds a MA degree in "Contemporary Dance Pedagogy" from the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany. Since 2008, she’s been teaching contemporary dance technique, improvisation and contact improvisation, both in Frankfurt and abroad. She is curious about the unknown as a source for creativity, and considers it to be the best teacher for change and growth. States of presence and the body’s ability to transform, embody, and transmit images, knowledge, emotions and ideas continue to fascinate and inspire her movement practice, research and life.

This workshop grows from our explorations, interests and shared dances during these past few years. Merging our curiosities of imagination, poetry and play together with the principles of CI will form the heart of this workshop.

Each session is a combination of exercises that prepare the body through touch, sensation of weight, interaction with the floor and our partners. Themes such as the spine, the center-periphery, our joints and variation of the tone of the body will give us a common starting point and create the ground for further play.

We’d like to evoke from participants awareness of their senses, shifting between the inner worlds and that which surrounds us, emphasizing the relationships between giving and receiving, guiding and following, witnessing and moving, being active and being passive. Drawing attention to our inner choice making processes together with others, we welcome restrictions and limitations as inpiration for new choices, different movement pathways, and as potential for widening our physical vocabulary.

Born and raised in Bangkok, Ong has always been a keen mover. During his graduate school years at the University of California, Berkeley, he studied modern dance, West African dance, and ballet. In 2012–2013, he worked with several performance companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, such as ZiRu Productions, Project Bandaloop, Palanza Dance and Lizz Roman & Dancers. During that period, he also choreographed his own works, curated an evening performance salon and was part of the interactive technology/art/media performance group, Kinetech Arts. His movement practice is highly informed by Gaga, The Axis Syllabus, contact improvisation, physical theater and somatic practices such as The Feldenkrais Method® and Body-Mind-Centering®. Currently based in Bangkok, Ong is a member of an artist collective called Urban Bones Dance Company. He likes to promote contact improvisation and to engage his local community into exploring the creative possibility, self-cultivating power and socio-democratic activism of the performing arts.

This workshop is about movement based on sensation in the body and how trusting that gained sensitivity can permit our body to make intelligent choices. We warm up with simple movement exercises that build awareness of evolutionary and developmental movement patterns and multiple body systems, sometimes with hands-on bodywork with a partner. We cultivate learning by observing the partner’s body, and activating internal awareness aided by the sense of touch. We build listening skills—how to dialogue with our environment/partner through functional movement, finding our own center of gravity, how to release unnecessary tension in the body, to move harmoniously with the physics of gravity and to respond easefully to neural/emotional impulses. We will use "improvisation scores," which are ideas that generate movement or interaction—a dance—and inversely how to spontaneously discover a dance that engages you in a specific and structured way. We also use group discussion to reflect on the individual’s experience of the dance.

Faye is based in Singapore where she directs the Strangeweather Movement Group, plays martial arts and is a full-time community arts advocate. She founded Strangeweather to develop an enduring|endearing practice in collaborative and improvisational dance-making. The group has performed off-stage at various places around Singapore such as Stamford Green (Archifest), Bottle Tree Park (Ground-Up Initiative), and the Fost Gallery (Gillman Barracks). Excerpts of their work, Spooky Action (from a Distance), was featured in Karol Jalochowski’s quantum physics documentary Reality Lost. Previously based in New York City, Faye has also worked with such artists as Benjamin Rasmussen, Patricia Noworol and the multi-disciplinary Dana Salisbury & The No-See-Ums. While there, she taught improvisation and creative movement classes and received an MFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. In 2013, Faye led a workshop at MyDance Festival in Kuala Lumpur and is glad to be back in the city for this festival.

This session sets up an intentional place to explore the dynamics of the number 3 in a contact dance and how that may develop into a score for exploration or performance. We will play with the number 3 by way of awareness, physical space and trio dances, and uncover the balances and counterbalances available. The fun is in the experience of the tension and messiness, as well as the movement fluency and surprising rhythms we may find together.

Time will be set aside for the developing and sharing of small group movement scores arising from the earlier exploratory exercises.