Emily Bowman is a dancer and choreographer based between Melbourne and Western Australia. Her practice is grounded in real-time choreography and contact improvisation (CI). She is interested in weight, repetition and durational work. Emily has travelled to India, Canada, Europe, the US and across Australia for CI teaching and research/performance projects. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Dance, from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 2013.
Emily has been an Australian Council peer assessor and is an organiser of the Australian Contact Improvisation Convergence. She has trained with CI teachers such as Nancy Stark Smith, Ray Chung, Andrew Harwood, Mark Young, Jacob and Joey Lehrer, David Corbet and Martin Hughes. Emily approaches CI as a physical dance technique in the traditional sense, with the belief that the learning is in the dancing.
Yurie Irino is a contact improvisation dancer and teacher based in Tokyo. After having practiced the Japanese martial arts Taidō, which made her realize that moving with others makes her feel alive, she found CI and soon fell in love with it. Since then, she's been fascinated by magical moments she experiences while dancing CI. She considers CI as not only a dance technique but also something that can change how you live your life, believing that it offers opportunities to be vulnerable, humble, and responsible for one's own happiness. Yurie teaches CI in Tokyo regularly and in China occasionally.
In this workshop, we will focus on working through what we sense rather than what we think – reality rather than creativity – with the aim of cultivating our sense of listening. What will happen if we become extreme listeners? The dance might not unfold as you expect; nothing might happen, it might not look very cool, it might not look like contact improvisation... However, can we accept that and keep listening, trying to feel the tiniest movements we can feel? What if we danced with the willingness to accept, being ready for whatever happens the next moment and letting it happen?
Filip is a contact dancer, improviser, physical actor, director and teacher. He co-founded the Polish physical theatre/dance company The line of Night, and is a member of the international theatre research group The Bridge of Winds, led by Denmark-based troupe Odin Teatret. He is also the co-creator and artistic director of multiple dance film projects.
Filip trained in traditional martial arts (aikido, Wing Tsun) and modern fight systems (Krav Maga, Brazilian jiu-jitsu). These days, he is occupied with contact improvisation and physical movement. Filip performs and teaches internationally both for dance and physical acting (Columbia, Mexico, Thailand, Denmark, France, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland). After years of training, he is still surprised by the endless possibilities in movement and expression.
I would like to invite you to a journey into your body – your skin, muscles, bones, organs and liquids, fascia and nervous system. They are all there for you and for your partner in dance. We will explore the means of communication in movement based on deep somatic understanding. We will broaden our ways of expression and communication in dance – to make the dance even more engaging, more open and fulfilling, and most importantly... more enjoyable!
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