Intensive: “Embodying Consent in CI” by Defne Erdur
Gently getting back to touch, reclaiming contact with care
After a long, precarious period of witnessing our own inner movements and surviving in small, confined spaces for moving, maybe witnessing others via online platforms we started to move in opening bodies in open spaces! And now we meet in Fall in CI after 2 years of distance.
As always, we will all be coming from different places and shades of sensitivity. Maybe some of us already moved in open spaces and in festivals during the summer. But now, more than ever, calls for more attention to our differences and deeper study of what touch entails. Therefore, we will be inviting us all to find calm and focus, and delicately touch —physically, mentally, emotionally, politically— upon issues relating to touch in our dancing.
Are you willing to move with us inquiring into some of these questions? Can we seriously study the sliding scale between a “yes” and a “no”? Can we inquire: how we know, how, when, why our answers change, when we are able to answer, when we are confused and/or unable to communicate clearly, when we are able or unable to read others, how we can develop physical and verbal language to express our ever-changing choices? In other words, how can we develop skills to be aware and able to sense our physical states and to be informed about our mental, emotional and chemical states; how they take shape in and around our dances? How can we become the masters and not the victims of our own choices and our partner’s choices in any given moment? How can we move towards developing instant, multi-layered compositions with each other that let us stay in the dance for the dance? Are we ready to fail and repair?
All for co-creating a brave safe space in and around our dance floors!
Seriously joyful, joyfully serious…
“Tact of Teaching”s – meaning pedagogical thoughtfulness – are an invitation for teachers to find a point of contact for teaching together. Finding their individual teaching inquires and follow that together with their colleagues’. Assuming that practical knowing-in-action requires pedagogical sensitivity, vigilance, and tact we hope to challenge and inspire the teachers as well as the participants of these sessions.
LAB’s:
We reserved time slots for the laboratories to be proposed by the participants. In the labs you have the possibility to bring in or try out your own interests with the people sharing similar interests.
one2ones:
You can get one one2one session with one of the teachers for ~15 min. You come with your question, interest, wish for feedback. You can work 1 on 1, come with a friend or small group.
Kitchen Table is a setting for an open discussion about any topic (in this case in and around CI), but with a rule set to create a performance out of the ordinary. During a set time anyone interested can witness and/or participate in the discussion. The topics are open and the exchange of speakers is actively encouraged.
Schedule
Teachers
Defne Erdur (TR/FR)
Defne Erdur is a dance artist and a sociologist working in the fields of performing arts, therapy and education. She is trained in Contemporary Dance (PhD), Sociology (MA), Intermodel Art Therapy & Creativity, Body Therapies (Deep Tissue Release, Trigger Point & Movement, Integrative Craniosacral Therapy), Meditation, and Trauma Healing (Somatic Experiencing). She is the co-founder and editor of idocde.net.
In 2016 she completed her PhD thesis in Turkey (DANCE EDUCATION ON THE TRANSITIVE LINE BETWEEN LIFE AND ART: Contributions of the Technique, Methodology and Pedagogy of Contact Improvisation to the Physical, Artistic and Psycho-social Development of Amateur Dancers). In 2017 she co-published mindthedance.com: A Guide/Movement to Document Contemporary Dance/ Movement Teaching, as an outcome of the REFLEX Europe Project.
Besides her private practice, she had been regularly teaching at ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival, MSGSU Istanbul State Conservatory, CI-Turkey, ElimSende and ÇATI Associations. She also gives her workshops (Hunting Gathering Cultivating, Every Body Knows, Mind the Body, and Embodying Time) around the world (Tanzhaus Zurich, Konservatorium Wien, Mandala İstanbul, Kuala Lumpur, Vienna, Berlin and Freiburg CI Festivals…), working with different populations (professional and amateur movers, therapists, women, and migrant children and youth).
Her movement teaching practice is mostly informed by her intensive trainings with Simone Forti, Julyen Hamilton, John Britton, Nancy Stark Smith, Daniel Lepkoff, Kirstie Simson, Nita Little, Frey Faust, Keith Hennessy, Aydın Teker, Marcia Plevin and Julia Buckroyd. Today, she continues her quest within Body Mind Centering, Axis Syllabus and Integral Somatic Psychology studies.
Nayeli Špela Peterlin (SLO)
Nayeli Špela Peterlin (SLO) is a psychologist, therapist, non-formal education facilitator and passionate movement explorer.
Her work is inspired by many fields of practices she is involved in (gestalt experiential psychotherapy, somatic practices, contact improvisation, youthwork, etc.). Her main exploration and research involve finding bridges between psychology and movement, between inner and outer personal relationships, between nature and human etc.
In 2016 she founded an NGO called Moave – psychology in movement, with the intention to bring embodiment practices into youth work, helping people to be more aware and sensitive to their bodies while working with other people. In contact improvisation, she finds a meaningful place to expand, explore, deepen her knowledge and simple be playful!
Nayeli’s message to us:
“Thanks to many, many knowledgeable people I have met in the jams, festivals and workshops, their wisdom and body intelligence have touched me and reshaped me into a more aware, soft and humble human being. I look forward to meeting you in Turkey.”
Mileen Borgonjon (BE)
Mileen is a dancer & performer, poet and dance teacher. After her master in social work & pedagogics (University of Ghent), she graduated at TIP, school of dance, improvisation and performance in Freiburg (DE), which nourished and deepened her love for instant composition, contact improvisation and the many layered world of our moving and poetic body. Shortly after she as well fell in love with teaching. She finished a training in education in the arts and since many years now deepens her practice by performing and by teaching contemporary dance, CI, and instant composition nationally and internationally. In 2013 she started initiating and teaching regular CI classes and jams in Ghent (BE) which evolved into a beautiful young and growing community. Mileen develops and teaches the dance trajectories for WISPER, a leading organization for art education for adults in Belgium.
In her teaching Mileen is passionate about supporting a space, a container where people can grow in (body)awareness. She values a profound as well as playful approach to empower people to plug-in to their movement potential, multi-layered physical and artistic expression.
As a performing artist as well as a teacher Mileen is fascinated by inter-human connections, surrendering to our power, reflexes and instinct, efficiency in motion, the diverse movement qualities we hold in our bodies, musicality in movement, the fine universes of the different senses as well as the different body systems, and how they connect with space and time, the work of composing in the instant and what that means in a performance setting. Mileen often collaborates with artists of other media, looking for common or new artistic languages. Since 2013 she is part of the Belgium based artistic collaboration POST.TRAUM.Collective.
