Contemporary Master Class: Contact Improvisation Dance

Dancing Grounds is excited to host two Contact Improvisation classes with French visiting artist, Alain Montebran! Fri April 17 & Mon April 20, 9-10:30am Sliding scale donation: $10-15 Contact Improvisation is a partner dance form based on the physical principles of touch, momentum, shared weight, and most quintessentially - following a shared point of contact. The form was founded in 1972 by Steve Paxton. Integrating his background as a modern dancer and his studies in the martial art form Aikido, Steve developed Contact Improv through explorations with his students and colleagues at the time. It now became one of the best-known and most characteristic forms of postmodern dance. This masterclass, opened to all levels of experience, will focus on the bases of Contact Improvisation by exploring the skills of falling, rolling, counterbalance, lifting using minimal effort, how to make ourselves light when being lifted, centering and breathing techniques, and responsiveness to our partners and surroundings. Dancers will be given substantial material, space and freedom to explore new movements for choreographic work as for self-expression. Alain Montebran (http://www.alain-montebran.com/) is a visiting world class Contact Improvisation Dance teacher from France, a Feldenkrais, Gestalt and Tai Chi Chuan certified practitioner, a performer and a visual artist. He discovered the Contact Improvisation Dance technique in 1981 through the teachings of Didier Sihhol, Suzanne Cotto, Mark Tompkins, Steve Paxton, Patricia Bardi, Kirstie Simson, Ollivier Besson. Alain has been teaching Contact Improvisation since 1983. Fed with his own artistic, pedagogic and therapeutic practice of 25 years of clinical practice of Feldenkrais Functional integration, he offers a teaching opening bridges between the creative process, the energetic practices, the biomechanics and the Gestalt theory or philosophy. For many years he lead research work about the creative process and the possibilities of movement, which gave birth to a Somatic Development Center, Beaulieu, and to an Association, Spirales, located in Le Mans, France (http://www.centrebeaulieu-lemans.fr/).