Take it from Here

Constantly faced with ever changing environments, improvisation is natural and ordinary. How do we make choices in our improvisational dance? In this practice we will bring together the partner and ensemble dance practices of CI (instigated by Steve Paxton) and Tuning Scores (invented by Lisa Nelson).

Tuning Scores warm-ups play with opening our lesser-accessed senses while resting others, like awakening touch and imagination and de-emphasizing seeing with the eyes. Using tasks and games that employ all senses, perceptions and desires we can build awareness of what we do, and what we choose.

We will explore the reflexes of balance through the CI practice of small dance. We will teach ourselves new ways of falling, rising and playing with gravity’s embrace. We will facilitate the transmission and learning of movement thru touch, discerning our own strengths and weaknesses, and grow agency to show up to every dance in a full, present and empowered embodiment.

Karen (Chuki) Nelson

Karen (Chuki) Nelson rests playfully within dance improvisation and Buddhist study and practice. As explorer-collaborator, teacher, maker, touring performer, author/contributor to Dancing with Dharma and Contact Quarterly she has been a mutator of the form Contact Improvisation since 1977. She co-founded mixed-ability experiments Dance Ability and Diverse Dance Research Retreat and integrates Material for the Spine (Steve Paxton) and Tuning Scores (Lisa Nelson/Image Lab) into her physical-sensation based approach to dancing, along with investigating dominant cultural narratives and re-vers(ion)ing these fictions within her own embodiment and wider community.

WHERE?
Art Factory International
Via della Casa Buia 4/A Bologna
Italy