Lasqueti Island Contact Improv Workshop and Jam

with Anne Cooper and John Faichney

AUG 23-27, 2010, Lasqueti Island, B.C., Canada

This event will be held at Leviathan Studios on Lasqueti Island
Presented by 'there will be chocolate'

Come for five days of dance study and play on beautiful Lasqueti Island

- $300 for Workshop, food, camping, child-care and transportation on Lasqueti Island included.

- There will be two-hour classes morning and afternoon followed by open jam time before each meal and a jam each evening.

- Contact markyoung@lasqueti.ca for enquiries to register.


John's class will focus on two areas:

(a) developing core, body-centric CI technique, particularly torso articulation, touch continuity, and the communication of kinaesthetic preparedness from one part of the body to another; and,

(b) playful ways of approaching CI as a touch-trajectory-based dialogue oriented toward initiative, elicitation, forbearance, and the 'thinginess' of each-and-any gambit.

Many of the exercises will exploit game-like and/or martial-arts-like structures, and, indeed, will open onto a vision of CI as a conversation-centric, anti-theatrical performance form.

John Faichney has practised Contact Improvisation for more than three decades, since the form's inception. For more information go to http://www.personae.com/


In Anne's class we will build on and integrate sensations, states, principles and ideas underlying Contact Improvisation that we will carry forward through the week as we develop range in our dancing. Warm-up, technical practice alone and together, as well as practice to loosen the cork on the physical imagination will be followed by open jamming. We will work to increase our capacity for stillness/balance, flow, disorientation, fall and recovery, support, integration, composition and connection-safely- as we move toward the unexpected.

Anne is a dancer who has performed widely in contemporary dance, dance theatre and improvisation for 20 years. She has performed in the contact inspired work of Peter Bingham/EDAM for 15 years, and has studied CI with him and with Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, Nita Little, Chris Aiken and Ray Chung. She has taught CI for 10 years and is an avid jammer. This year she is touring across Canada with EDAM, and performing with the improvisation ensemble, 'No Hitting'. She is also a choreographer who sources from the body and voice.