We open the festival by coming home to the body. This workshop is an invitation to arrive — fully, curiously, and without rush. Drawing from Body-Mind Centering, Tuning Scores, Material for the Spine, and the Small Dance, we prepare the whole system for ten days of shared practice. We will explore somatic tools and developmental patterns that help us land in the present moment — releasing accumulated tension, reawakening peripheral perception, and finding the aliveness that makes Contact Improvisation possible. We play with spontaneity, release the need for anticipation, and invite the dynamic, unpredictable body to show up fully. This is also a toolkit you can return to throughout the festival. Use it to prepare for the day ahead, reset between classes, or restore at the end of a full day of dancing. We will build together a container of emotional, physical, and community safety — grounded in autonomy, transparency, and mutual care. A space where serious fun, rigorous training, and genuine play coexist. All bodies welcome. All levels. All abilities. Come ready to move, laugh, sweat, and reset.

There is a difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is a passive verb, faced with a sonic interaction that imposes itself within the environment but to which we do not choose to offer attention. It is the result of the excitation of our auditory membranes by the surrounding air, whose message we can easily ignore. Listening, on the other hand, is an active process, using perception to decode sound and understand its path—where it comes from, what it is, and what its consequence is. Deep Listening Principle In this sense, within deep listening, no sound is passive. All sounds are co-written by the emitter and the receiver, regardless of their nature. Through deep listening emerges the idea of full sonic awareness and the power of imagination to perceive and feel as many sonic events as possible, their interrelations, and their nature—whether they arise from our inner voices, the sound of the wind, the ultrasound of electricity, the intentional sound of a musician, or the random creaking of a floor. The Experience An expanded and deepened listening practice that helps us explore the edges of our perception and expand our capacity for improvisation. This is the spirit of the research: • What is our capacity to enter into relationship? • To be influenced by a rhythm outside ourselves? • To tune into our own internal rhythm? • To share that rhythm, and then allow it to be surprised by the chaos of the unknown? • To embrace repetition and observe the influence of sonic inputs on our emotions? In the Echo-Location Jam the musician does not accompany the dance—the sound and the movement co-emerge. Listening becomes a shared field between bodies and sound.

Many of us have a seasoned understanding of the duet—the weight, the listening, and the familiar rhythm of moving with another. In this workshop, we bring that experience into the complex, layered environment of the trio. We examine how to stay connected when the physical conversation expands to three bodies. How do you maintain a clear line of communication when you are the bridge between others? What happens when you receive information from multiple directions? My own curiosity right now is centered on the pelvis as a stabilizer and a director in these three-way exchanges. I want to research how we can use our center to handle the increased weight and complexity of trios. I'm also interested in jamming as a site for composition. We will look at the 3-2-3 flow as a way to enter and exit dances with intentionality. In this field of research, we will explore: • Expanded Attentiveness: Training your ability to track the whole dance, including the partners you aren't in physical contact with. • The Creative Pelvis: Enlivening the lower core to find a responsive center that balances stability and mobility. • Entry and Exit: Researching how to join or leave a dance in a way that feeds the momentum of the group. This is a collaborative inquiry, and I invite you to bring your own specific questions about trio dynamics. Because we will be working with complex weight-sharing and compositional choices, this workshop is designed for intermediate dancers who are comfortable with the fundamentals of Contact Improvisation.

In this workshop, we wish to create a sufficiently safe space to explore touch in a consensual way and welcome the inner experience (sensations, emotions, thoughts, etc.) that contact can bring to the surface. You will be guided through a series of exercises and proposals that will allow you to explore your relationship to different types of touch — with yourself and with others — so as to discover your preferences and get to know yourself better.