SP26 CONTACT IMPROVISATION FESTIVAL
Contact Improvisation Festival
Classes & Workshops for all levels!
Dates
20.07. – 24.07.26
15:00 – 17:30 Workshop with Ka Rustler
19:00 – 21:00 Contact Improvisation Class
21:00 – 23:00 Jam
Level
See individual class/workshop
Participation Fee
See individual class/workshop
Flowing Between – Intensive with Ka Rustler
Dates
20.07. – 24.07.26, 15:00 – 17:30 (Mo–Fr)
Level
With CI Experience
Workshop Description
Grounded in Body–Mind Centering® principles, this intensive explores how our movement is informed by our fluid body. The flow of cerebrospinal fluid supports orientation and subtle timing. Cellular fluids invite boundaries and permeability. Lymphatic flow supports release and spaciousness. These inner currents and rhythms shape how we yield, surge, rebound, and reorganize through shared surfaces while dancing.
Exploring in duets, trios, and ensemble, we remain connected to ourselves while entering into physical dialogue with others. This workshop offers a space for deep physical research, where dance becomes a breathing terrain: tidal, porous, and responsive. It is a practice of presence and embodied choice, where consent is central, allowing you to engage with ease, curiosity, and attentiveness.
Ka Rustler
A mother of two amazing children, Ka Rustler creates, performs, and shares her research and teachings within an international field, exploring how embodied approaches reveal cognition and neural integration in dialogue between neuroscience and performance.
Over the past 35 years, she has been a core member of Tanzfabrik Berlin and deeply engaged in the Contact Improvisation community, co-organizing European conferences, exchanges, and CI festivals. She has collaborated and performed with Chris Aiken, Ray Chung, Jess Curtis, Dieter Heitkamp, Lani Nahele, Steve Paxton, Kirstie Simson, and Andrew Wass, among others, in experimental, improvisational, and radical ensemble work.
She is a member of Cranky Bodies a/company and co-founder of the Authentic Movement Research Group Unwinding the Body and C.A.R.E., a somatic training program at the Somatische Akademie Berlin.
S.E.E. I. – somatically experimenting ensembles investigate – Andrew Wass
Date
20.07.26, 19:00 – 21:00
Level
Open Level
Class descritpion
Often practiced as a duet form, CI and its underlying principles provide tools for doing and lenses for viewing, encompassing the whole space and everyone in it. This class draws on Nina Martin’s Ensemble Thinking™ and Mary Overlie’s Six Viewpoints to offer tools and perspectives that move CI beyond the duet. These approaches address spatial, temporal, and kinetic relationships, providing clear yet fluid, simple yet rigorous guidelines for sensing and composing in the moment.
Andrew Wass
With a background in biochemistry from UC San Diego, an MA in Solo/Dance/Authorship from HZT Berlin, and a PhD in Dance from Texas Woman’s University, Andrew Wass situates his inquiries at the intersection of philosophy, cognitive science, and process-oriented concert dance.
Wass has performed with dance luminaries such as Jess Curtis, Ray Chung, Scott Wells, Nancy Stark Smith, Nina Martin, Kirstie Simson, Ka Rustler, and Chris Aiken. An avid collaborator, he is a member of the Lower Left Performance Collective, based in Marfa, TX. His work has been presented at venues including Danspace at St. Marks, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Sushi Performance and Visual Art, the Crowley Theater, and the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art.
wasswasswass.com
lowerleft.org
How to be Heavy – Laura Stokes
Date
21.07.26, 19:00 – 21:00
Level
Open Level
Class descritpion
Does our preoccupation in CI with “being light” run the risk of mirroring harmful cultural norms, such as preferring lighter moods and lighter body types?
I’m not sure. But I do know that the contact dances I find most satisfying are those with the greatest shared weight — the heavier ones.
Of course, I don’t want to crush my partner or be oppressed by their weight, but perhaps by refining our experience of weight, we can discover more fulfilling, more honest, and more exciting dances.
We will work with physiological states and specific physical techniques to explore weight along continuums such as:
Decided ~ Questioning
Dependent ~ Agile
Rigid ~ Released
Sudden ~ Sequential
Linear ~ Centrifugal
Focused ~ Diffuse
Fixed ~ Adaptive
Collapsed ~ Activated
Transparent ~ Opaque
Laura Stokes
Laura Stokes carpooled with Steve Paxton to her first jam 25 years ago and has been in love with Contact Improvisation ever since. She has worked across many performance and movement disciplines; these days, she is most interested in cultivating a non-disciplinary approach to living artfully in a body.
Organic Interface – Elke Kalupar
Date
22.07.26, 19:00 – 21:00
Level
Open Level
Class descritpion
This class explores interaction through movement, drawing on partnering, contact improvisation, and elements of physical theatre. We work in pairs as well as in larger group compositions, using improvisation as our primary tool.
Some sections focus on storytelling, integrating concepts such as attachment, resistance, and rejection. Other sections investigate technical lifts and tricks, exploring the underlying principles of weight-sharing and support.
Participants should feel very comfortable with physical contact.
Elke Kalupar
Elke is a performer, dancer, and teacher specializing in partnering. She is the founder of Akzeptanz Movement, a school and teaching practice that combines contemporary partnering, group dynamics, contact improvisation, and physical theatre. Her work enables groups of dancers to create instant improvised compositions using only their bodies and movement.
Danceshot: Vika Temnova
Composing while dancing – Eszter Kalóz
Date
23.07.26, 19:00 – 21:00
Level
Open Level
Class descritpion
Besides the surface of contact that we engage with while dancing, what other compositional elements can inform us? Can we invite space to become part of the dance? What about time? What do we see, where do we look, and how are we being seen?
This workshop opens a research field in which we invite greater compositional awareness and improvisational strategies into the dance — making it more engaging, more creative, more unusual, and perhaps even more performative. We may work with scores, and we might even have fun doing so.
We will practice with what we already have in our body–mind; no previous experience is needed, only a willingness to try (perhaps familiar) things differently.
Eszter Kalóz
Eszter Kalóz is a dancer, holistic dance and movement pedagogue, somatic movement facilitator, and yoga teacher based in Berlin.
She is dedicated to practicing dance as a way of life — an art form, a method of embodied connection, and a path of following joy. Her work is based on studies in dance pedagogy, dance and body therapy approaches, and holistic movement practices.
“Movement is not something we do nearly so much as what we are, and a harbinger of what we can become.” — Sonja Fraleigh
Musicality in Movement – Karthik Rajmohan
Date
24.07.26, 19:00 – 21:00
Level
Open Level
Class descritpion
This class invites dancers to deepen their improvisation and discover how the body itself can become a musical instrument in contact. We explore how musical structures emerge naturally or through choice. Using improvisational scores and group explorations, we investigate dynamic qualities of movement that shape the texture of a dance:
• swinging, suspended, vibratory, sustained, percussive, and collapsed
We also work with how we interpret music while dancing, exploring different relationships to sound: moving with the rhythm, stretching or delaying it, responding to subtle textures, or intentionally dancing against the music to create contrast and unexpected dialogue between sound and movement.
By playing with these dynamics and ways of listening, we explore how contrast, timing, and responsiveness can enrich a dance.
Karthik Rajmohan
Karthik Rajmohan is a dancer, musician, and yoga practitioner whose work bridges tradition and innovation. He holds a Diploma in Movement Arts from the Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts (Bangalore, India), where he trained in contemporary dance, Kalaripayattu, Bharatanatyam, ballet, body conditioning, art history, and anatomy.
His artistic journey took a defining turn when he discovered Contact Improvisation and Instant Composition, which he encountered during his formal dance education and has since made central to his artistic and teaching practice. As part of the first generation of CI practitioners in India, he has played a key role in introducing and expanding the form beyond conventional dance spaces.
Over the years, he has collaborated with dance companies, art collectives, and social organizations across India and Europe. Alongside performance, he has developed a distinct teaching practice integrating movement, presence, and community. His commitment to accessibility and inclusivity has led him to share CI in diverse contexts, making movement a tool for connection and transformation.
