Techniques for flying and falling are often considered to be quite complex and for advanced dancers only. Nevertheless skills for landing softly on the floor and rising up with ease into the upper space can be a theme even in your first class. And as CI is a dance form where the body is constantly listening to gravity and playing with balance and off-balance, flying and falling through the levels and the space is part of your experience from the very first moment you start dancing contact.

That’s one reason why this workshop will start with basic skills and exercises to challenge your perception: to deeply understand that flying high is much more a question of solid basic skills, of sensation and the ability to cleverly organize your body than a complex or even unreachable technique (except for strong men or light women!). You will discover that the main principles are the same whether you are moving quite close to the floor or up on your partners shoulder, the biggest differences being more momentum, more thrill, and starting to flow through the levels as you gain more experience and get into the higher spheres.

My intention is to work with precise movement techniques (solo and with a partner), to offer exercises that will help to differentiate your perception and to open your awareness, to use bodywork for softening not only your body but also your mind, and finally to play with simple improvisation scores and free dancing to integrate the new movements. There will be space for verbal exchange to deepen the understanding of the material and to learn from each other on different levels.

You will probably sweat a lot and have lots of fun while flying and falling through your dances. And hopefully you’ll be looking forward to the next jam to experiment with the full range of flying and falling within its very subtle parts!

ADRIAN RUSSI
Adrian Russi is a one of the leading CI-teacher in Switzerland and travelling all over Europe to teach and perform Contact and Free Improvisation. He is deeply involved in CI since 1992 and in the meantime he is dedicating the biggest part of his life to this wonderful dance form.

After his studies of New Dance at “bewegungs-art” in Freiburg/Germany he continued his education with many different teachers, among them Steve Paxton and Nancy Stark Smith who have started to develop CI in the early seventies with a group of other movers.

In his teaching he focuses on the technical aspects of CI (ease, precision and strength) as well as on matters of perception (sensation, connection of inner and outer space, of bottom and top) and on a creativity coming from a distinct body-awareness. For him the pleasure to play, deep engagement in the dance, and respect for others are the basis for gaining the most possible in dancing CI.
As a performer he works with many different international artists and his performances are primarily based on Free Improvisation incorporating Contact Improvisation, dance, dance-theatre, voice and live music. In 2007 he initiated “Moving Men”, a men’s trio with Charlie Morrissey and Jacky Miredin touring with there performance-work all over Europe.

As an organizer of CI-events he is involved in many festivals, jams and teachers-meetings, among them the “Moscow Contact and Performance Festival”.