"Open arms" exploring potential for connection in c

Highly perceptive and deeply communicative, our arms and hands will guide us into a three-dimensional, interactive, and dynamic contact-improvisation journey.Antoine will invite you to participate in a collaborative and immersive dance environment, enriched by somatic experiences, guided practices, and improvisational scores. Together, we will create a space where movement research and experiential anatomy merge, offering a deeper understanding of the body in motion. Together we will dive in the myofascial connections of the arms into the torso and abdomen, uncovering intricate coordinative patterns. 

This workshop is open to dancers of all levels, including those new to contact improvisation.

It is an opportunity to engage with other humans in a spirit of curiosity and joy, to (re)discover and challenge ourselves, and to develop precision and confidence in the quality of weight sharing. And who knows? You might even find yourself momentarily taking a flight!

Dancing Pathways_ Connecting Body, Mind & Space

From our very beginning, our cells and our nervous system are in constant communication, forming the foundation of how we move and respond to the world. 

This workshop invites you to explore and deepen your understanding of the nervous pathways, their connection to our neurotransmitters and the continuous dialogue between perception and sensation.

Through the lens of Contact Improvisation, we will explore our neural pathways, fostering a state of readiness for movement and choice-making. We will delve into the interplay between internal and external environments, shaping and being shaped through movement and spatial dynamics. This practice sharpens reflexes and senses, cultivating an attuned awareness essential to the improvisational process. We will focus on quietening ourselves through specific tissues and somatic networks listening deeply to the dance that arises within ourselves, our partners and the group creating a safe, nurturing space where each participant feels truly seen, heard, and supported.

Drawing from my personal research and distinctive, practical methods of developing material, I integrate principles of Body-Mind Centering® and other somatic methods with Contact Improvisation. This approach connects creative and structural practices, hands –on work, solo and reflection time inviting new physical terrains. Together, we will expand our dynamic imagery and uncover the beauty of expression in our emotional and physical states.

Dancing along these evolving pathways nurtures creativity, clarity and intuition, enriching the interplay between body, mind and space. Here, the body becomes minded and the mind embodied.

Somatic Contact: Listening to the Dance.

We will take our time to slow down, and from this space tune in to the subtle nuances that allow for clearer & deeper communication within the dance. The gentle sliding of fascia that indicates direction of movement, tuning to a partners’ breath to ‘hear’ their intention, and waiting in stillness together to allow the dance to arise from your shared connection. These are a few of the ideas and principles we will explore in thr sessions. Establishing a space of patience & allowing which gives trust to ourselves, our dancing partners and feeling more fully the nature of improvisation in connection. This can lead to more intensely physical dancing with a high level of attunement.

Cultivating Wholeness - Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement

Welcome to the morning tune-in Feldenkrais Method session designed to awaken your being and prepare you to flow through your day with more ease.
We will explore gentle yet powerful movements that connect the body from head to toe, nurturing a deep sense of integration and wholeness.

Qi gong /Taijiquan

Classes will be an opportunity to approach the Traditional principles of the Chinese internal martial arts. Through static and dynamic practices we will come into contact with our breath, Qi, the vital breath, to increase and make our vital energy flow freely in the energy channels of the whole body.

Qi Gong, formerly called Yang Sheng Fa, a method for nourishing life, is a body practice based on the integration of movement, meditation, breathing and feeling. Its main purpose is the maintenance of health and achievement of longevity. But, Qi Gong is also the basis of all Chinese internal martial arts since it improves coordination, grounding, endurance and it has a calming effect on the nervous system. We will also investigate the fundamentals of Taijiquan through sequences in the space, contact work in pairs and the study of martial traditional forms to improve proprioception, the quality of touch and the mental attention/intention.

"Nobody knows what a body can do"

Taking this phrase from Espinoza and his idea about the body as an unlimited power.

I am interested in sharing research from different somatic approaches and in relation to Contact Improvisation.

Exploring the qualities of sensations that are awakened by mobilizing specific structures and understanding the anatomical connections that occur during movement and dance.

The body has a system of self-regulation and organization which can be a power for dance.

Letting the body do what it knows better than trying to force it in any direction, relying on its own inherent intelligence.

What I move and feel awakens.

What I feel in my body becomes present.

Dance as a state of presence from the individual to the relational.

Continued Adventures of the Apple

“What is my body doing when I am not conscious of it?” (Steve Paxton)

This workshop is to honor practices created by dancer Steve Paxton (1939-2024).  We will artfully enter the basic principles of the form of Contact Improvisation which he initiated in 1972, and his Material for the Spine, begun 1986.  “Forms for sensations and sensing” (Steve Paxton), these classes will offer students the opportunity to deeply enter the basic study of the physics and ecological forces dancers experience as they move in relationship with each other and themselves.  We will engage with the body in spherical space to improvise in solo, duo and with the class as an ensemble.  As we deepen into the discipline of practice, we will evolve the process as tools for dancing to witness how we make sense of being HERE.  Playing with the chronosphere and spirals of time, space and weight, we will explore what Steve has said: “Dance is the art of taking place.  Improvisation finds those places.”  Sources will include several of Steve’s writings as well as what we discover in our practices together in this living art form.

The space between

An exploration of gravity, levity, and the quality of touch.I have always been interested in the space between.
Between different fields of investigation, such as visual art, dance, and politics.
Between my body and other bodies, between the sense of gravity and levity that I perceive in my own cells, between my nervous system and other nervous systems, between inside and outside.
When do we feel this space as separate, and when does it become just one?
How can different qualities of touch modify the quality of this space?
What information can we read in this space, and how do we inform it?
How is dance affected by that? Can we let the space between guide our dance?
In this workshop, I would like to invite you to explore this space with me, with fun and joy, and whatever emerges.

Navigating choices : Embracing stream

Polarities of dance  

Starting from the practice of skills that safeguard the body in landing, bearing weight, and organizing the structure in transitions, we will collectively research ideas of playful challenging of each other to create surprising situations that train alert, focused attention and responsive bodies. We will build and deconstruct movement patterns in order to continuously enrich and enliven the spirit of improvisation. Through the qualities of recoiling and re-bouncing we will generate plasticity in the body and simultaneously allow the exploration of surprise, redirecting, unpredictability of upper and lower dancer, alive and unrehearsed movement while dancing with others.

Inspired by the principles of Contact Improvisation and Capoeira.

These sessions are suitable both for beginners and for experienced practitioners, who wish to experiment and develop their practice.

Relational Forces

“he body is a mystery moved by tangible and intangible forces”.
These forces can have their origin in the interaction with others, the relationship with space and the memory and vitality of our tissues and cells.
We will initiate explorations that allow us to make contact with the information that is born from the skin to the interior, inhabiting the internal universes that we register through the “sensations” and in some way could be the gateway to physicality, as well as a power of exploration during the dance.
Taking advantage of the power of “feeling” to explore from different relational dynamics and based on the principles of Contact improvisation.

Moving, Seeing and Being Seen

Fall…and fall again better : Theater of the Body

Paraphrasing a quote from playwright Samuel Beckett, this workshop will deepen one’s relationship to the Soma through practicing performing into Contact Improvisation. Soma (as in Somatics) in Latin means the body.  In Sanskrit, it is the nectar of the Gods. Where we meet is in the play between the facts and the fictions.  This is the location of our great imaginations.  This workshop will be an entrance into physiological and poetic character/qualities of the bodymind going from practice to performance.  Traveling from the physics of the body moving in relationship to earthly forces and others to actively witnessing each other, we will create a dance that will further our experience of contact improvisation into an expression of our humanity.