Karen Barbour
Weeks later I still resonate with experiences from the Contact Improvisation teacher's workshop facilitated by Martin Keogh. Four days of intensive contact dancing and lab sessions on teaching left me with much inspiration, many great memories and some new friendships! The workshop, run over Easter in Auckland, followed a general format of skills sessions in the morning and teaching labs in the afternoon. A potluck dinner and an evening jam followed two of the days.
As always, I had wonderful dancing experiences! I always love the opportunities workshops give to dance with new people and to share moving knowledges. But what most inspired me most was the teaching lab sessions! Each afternoon saw us working together to understand and develop ways of teaching, investigating questions about skills and giving feedback to contacters. For me, this was a focussed and fun way to share our knowledge and experiences, to develop new ways of working and to develop our teaching with others! The passion and commitment we all showed to CI and to developing CI in Aotearoa, New Zealand was overwhelming. On the final day, some of us were asked to lead part of the session, myself included. I had been pondering a way to connect CI to my passion for the environment and to my love of the outdoors. I would like to share the warm up I developed with this in mind. Most importantly I would like to start some dialogues about CI and environmental consciousness.
This visualisation was developed as a warm up that might lead into partnering.
A meditation on land and home.
Begin lying comfortably on the floor and breathing deeply. As you inhale and exhale, allow your body weight to release into the floor. Sense your weight dropping right through the floor and into the earth below. Sense the earth rising up to meet and support you. As you lie there, bring to mind a place you feel safe and strong, a place you might call home. Explore the contours of this landscape. Experience the smells, tastes, sounds, views and sensations of this place. Really locate yourself there in this place. And now, release your weight deeper into the floor, into the earth and into this place you call home. Let yourself return to this safe and strong place, this place you call home. You might like to picture yourself lying in the place and explore the contours of the landscape that your body makes. As you lie there in your home, allow yourself to move as you wish. You might like to delve into the valleys and underground spaces of this place. Perhaps float up onto the high peaks. Maybe follow ridges and identify landmarks. Explore the places of bubbling potential change. Find the hidden special places of power, places of change and places where you feel strong. As you continue to move, you may come to your feet. Find a sense of strength for yourself in your deep connections to the earth. Explore a sense of lightness as you float to high points, and a sense of gentleness and power in the deep valleys and underground spaces. Allow a sense of generosity to enter your exploration of wide, open spaces. Maybe some of these places are in the landscape, and maybe some of them are in yourself. Delve, float, bubble. As you move you might like to take this meditation on land and home into a dance with another person. Maybe you can share something about your home with another person. Perhaps you can take them on a journey through your landscape, and journey with them through their landscape. Who knows where your journey might lead you!
vol 6 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3&4 - 2003 vol 5 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3 - ed 4 - 2002 vol 4 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3 - ed 4 - 2001 vol 3 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3 - ed 4 - 2000 vol 2 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3 - ed 4 - 1999 vol 1 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3 - ed 4 - 1998 |
e m a i l - <Proximity> |