Contact Improvisation - the art of flowing pathways - 31 July 2016, Brisbane
1:15-4:30pm Hamilton Town Hall
Contact improvisation is a dance between two or more people, using a point of contact to explore new intuitive ways of moving and interacting. In this workshop we will focus on the concept of counterbalance and practising pathways between one form of balance to the next. We will reaffirm the basic skills through sequential activities that encourage profound contact, listening, and constant flow through space. Contact improvisation is lots of fun and a fantastic tool for cultivating mindfulness and enriching our movement with physical and emotive presence. Open to everyone of all abilities.
Price: Early Bird $50 (...if paid before 17 July); $65 if paid after.
https://www.trybooking.com/Booking/BookingEventSummary.aspx?eid=209942
Contact improvisation is a dance between two or more people, using a point of contact to explore new intuitive ways of moving and interacting. In this workshop we will focus on the concept of counterbalance and practising pathways between one form of balance to the next. We will reaffirm the basic skills through sequential activities that encourage profound contact, listening, and constant flow through space. Contact improvisation is lots of fun and a fantastic tool for cultivating mindfulness and enriching our movement with physical and emotive presence. Open to everyone of all abilities.
Price: Early Bird $50 (...if paid before 17 July); $65 if paid after.
https://www.trybooking.com/Booking/BookingEventSummary.aspx?eid=209942
Past workshop examples
The Art of Contact Improvisation
April 2016
In this workshop Rita will guide you through her latest creative exercises that explore counterbalance, momentum, listening through touch, reactivity, and blind folded spatial exploration.
Absolutely no dance experience required, this is an inclusive event.
Absolutely no dance experience required, this is an inclusive event.
I really enjoyed Contact, I was delighted to witness all the narratives and connections that arise from spontaneous movement, such great tool for devising theatre! In a personal note I enjoyed exploring movement without justifying actions, it was a great tool for active meditation and mindfulness. There's much more, it was an enriching opportunity, I want to learn and practice more! And of course, there is you. You are a great facilitator: gentle yet direct, friendly and creative, bold and inspiring. - Olga
Thank you for a really beautiful class yesterday. The activities were creative and expressive and I am feeling refreshed, grounded in my body and inspired! I can't wait to do it again. ~ Georgia
Thanks Rita for an exquisite afternoon of connection, exploration and fun! Great workshop. ~ Marcus
Beautiful Spins and Space Sequences
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Contact Improvisation: Deeply knowing momentum
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CONTEMPORARY/ MIDDLE EASTERN FUSION CHOREOGRAPHY
PROUDLY PRESENTED BY SOUL DANCE
22 November 2015, Kedron
Recently inspired by the DisOrientation project performed by Amber Hansen, Rita is creating a choreography that brings together her experience - in dance and visceral emotion - of being between worlds. Drawing on contemporary dance, physical theatre, Middle Eastern dance and American Tribal Style (R) Bellydance, Rita's offering will represent an uncanny and dialectic force - encouraging dancers to embrace a broad range of technique and divergent performance dynamics.
The choreography is to an evocative song from the Blak soundtrack (Bangarra Dance Company), representing another layer of conversation between cultures.
This workshop involves some floorwork and task work in the contemporary dance tradition.
PROUDLY PRESENTED BY SOUL DANCE
22 November 2015, Kedron
Recently inspired by the DisOrientation project performed by Amber Hansen, Rita is creating a choreography that brings together her experience - in dance and visceral emotion - of being between worlds. Drawing on contemporary dance, physical theatre, Middle Eastern dance and American Tribal Style (R) Bellydance, Rita's offering will represent an uncanny and dialectic force - encouraging dancers to embrace a broad range of technique and divergent performance dynamics.
The choreography is to an evocative song from the Blak soundtrack (Bangarra Dance Company), representing another layer of conversation between cultures.
This workshop involves some floorwork and task work in the contemporary dance tradition.
Rita - today you bent my mind and body in all sorts of new ways. It was exciting, enthralling, challenging and rewarding. It was a great experience and I'm super happy I participated.
Workshop participant: Dominique
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The Art of Contact Improvisation (2nd workshop)
September 2015, Kedron Want to be able to move with absolute serenity, equilibrium, surrender? Want to infuse your movement with breath and melting, flowing spirit? A workshop for humans who love to dance. All abilities welcome. No dance experience required. A series of creative exercises to - strengthen the intuitive and creative part of your brain - build our ability to 'listen' to another dancer's movement, follow, mirror or counterresist - trust in yourself and with other dancers - practise balance poses, including partner lifts using momentum not strength. - be present to interpret music, to openly channel it with our movement - break from habitual patterns of movement, playing with risk - heighten peripheral and spatial awareness - move fluently to floor and about the floor space - remove fear so that you can move fluently between surrender and control and play with the quality of your movement. Spin, Travel, Flow and Modern Gypsy Choreography Saturday 15 November 2014, 12-5pm, Dancehouse, Melbourne, Australia Want to dance with wild abandon? With feet that glide effortlessly and lightly through space? Don't miss this opportunity to dance Modern Gypsy style with Rita. Spin, Travel, Flow 12 pm - 2 pm Learn step by step how to spin, travel and flow through space effortlessly. Rita will cover several travelling and stationary spins, playing with level, posture, tempo and feel. She will marry this together with tricks for transitioning flawlessly into travelling about the dance space, subtley steering the body as momentum takes hold. It covers several travel steps. Warm up will include contact improvisation and energy techniques used in tango. Good stretch at end. Limited to 15 places to enable individual assistance and critique. Aimed at intermediate and beyond dancers. Modern Gypsy Choreography 3 pm - 5 pm Transform your body into a vessel for the dramatic melody lines of Gypsy music. Drawing on Rita's fusion genre of Modern Gypsy, a blend of Rom-Inspired dance from Russia, Spain and Turkey. This choreography involves spins, travelling steps (learnt in the first workshop), as well as some small jumps, and floor work. Please wear a full skirt. Music will be provided in advance to workshop participants. Aimed at intermediate and beyond level dancers. |
Intuitive Dance
Workshop with Rita Markwell National Folk Festival, Canberra Mon, 6 April 2015, 9:30am @ Coorong The ability to dance freely and gracefully comes from a intuitive part of our brain that can grow stronger through exercise. This workshop uses fun activities (including contact improvisation) to make movement and dance a sublime experience for ordinary men and women of all abilities Contact Improvisation, The Art of Letting Go
Sunday 2 November 2014, 1-4pm Vida Yoga Fitness Studios, Annerley, Brisbane A modern dance tradition originating from the USA in the 1970s, contact improvisation is a free flowing dance that starts from a point of contact between two or more dancers. It explores the nature of moving contact, use of momentum, surrender, weight transfer, balance, emotional connection and amongst more experienced dancers, body lifting and rolls. It is best carried out in a state of 'headlessness' without thinking and planning, and can be a very healing and uplifting experience for participants. It is often taught in university dance education and used to develop natural looking, complex and fluid performances by choreographers. Rita absolutely loves to teach and practise contact improvisation, which she calls the art of letting go. Breathtaking Slow with Rita Markwell
Saturday 11 October 2014, 3pm at Connect Studios, Parramatta A workshop about slowing down our dance and infusing movement with our breath to create expansive, seamless, spine tingling phrases. Practise movements from Slow ATS (R) repertoire that Rita has remoulded and reinvented to create drama and intensity, softness and light. Practise using the whole space, our whole bodies ...and the ‘tribe’ to connect with the audience in more profound ways . Drawing on exercises used in Rita’s classes to conquer travelling movements, level changes and off balance, you will have ample opportunity to express yourself and practise breathtaking slow. |
