Collecting ideas for the Teachers Track

[Brenton (Website Curator)]

We want your ideas!

The "Teacher’s Track" will consist of a series of labs, co-teaching sessions, discussions, network support groups, and other activities focused on the art of teaching contact improvisation. All activities will be organized as individual events, any or all of which interested participants can attend. In order to focus our efforts, we invite you to bombard us with your areas of interest, questions, subjects for talk and discussion groups, and ideas for activities. We are also looking for people who want to facilitate a lab, have a special way of teaching "difficult" groups, know tried-and-true techniques for teaching a particular skill (such as getting into the air), or anything else you would like to share with your fellow teachers.

Feel free to post in this discussion or email any of the Teachers Track curators:

Jane Hawley: hawleyja(AT)luther(DOT)edu
Brenton Cheng: brenton(AT)bfalling(DOT)net
Sybrig Dokter: sybrig(DOT)dokter(AT)tele2(DOT)se

(Remember to replace "(AT)" with "@" and "(DOT)" with a period in the addresses above.)

-Brenton

[Fernando Neder]

Hi Brenton,
I guess I'm the first to post here a message. Well, someone has to start.
My concern on the latest years is sound landscapes in contact jams. Every jam I go, in diferent countries has diferent aproaches about that, from silence (if there is such a thing) to technomusic. But just few of them seems to have a carefull research on the field.
I've been facilitating jams in Rio the last 10 years, and more recentlly and some other festivals and international jams (Brasília, São Paulo, Israel, Spain), with special focus on sound. In those years, suported by a system called "Organic Music", I started to develop thougths, practices and exercises that alowed the movers to be more involved in the prodution of sound during their improvisation, rather the just let the musicians or a DJ run the show.
This is the subject I would like to share.
See file for more info about Organic Music
Love and care,
Fernando.

[Brenton (Website Curator)]

Hey Fernando,

That sounds great! I would suggest that this information go into the "CI36 Events" forum category. Start a discussion there, maybe even a proposal, and let's see where it might fit into things.

-Brenton

[Samantha Pienaar]

Hi Brenton,
My husband and I have been involved in teaching contact improvisation, creative movement and physical improvisation for the past 12 years. During this time we have taught to diverse groups around South Africa - including school children, couples, therapists, university students, community groups, professional dancers, actors and performers, and the general public. Because South Africa was largely isolated from receiving direct input from international trends for many years - we had to rely on books and videos, rather than workshops and training - we really taught ourselves the fundamentals of contact improvisation through trial-and-error, combining our shared skills in gymnastics, contemporary dance, release techniques, yoga, and a few other movement forms. As early as 1996 we realized that contact improvisation was a powerful tool for social transformation in South Africa - offering the practical experience in tolerance, trust, harmony, acceptance and adaptation - that the changing socio-political climate was demanding. Also, contact improvisation was introduced as a subject in our National Dance & Drama curriculum a few years ago, as a movement form to be explored by Gr.11 & 12 school pupils. With the realization that we could use our experience and contribute to the growing popularity of contact improvisation in South Africa, we set about developing and refining skills for TEACHING contact improv. Over a period of about 5 years, we developed a series of 'exercises'/mini-improvisations dealing with SPECIFIC CI skills (developing tensegrity and resilience through proper alignment, learning to catch and lift safely, finding flow through following impulses, enhancing balance and levity etc.) and managed to create a multi-media CD-rom capturing over 40 of these exercises in video format - together with detailed instructions - as they might be taught in a workshop/classroom. We have sold this CD-rom to school teachers, students and jammers in South Africa as an educational tool. It is available to order on our website www.kontaekt.com should anyone out there be interested.
Sorry for such a long post - but I love the idea of a "Teachers Track" since this is what I am primarily involved in - and I am excited to make our teaching resource available to others.
Thanks for the space to share.
Sam Pienaar

[Brenton (Website Curator)]

Hey Sam,

This is fantastic! I think it's absolutely wonderful what you've done, and would love to have your participation in the Teachers' Track. You are exactly the kind of person I was hoping that I/we would be able to dialogue with about our fine art of teaching.

It'd be great if you could bring a handful of the CDROM's to CI36, because I know that there would be many interested in purchasing them.

I'd also love to have you in on the style discussion. I'm personally interested in exploring and articulating the modalities by which contact can be taught. More to come!

-Brenton

[Brando]

I would love to have a lab/discussion on ci curriculum/pedogogy.
mapping out answers to the questions:
what would you do if you had:
2hrs to teach ci to beginners?
1 day to teach ci to beginners?
1 weekend workshop to teach ci to beginners?
1 semester to teach ci to beginners?

[Brenton (Website Curator)]

Brando,

Is this something you'd enjoy facilitating? We've basically got 4 seminar slots: two that are 1.5 hours, two that are 2 hours.

We've just started inviting folks who are interested in leading an experience.

-Brenton

[Hilary Bryan]

What about some time spent playing in/around CI+LMA and CI+BF?
xo hilary

[Brenton (Website Curator)]

Of course, I would love this. Might you have some ideas on using the LMA/BF framework as a context for a discussion/lab/event on the art of teaching CI?

[Jeff Bliss]

I am curious about a discussion about what I have been calling the "habit of destination" where I am knowing/seeing the path of this "contact sequence", this "move" and want to find ways to break it, shift it, explore it more, even when that might mean not taking the easy momentum ride.
Jeff Bliss

Another conversation I have been curious about is how we live such a 120 degree life at our computer, our desk, our car, our kitchen sink, but we are truely built to be 360 degree beings and have roots in knowing that. Contact is a great way for exploring and expanding towards the spherical 360 degrees of potential. Curious about how others explore this. Just dance might be one answer.
Jeff Bliss

[Brenton (Website Curator)]

Jeff,

These are great. They almost sound like topics for a "Scores" track, or "Scores and Values"...

-Brenton