Class Descriptions

Improvising/Composing
Friday 17th , 2 - 4 pm

This workshop will be an opportunity to get a sense of how our choices are composed in the space we are working in.  What if we were to step outside the frame of our dancing together and see it as a composition?  How does this frame influence our choices? Adding light and sound- we will have an opportunity to play with these ideas and consider how composition can connect us through a shared embodiment of space and time.

Compositional awareness in contact improvisation
-Friday 17th, 11:30 - 1:00
-Saturday 18th, 3 - 5 pm
-Sunday 19th, 10 - 12

CI offers us a container for the practice of non-verbal communication, of expanded awareness, and for creative expression while allowing what is unexpected to emerge. As we ground ourselves in the core principles of CI, focusing on the dynamics and subtleties of touch, tone, texture, weight, momentum, and moving support, we will expand our awareness to include space, time, image, gesture and feeling, through solo, duet, trio and ensemble dancing. We will consider how a lightly held compositional awareness and feeling can support our efforts to connect and find meaning when we are dancing. This work can be viewed not only as a means for creative expression but as a process for developing our capacity to collaborate and build a community that holds space for each individual.

Contemplative Dance
-Saturday 18th, 9 - 10 am
-Sunday 19th, 9 - 10 am
Contemplative Dance Practice is a kinesthetic delight. CDP blends together meditation, personal awareness, improvisational solo & relational movement with others into a tasty potage of insight and delight to cultivate attention, connection, self-discovery and community.  Listening to your body move your body, paying attention to the bodies around you, moving with and being moved by this environment in this present moment, and nurturing the power of a gathering of like-minded explorers is our practice of depth and connection. 

Soul Solo: Unleashing the Expressive Body

Friday April 17, 2 - 4

What happens when “solo” stops meaning separate? In this workshop, we bring the relational intelligence of contact improvisation into solo dancing—exploring the body as a responsive, porous vessel in constant exchange with space, sensation, and unseen currents.

Through duo, trio, and group practices that bridge into solo, we open into expression that doesn’t need to be controlled, performed, or understood.

We culminate in a shared field of witnessing and being witnessed—an invitation to feel fully alive and to remember that even in solo, you are not alone.

This workshop is also an offering of lineage and gratitude, shaped through 25 years with EDAM Dance and as a lifelong student of Peter Bingham.

Following the Point: Continuity, Spirals & Falling in Contact

Sunday April 19, 6 - 7:30

The point of contact is always changing—rolling, spiralling, slipping, reappearing. This technical class explores how to follow that movement with clarity and ease.

Through focused scores, we work with rolling points of contact, spirals, falling and leveraging, and tonal modulation to develop continuity, responsiveness, and efficiency in the dance.

Less holding, more following.

Technique here is rooted in sensitivity—the more you can feel, the more the dance reveals itself.

This workshop is also an offering of lineage and gratitude, shaped through 25 years with EDAM Dance and as a lifelong student of Peter Bingham.

The Tipping Point

Saturday April 18, 3 - 5 AND

Sunday April 19th, 10 am - 12 pm

There is a moment — barely a moment — when day has not yet become night, when cold has not quite turned toward warmth. A threshold so fine it can only be felt, not named.

These are tipping points: the quiet pivot before the shift, the pause inside the change. They happen constantly, in weather and in seasons, in the body and between bodies. Small in their arrival. Immense in what follows.

This workshop invites you to slow down enough to find them.  We will practice tracking the subtle — the flicker of impulse, the almost-decision, the instant before one thing becomes another. In our dancing together, we will ask: what does it feel like when a shared direction begins to dissolve? When speed wants to change, when quality wants to transform? How does a room full of people arrive, wordlessly, at the same new place?  Where is the tipping point — and how do we learn to recognize it before it has already passed?

"Helium, Wood, Gold and Magnets"
Friday 17th, 11:30 am - 1 pm
Sequencing from light to weight loaded touch, we’ll be cycling through CI elementals to explore entry ways and exit strategies into dancing in trios and whole group play.


"The Waves and The Shore"
Sunday 19th, 6 - 7:30 pm
In this class we'll explore the ocean's ambiguous forces versus the land where it dissipates its strength. 
Preparedness, anticipation, unweighting and yielding.  How do we arrive, how do we receive, how do we meld? 

Nervous System/ Somatics/ Bodywork

Sunday 19th, 6 - 7:30 pm

This will be a soft, inward, gentle class for those feeling a bit overwhelmed and in need of some good grounding. We will shake it out, have lots of floor time on both our backs and bellys, work with tapping on soothing acupuncture points and then partner up for some guided release-based body work.

Intuition and Empathic Tuning. Tracing Somatic detail so we Can Balance “Talking” and “Listening”

Sunday 19th, 1 - 2:45

This will be a replenishing class, tuning to impulse, and amplifying it, dropping into intuition and learning to trust it. Contact can land us in states of sweet mirror resonance. We will develop and hone our listening skills by getting granular with our innermost, and narrowing focus onto our sensations. Then we’ll take these beautiful cultivated listening states outward and play with some psychic forms (from Ray Chung), some mirroring games, share some authentic movement stories to each other, and have a nice long cypher at the end to let the distinction between our solo dance and our connected dances really land in our body.

* What is it to clearly express our own self? and what is it to be moved and influenced by your partner, the floor, the light in the room? Do we like to be influenced? Or do we prefer influencing?

* And can we hold our centre while being in relationship? Are we all Yin? Are we all Yang? Can we play with that dial? Can we do both: listening and “talking” at the same time? Or do we lose our solo plot and cave to the other?

General:
These CI Dance classes sufficiently explore our potentially unexplored psycho-emotional aspects within specific interrelational movement.

We’ll dive deep into our internal landscape whilst relating, our unknown, unexpected, surprising aspects of physical & energetic relating, exploring how these experiences affect & change us, as we confront more uncomfortable, yet exciting & relieving mental/emotional truisms.

We’ll gently choose partners with highly intuitional guidance that potentially trigger our patterns, giving us ample chance to move through any stuck internal places with the help of exact experiential awareness.

This guided process is meant to enhance our personal evolution/development quickly & safely.

All levels welcome.

Dive Deep 1
Friday 17th, 6 - 7:30 pm
This class explores fine tuning our innards in relation, ultimately guiding us to more fluent results whilst confronting inter-relational challenges. Technique, safety & prowess all come from properly aligned energy. We're sophisticatedly guided to translate inner reactions into attuned responses, constantly resolving what's attended.

Dive Deep 2

Saturday 18th, 1 - 2:30
This class focuses on how we feel, but delves deeper into moving our stuff safely whilst "blaming" others for our predicament, taking more responsibility for moving where we are, so again, it's not a pain in the ass to relate/connect, rather, empowering

Dive Deep 3
Sunday 19th, 1 - 2:45
This is a continuation of deep dive two where we focus on how we feel, but delve deeper into moving our stuff safely whilst "blaming" others for our predicament, taking more responsibility for moving where we are, so again, it's not a pain in the ass to relate/connect, rather, empowering

Trigger warning: Shadow work

The Curious Mind and the Surprising Body
Saturday 18th, 10 am- 12 pm

We will explore possibilities for how we move, sense, fall and dance into our back space, or the space less seen. How does playing in spherical space also avail us to support a partner? Anne & Natalie’s offers will take a multidisciplinary approach, drawing inspiration from various somatic and creative modalities. Anne & Natalie have both studied contact improvisation extensively with Peter Bingham of EDAM as well as with other teachers.They both teach CI at EDAM.

Open to all levels.

Friday 17, 11:30 - 1: Dancing with Backspace (open levels)

a sweet opening class focusing on dancing with our backspace! We’ll reach through space, hold each other’s hearts, and fall upwards through space, finding ways to enter into the unknown.

Saturday 18th, 1 - 2:30 pm: Collision & Ignition (intermediate)

This intermediate class will focus on energizing our dance. Through the lens of compassionate mischief, we’ll explore assembly/disassembly, falling together, colliding, adrenalizing our limbs, and energetic entries into contact. Established comfort with going in and out of the floor and sharing some of your weight is reccomended. 

Birds of a feather: a study in Grazing
Sunday 19th, 1 - 2:45 pm (open levels)
we’ll explore the concept of Grazing, as coined by Nancy Stark Smith- short, sweet connections with the ensemble and the space while still staying connected to one’s own solo. We’ll move in and out of solo, applying a compositional eye and drawing on kinesthetic response as our stimulus to move. We will also explore strategies for initiating these brief dances, inspired by various birds and their courtship rituals! By practicing grazing, we learn how to tune with the room, our own impulses, and inject an attentive play into our dance. 

Let’s Get Consensual; Contact Improv Edition
‍Friday 17th, 2 - 4 pm

‍ To what extent are you having the dance you want to have? Or the dance you think your partner(s) want to have? Inspired by the Wheel of Consent, this experiential workshop will explore factors that support or inhibit us in fully expressing our desires and limits in contact improv, including power dynamics.

Becoming dandelions - Intermediate to Advanced
Saturday 18, 9 am - 12

This is a meeting place for our heart-body, through contact improvisation.

Dandelions nourish the kinship network through their interconnectedness and entangled systems of generosity.

Dandelion’s spirit of receptivity and independence inspires the direction of our exploration within the practice of Contact Improvisation.

In this workshop, we approach the dance as a vehicle for us to reflect on our lives, and a way to meet the parts of us that were unreachable before.

Contact principles, such as reaching, leaning, modulating, internal expansion, weight-sharing and falling together, that we share as part of the practice, become the doorways to our personal research.

We use these doorways to cultivate softness, deeper listening and a graceful ability to respond in the moment.

By tasting the dandelion root tea, we invite the participants to indulge in the sensorial relation with the plant and in dancing with the other.

Through inviting the spirit of Dandelion as a third partner in the dance, Viktória and Arash facilitate a new space of discovery to identify, dance with, and maybe even integrate the untouched parts of ourselves.

Through giving attention and inviting the unconscious internal tendencies that we carry and allowing them to become conscious, we envision a future that allows for the integration of new relational ways of becoming.

We are committed to a space of kindness, care, and compassion where people are encouraged to participate in ways that feel comfortable for them.

This workshop is designed for intermediate to advanced practitioners of movement, dance and contact improvisation.

Dimensions of Imagination - Just Arash
Sunday April 19, 1 - 2:45

In this workshop, open to all levels and experiences, we will bring the value of agility and tactility to awaken our intuition.

This practice invites us to lean into and remember to follow our biology.

This awakens our embodied trust and empathetic body that reveals the nature of interdependence with all that is.

We will work on physical partnering by using specific skills such as bridging, yielding, tone modulating, and weight-sharing to sharpen our awareness and dexterity.

These skills allow us to practice autonomy, personal responsibility and a deeper connection to ourselves.

We will work on enhancing personal suppleness and tuning into the group's intelligence.

We will explore how the physical skillsets can expand through indulging in the range of our senses, noticing emotions and tapping into imagination.

Can imagination guide us to inhabit our bodies of knowledge and generosity?

I believe the heart, as an organ, plays a part in linking us and our paths of dancing together. 

Freedom in flight-
Sunday 19th, 3 - 5 (Intermediate/advanced level)

In this class we will play with spherical space by exploring the buoyancy and ease through the air and softly back down to the ground. To support the loft, we familiarize ourselves with our ever shifting centers of gravity. We listen for the nuance in weight exchange, playing with modulating tone, pressure, counterbalance and counter tensions of support. As underdancers, we investigate the multitude of ways our bodies provide surface, offering structure and agility for our partners to willingly and harmoniously perch or hitch a ride.

Appetite for disorientation
Friday 17, 6 - 7:30
Saturday 18, 3 - 5
Developing an appetite for disorientation is a necessary skill to learn and to delight in while dancing Contact Improvisation. Disorientation stimulates balance and challenges the way we are used to balancing. We can give up choosing "this way or that way" and allowing ourselves to get caught up in the whirlwind of kinesthetic possibilities – the potential of being moved by beauty and sensation. We aim to experience our bodies as a spherical multidimensional space instead of a rigid structure controlling space.

Disorientation can feel bewildering and confusing, even scary. Embracing these feelings as part of the dance brings out the improvised nature of this form. Through disorientation we can begin to experience many directions all at once – finding suspension through space while at the same time feeling the earth and the support of gravity.

We will build capacity to stay aware during spatial disorientation by practicing shifting and falling in many directions, being upside down, spinning, playing with momentum, peripheral vision, eyes closed and most of all not being in total control. We will explore the fluid nature of our structure in order to cultivate introspection and sense proprioception.

Text inspired by: How to land by Ann Cooper Albright

Fine-tuned Awareness
Friday 17th, 11:30 am - 1 pm
In this class we will cultivate fine-tuned awareness and deep embodied sensitivity as means for becoming more angile and responsive within the emerging, unpredictable unknown. Using principles of The Feldenkrais Method to cultivate our abilities to sense detail and move with continual adaptability, we will expand our understanding of how to effectively organize our structures in both weight-sharing and solo dancing. We will pursue having a wider array of possibilities available to us in any given moment, exploring how this gives us a greater ability to follow/respond to our partner's invitations, and a greater ability to offer clear invitations to our partner. Francesca has a particular interest in cultivating a state of presence and embodied readiness that is so responsive that we can feel as though we are simply observing the dance unfold as we dance it, even while we simultaneously engage continual choice-making.

We will begin with a solo warm up that will engage our attention to subtlety in our own bodies. Francesca proposes that patience and subtlety set us up for greater precision in high velocity dancing -- to this end we will take our time in the beginning, and bring these values with us as the pace of the class progresses. Francesca will offer structured partner explorations, containers for attending to specific qualities in more open-ended duet practice, and collective improvisation + CI scores. 
Beginner Friendly

Fine-tuned awareness
Saturday 18th, 10 -12
In this class we will cultivate fine-tuned awareness and deep embodied sensitivity as means for becoming more angile and responsive within the emerging, unpredictable unknown. Using principles of The Feldenkrais Method to cultivate our abilities to sense detail and move with continual adaptability, we will expand our understanding of how to effectively organize our structures in both weight-sharing and solo dancing. We will pursue having a wider array of possibilities available to us in any given moment, exploring how this gives us a greater ability to follow/respond to our partner's invitations, and a greater ability to offer clear invitations to our partner. Francesca has a particular interest in cultivating a state of presence and embodied readiness that is so responsive that we can feel as though we are simply observing the dance unfold as we dance it, even while we simultaneously engage continual choice-making.

We will begin with a solo warm up that will engage our attention to subtlety in our own bodies. Francesca proposes that patience and subtlety set us up for greater precision in high velocity dancing -- to this end we will take our time in the beginning, and bring these values with us as the pace of the class progresses. Francesca will offer structured partner explorations, containers for attending to specific qualities in more open-ended duet practice, and collective improvisation + CI scores. 
Beginner Friendly

Exploring
Saturday 18, 10 am - 12 pm

Also offer this class

Sunday 10 - 12

You’ll find an emphasis on cultivating personal agency, exploring shared momentum, and listening through the body. Rather than offering fixed answers, Sasha creates space for questions to move—encouraging embodied experimentation, surprise, and moments of real presence.
Expect a playful atmosphere, grounded invitations, and room for you to find your own way in the dance.

Gently Facilitated Jamming

Friday 6 - 7:30

Beginners

Sunday 10 - 12

Beginners

Join us in a gentle guided journey into the body - unhurried, nourishing, and vibrant. Let the curated soundscape and a slow, thoughtful progression melt tensions and warm us into an open jam space.

UNWIND: A Somatic Journey into Stillness
Sunday 19, 6 - 7:30

As the festival begins to come to an end, this session invites you to soften, integrate, and return home to yourself.

Through a nourishing blend of yin and restorative yoga, somatic release practices, and guided Yoga Nidra, you’ll be supported in downshifting your nervous system and settling into deep rest. With long-held shapes, spacious stillness, and subtle breath awareness, this practice creates the conditions for release, repair, and quiet integration.

Offered on the final day of the festival, UNWIND is a solo journey inward - a chance to digest the richness of your experience, recalibrate your inner landscape, and honour the body after days of movement, connection, and expansion.

Come as you are. Leave grounded, softened, and deeply restored.

Authentic Relating
Saturday 18th, 3 - 5 pm

Drop into real connection through playful, guided authentic relating games designed to spark honesty, curiosity, and presence. This workshop invites you to reveal your lived experience in the moment, practice owning what’s true for you, and gently lean into your relational edge. Through simple yet powerful exercises, you’ll build confidence in expressing yourself while deepening your capacity for listening and connection. Come as you are — no experience needed, just a willingness to be real and a little bit brave.

Rising Energy of Spring‍, (Qi Gong)
Sunday 19, 3 - 5 pm

Qi Gong workshop inspired by the Wood element. As nature awakens, this session will focus on gentle, flowing movements to support the liver and gallbladder systems, helping to release stagnation, cultivate flexibility, and invite a sense of renewal.
Through breathwork, mindful movement, and simple energetic practices, you’ll learn how to align with the upward, expansive qualities of spring—nurturing clarity, vision, and emotional balance.

This workshop is open to all levels and offers a grounding yet uplifting space to reconnect with your body and the rhythms of the natural world.

Mash-up: clown and improvisational dance
Friday 17, 2 - 4 pm

Somatic group, and solo explorations of play and you and us and everything and nothing. 
Taught by George Longshadow (Me!), a queer, trans, weirdo, parent, clown, and dancer. I'll be creating a non-judgmental space and providing exercises to process everyday life shit with play, and imagination. We will work with what's there, attune to ourselves, and each other. Listen to cheesy music, and weird soundscapes, and get weird and playful!  and! and! and! and! 

No experience in clown or dance necessary. This class is focused on making space for each person to do and explore and figure it out for themselves and not so much of me explaining how it's "supposed" to look/feel/be, but I will admit to having an occasional poignant thought by accident every once in while! 

I'm so excited to share this material that I spent many years haphazardly/methodically mashing and unraveling in Montreal!

Contact/Fusion
Saturday 18, 1 - 2:30 pm
In this workshop we’ll be exploring the spaces and common ground between contact improvisation and partnered fusion dance. Where do these improvisational forms intersect? How do they differ? How can we use techniques from one form in the other…or choose not to? How can we get off/into the floor with/into the music? No prior partner dance experience required!

Breathwork
Friday 16 - 8:30 pm

Join us for an accessible community Breathwork Offering designed to support playfulness, connection, and the therapeutic benefits of Soulful Somatic Breathwork.
We’re going to harmonize science-based, trauma-informed, somatic practices while centering our breather and the intelligence of their nervous system. We look forward to sharing this with you!

- - The Journey - -
Introduction + Meditation (5min)
️Movement (10min)
️Techninque (10min)
Bathroom Break + Set Up (5min)
️Conscious Connected Breathwork (1hr)
️Shares + Socializing (15min)
️Close (5min)

- - What to bring - -

 ️A cushion for comfort
 ️A blanket for coziness
 ️A water bottle to stay hydrated
 ️A journal to capture reflections

Embodied Whimsy
Saturday 18th, 1 - 2:30 pm

Expressive, connective, clown-adjacent

How can we share, communicate, explore, express, surprise and delight, beginning with ourselves? 

Through somatic + improvisational prompts, feeling into our flow, and letting our bodies do the “thinking”, we will get grounded in sensation and our own movement exploration. Gradually tuning in with our fellow movers, we will broaden our inquiry—in the key of play—through pair/group exercises and into scores for compositional improvisation. 

Sound bath
Sunday 19, 7:30 - 8:30 pm
Sound vibration is an ancient, universal and foundational element of life itself. Timeless texts from a wide range of land based traditions speak of this. From witnessing the rhythmic pulse of your mother’s heartbeat in utero to the resonance of your breath once earth side, every cell of your physical body is singing. How you attune your breath with the “mother pulse” is fundamental to your sense of connection in this lifetime. How you attune yourself shapes how you feel, move, and connect.

This immersive sound healing experience weaves crystal bowls, gong, flute, a touch of Vedic wisdom, vocal activation and more into a rich tapestry of resonance. You will have the opportunity to let the vibrations recalibrate your nervous system, guide you into deep rest, expanded awareness, and an elevated energetic frequency. Personal agency is cultivated. You will leave with a greater embodied understanding of the chakras. Other potential benefits of participating in a sound bath include but are not limited to, reduced stress and anxiety, deeper restorative sleep, lower blood pressure, reduced pain and inflammation, balanced hormones and moods, greater sense of inner peace and wellbeing, sense of connection whether to self, community or the divine.

Though many people may have only recently heard of sound baths the healing power of sound is ancient and universal. Across cultures, sacred sound has been a medicine: Tibetan singing bowls and Himalayan bells, Aboriginal didgeridoos, Sanskrit mantras, Gregorian chants, African drumming, Kirtan, etc — all carrying frequencies used for millenia to restore harmony, mark sacred rites, and connect people and communities to the divine.

We look forward to meeting you on the next level of our journey in sound healing research.

Skill set
Sunday 19, 3 - 5 pm
This class will be designed to help people build their skills and understanding of contact principles so that they can give and receive weight with confidence and safety.
The class will begin with simple movement patterning exercises that will allow us to transition in and out of the floor efficiently. Once we are warm, we will begin to access more complex and dynamic movements drills that will incorporate inversions that can bring us out of the floor to standing and vice versa, we will play with the concept of being able to fall upwards into our recoveries. We will then move into structured partnering exercises where we have the to opportunity to learn tools to find each other's centre, to utilize rolling and sliding point of contact to be able to offer or invite our partner's weight into and out of support. We will have a strong focus on developing skills that will require the consent of our partner for these lifts to succeed.
We will build into more dynamic movements that will allow for greater use of space, levels and pacing.Description goes here

Rap games for people who don’t rap.

Sunday April 17 , 3 - 5

Have you ever wanted to free-style rap but the idea makes you want to jump of a bridge. Join Tesla in this co-created safe space to gently nudge you into the freedom and fun of spinning out rhymes. Seriouseness not allowed!!