Our Instructors
Our Instructors
Delia Brett
Anne Cooper
Olivia Schaffer
Manuel Rochette
Selena La Brooy
Marie Osterman
Joni Cooke
Stuart Phillips
Andrew Harwood
Natalie Tin Yin Gan (顏婷妍)
Julia Goudkova
Carmen Serber
Sashah Klapkiw
Damien Kai Norman
George Longshadow
Odette Slater
Niku Dhillon
Franchesca Frewer
Julia Wu Wei
Arash Khakpour
Viktoria
Rob Kitsos
Delia Brett Anne Cooper Olivia Schaffer Manuel Rochette Selena La Brooy Marie Osterman Joni Cooke Stuart Phillips Andrew Harwood Natalie Tin Yin Gan (顏婷妍) Julia Goudkova Carmen Serber Sashah Klapkiw Damien Kai Norman George Longshadow Odette Slater Niku Dhillon Franchesca Frewer Julia Wu Wei Arash Khakpour Viktoria Rob Kitsos
Olivia Shaffer (she/her)
Olivia Shaffer is a professional dance artist based in Vancouver, which is located on the traditional, ancestral and unceded Coast Salish lands and waters of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) people.
Olivia is the Artistic Director of the EDAM Dance Company, where she has practiced Contact Improvisation with pioneering teacher Peter Bingham since 2011 and performed with his company since 2014. In addition to teaching dance and CI, Olivia is a certified Feldenkrais® Method practitioner. She teaches regularly at EDAM and in the Department of Theatre & Film at the University of BC. She has taught internationally at Freiburg Contact Festival, CI@50, SFDI, and the University of the Philippines.// oliviashaffer.ca
Photo: Hilary Maxwell
Selena La Brooy (she/her)
Selena La Brooy, is also known affectionately as ‘Selena BoBeena’. Over the last 20+ years she has pursued study of various yoga lineages, Laban developmental movement patterning, BMC, Feldenkrais, the Axis Syllabus, breathwork, vipassana and circus arts which colour the lens of her inquiry of the form of Contact Improvisation.
She is an anatomy nerd, certified rolfer and somatic movement integration practitioner which inform her approach to teaching contact improvisation. Some of her most influential teachers have been Martin Keogh, Kira Kirsch, Frey Faust, Andrew Harwood, Anjelika Doniy, Karl Frost, Alicia Grayson, Nita Little, Ida Rolf, Hubert Godard and Monica Caspari. She is most passionate about ways to make contact improvisation accessible to all bodies by empowering choice, inviting deep listening and inspiring perpetual curiosity into what else is possible. She is currently inspired by the weightless possibilities of aquatic movement, the merging of energetic with physical awareness of Qigong and the movement patterns of Capoeira.
She is a core member of the Salt Spring Island Contact Improvisation community, Salt Spring Island Contact Improvisation Festival and the founder of Rhizome Springs, the land of living inquiry: an off-grid exploratorium hosting multi-day retreats for somatic and creative research on the unceded territories of the Hul’Q’Umi’Num and Sencoten speaking people.
Manuel Rochette (he/him)
Manuel Rochette is a dancer, facilitator, and host of Salt Spring Island Contact Improvisation Festival in Canada. With 2 decades of experience with the form of Contact Improvisation, his personal studies got him closer to teachers such as Martin Keogh, Angelika Doniy, Alicia Grayson, Ray Chung, Scott Wells, Vega Luukkonen, Kira Kirsch, Paul Singh, Andrew Harwood and more. His facilitation approach is at the nexus point where skills, states, play and spontaneous composition merge. His dancing style aims at creating ever-changing pathways, opening to novelty, modulating patterns, and the use of momentum and release to ease into authentic movements.
Curiosities of the moment: Deep focus on connection, accessing poly-centricity, how to increase availability & generosity with the body, opening the backspace, falling together, and continuity of attention and movement. He has explored and facilitated CI on many continents and communities, harvesting gems from them all. Manuel is an avid jammer while he continues to deepen the practice in classes and workshops. Manuel is also a DJ and a gardener from which he sources inspirations and metaphors.
Delia Brett (she/they)
Delia is an established Vancouver performing artist, teacher and choreographer. She took her 1st CI class from master teacher Peter Bingham when she was 14yrs old and began training, almost daily, in CI when she was 18 yrs old, 33 years ago (Eek!). Delia teaches people of diverse, ages, abilities and genders locally And has toured as a CI teacher and dancer to Austria, France, Greece, Finland and across Canada and in the US. Locally, Delia has been a contributing teacher to Dance and theatre programs: Modus Operandi, The BPA, SFU, Studio 58 and of course, last but not least…EDAM Dance (Canada’s premier contact company) in which she was a primary contributing dancer with for 24 years! Pre-covid, Delia and her company partner Daelik, offered regular CI classes and workshops at their studio, Left of Main as well.
Delia’s perspective as a CI teacher, facilitator and dance artist has been informed by numerous practices, including her extensive background in acting, theatre, martial arts, voice, breath, Yoga and Myofascial structure and function. But one of the single most enlightening of all her experiences as a teacher/ facilitator, was the 8 years her company, MACHiNENOiSY dedicated to working with LGBTQ2+ youth (ages 13-25) producing 11 different shows called, PROX:IMITY RE:MIX, during which they trained the youth in the skills of CI. Because it was through these years that Delia began to understand how this dance/awareness practice we call, Contact Improvisation can be used not just to create wickedly awesome dances, but also to develop complex inter-relational capacities such as confidence, deep listening, somatic and intuitive knowing, as well as collaborative and divergent thinking.
Delia is also a Hatha yoga teacher with 20 years experience, has an extensive knowledge of myofascial anatomy and bio-mechanics and post covid has transitioned from running a dance company to running her own business in transformational coaching and wellness for artists, activist and creative beings.
Joni Cooke (she/they)
Joni encountered Peter Bingham and fell in love with Contact Improvisation in 1995 in the BFA dance program at SFU. She avidly delves into the myriad ways CI teaches us about the relational field, using the study of weight and the point of contact as a way to examine independence, co-dependence and interdependence. Despite being "neurospicy" she has been a serious student of Zen since 1992, and primarily examines the way we work with focus and presence, story and impulse, both the witnessing mind and the full absorption that we can directly experience when we're flying or in flow. Just like with meditation, contact is an excellent way to deeply examine how we generate story, how we let stories proliferate, how we can relinquish them in an instant and find silence and simple sensation. The adaptability and embodied play afforded on the dance floor can teach us skills to bring into our daily life. Joni is a yoga teacher at Green Room Yoga and teaches a class called "Yoga for the Nervous System" which develops the Jedi ;) awareness to regulate "fight or flight responses" and is working on the same material for CI. Contact has informed her yoga teaching, her shiatsu practice (RST) , and her somatic embodiment coaching (SEAC). She is a nerd about embodied philosophy, healing arts and uncovering radical presence. It is said she brings her joy and vitality to her teaching. Currently she is studying Somatic Embodiment through the Somatic Embodiment Association (SEA. Damien Kai Norman and Dr. Sam) and is dying to fold her somatic work into the field of Contact Improvisation.
Anne Cooper
Rick Nodine and Anne Cooper. Photo by Patrick Beelaert
Anne is a dancer/performer, improviser, choreographer & teacher based in Vancouver, BC. She has taught Contact Improvisation since 2001 at EDAM, WOW, Leviathan & in the NWT and has studied CI with many teachers including Peter Bingham as well as Nancy Stark Smith, one of CI's originators & the deviser of the Underscore. Anne has performed with Nancy Stark Smith & other improvisers in Nancy's 'Glimpse' projects. She's recently returned from 'Glimpse 4' in Salt Lake City, USA, researching & offering the Underscore as both Community Underscore & 'Performance Installations'. Anne has danced for a number of choreographers for over 20 years, and also creates her own hybrid dance/voice works. Upcoming she performs in EDAM's Spring Choreographic Series. She's happy to give the Underscore 'Talk-through' & do the Practice with people at the Vancouver CI Festival! Natalie Tin Yin Gan (顏婷妍)
Natalie Tin Yin Gan (顏婷妍) is an independent dance artist, writer, and facilitator based in so-called Vancouver, on the unsurrendered ancestral lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. She has performed and presented work in Asia, Europe, and across Canada. Natalie is Co-Artistic Director of company Hong Kong Exile and the smaller half of vulva clown duo, Pulsive Party. Natalie is a certified teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework®, a body-centred and trauma-aware approach to the voice. Natalie has been a student of Peter Bingham since 2009. Since 2023, she has had the deepest privilege of teaching CI at EDAM, where she delights in and nerds out on cultivating beginner-friendly space for BIPOC folks to fall in love with the form. nataliegan.comStuart Phillips
Stuart Phillips dances CI as a healing process for over 40 years, teaching, performing & researching said form worldwide. He has a potent emphasis on efficient transformational relational healing, and also has a therapy practice for the same work. 
Marie Osterman (They/She)
Marie Osterman is a multidisciplinary artist working to unearth community and curiosity through theatre, devised performance, improvisation, and movement. Their work centers around generosity, queer embodiment, and politics of the body. Marie’s generative art combines her classically-trained background in theatremaking and her contact improvisation practice with the mission of facilitating intimate and playful creative spaces. Marie is a facilitator, teacher and passionate member of the Contact Improvisation community, as well as a professional performer and social theatre teaching artist based in LA. They have studied CI and movement composition in UCLA, Tbilisi, Germany, and San Diego, going on to teach Contact to both professional dancers and students between ages 5-19. Marie has trained in CI with Konstantinos Mihos, Dorte Jensen, Anya Cloud, Mayfield Brooks, and Ezra LeBank. They also most recently completed the "Composing Emergence" mentorship with Nita Little. Their own teaching in Contact Improv focuses on accessibility, community-building, emergent strategy, and chaos. They are a longtime collaborator and associate managing director of Project Nongenue, a queer theatre company focused on centralizing the voices of women and marginalized identities within classical theater and mythology, and a teaching artist for Unusual Suspects and 24th STreeT Theatre. Other passions include birds, pleasure activism, and pointing out the moon.
Andrew Harwood (he/him)
Andrew de Lotbinière Harwood is renowned as a leading light in the field of dance improvisation. He is an internationally recognized pioneer of contact improvisation (CI) and a master teacher/performer in both real-time composition and CI. He has dedicated himself to the research, development, education, collaboration and dissemination of these rigorous artistic practices as sophisticated performing arts for the past 50 years. He first studied and then performed with Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith and Nita Little, the instigators of Contact Improvisation. He has also danced for the companies of Marie Chouinard, Jean-Pierre Perreault, Jo Lechay, Joint Forces and Fulcrum, as well as the improvisational dance collectives Discovery Bal, The Echo Case and The Improvisational Movement Fund. His journey has continued to evolve through the development of consciousness, various investigations of perceptual awareness, an in-depth interest in design/composition as well as an abundance of collaborative performances around the globe with the likes of Peter Bingham, Chris Aiken, Ray Chung, Daniel Lepkoff, Kirstie Simpson, Alito Alessi, Karen Nelson, K.J. Holmes, Lisa Nelson, Julyen Hamilton, Benno Voorham and Benoit Lachambre, to name a few. Carmen Serber
I teach dance because I love dancing and because I want to share that. I teach because I love to learn in community and believe in the infinite potential of exploring movement together. I teach dance because probably nothing else kept me more engaged and intrigued about life and guided me toward the places that I needed to look at. I teach because I had a hard time in many dance classes just because I couldn’t remember the freaking phrase! I want to create an environment where every-body can feel welcome, learn and play with presented material and apply it in their own dance practice. I am annoyed about ideologies that preach what is the right way of moving and I strive to offer something different.
In the last 25 years I have been exploring and deepening my practice of embodiment. Extensive studies in perspectives of anatomy and movement practices that are not limited by this study are relevant for my offerings. I am interested in investigating embodied attention within improvisational movement practices which are both creative and relational. My teaching is shaped from my longtime study of the Axis Syllabus and Contact Improvisation, from my work as a biodynamic craniosacral therapist, the exquisite exploration of the subtle realm of the body and my longtime practice and study of contemplative and improvisational dance scores.
Inspirations for dance/improvisation:
Frey Faust, Sara Shelton Mann, Mary Armentrout, Liz Koch, Lynda Caesara, Contact Improvisation jams, witnessing improvisers take risks, practicing dancing with peers, my students, my inner worlds, my relationship with nature and my two kids.Rob Kitsos
Working in a range of mediums and disciplines, Rob has performed across the United States, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Venezuela and Hong Kong. In addition to creating over 100 works, Rob’s been teaching dance in universities for twenty-five years.
Damien Kai Norman
As a registered counsellor specializing in trauma and somatic therapy, a certified breathwork facilitator, a craniosacral therapist, a certified body worker, a psychedelic integration counsellor, and a certified ICF-accredited coach, Damian Kai Norman values community, integrity, and congruence between our hearts, bodies, and minds. He loves facilitating group work and wellness retreats, creating safe containers for authentic vulnerable conversations, befriending our nervous system, and cultivating our capacity to feel fearlessly.
Norman has over 10 years of experience facilitating, including internationally across Canada, Europe, and South America. Norman is the co-founder of the Somatic Embodiment Academy offering training programs that proudly certify somatic coaches and breathwork facilitators, embodying therapeutic excellence. Norman is a student at heart, having completed the three-year Somatic Experiencing International Trauma Therapy program and the Embody Lab Somatic Attachment Therapy program.
Norman has completed levels 1, 2a, 2b, & 3 of Robin Clement’s Breathwave Facilitator training, co-facilitated with Robin in level 1 and 2 trainings and co-facilitated the first Clinical Breathwork program with Braedy Mac in North America. Norman is a certified Level 1 Craniosacral Therapist through Healing Hands, a certified 200-hour yoga instructor through the Himalayan Valley Yoga Center, a certified ZenThai Massage and Shiatsu practitioner a level 3 graduate of the Movement Flow program, and completed 4 years of professional dance training at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre and York University, leading to a career in dance performance and teaching dance + embodiment workshops. Norman brings Breathwork, psychoeducation, and Embodiment Workshops to TheraPsil, Qi Integrated Health, corporate & wellness companies, retreats, festivals, and trainings. He is a leader in conscious men’s work, spending 4 years with the Arka Brotherhood including leading his own Squad, and currently leads immersives and retreats with Expansive Man, has completed levels 1 & 2 of the Conscious Relationship Training (CRT), completed The Power of Awareness meditation training, and was one of the first graduates of Toad School psychedelic training. Lastly, he is a graduate of the Rhodes College Professional Counselling Program.
Norman has an intimate relationship with trauma and continues to learn through lived experience how to compassionately relate to his own chronic pain through working with the nervous system. Norman is here to do the work with you and attune to your personal journey. With a calm grounded presence and an uplifting encouraging spirit, Norman invites you to connect with your body and build a relationship of trust, curiosity and compassion… Creating a loving partnership with yourself.
Arash Khakpour
Arash Khakpour ( ) is a dancer, choreographer and facilitator from Tehran and based in the Coast Salish Territory (colonially know as Vancouver, Canada). Arash has been practicing dance and performance for the past 16 years and has been a company member and part of the EDAM ensemble since 2017. In 2018 he was mentored by Raïna von Waldenburg on presence and embodiment based on Grotowski method. In 2023 he completed a mentorship project with Benoît Lachambre on deepening his performance and facilitation practice. Most recently, Arash was one of nineteen participants in ‘the Mystery School of Choreography’ in Lisbon directed by Meg Stuart and Ana Rocha. He tends to invest in the nuances of prejudices in the body as a way of inviting the unconscious to the conscious, and as a doorway to meet the unknown emotions. He sees dance as a process of emotional and spiritual discoveries and a mode of transformation. He works with dance as a language that researches the human condition through mythical, historical, social, political and animistic interpretations. As a first-generation immigrant, he continuously considers what healing he can bring to the land and communities he works with. He is building a culture of relationality and reciprocity that celebrates the multiplicity of presences and approaches. He is the co-founder and artistic director of the dance-theatre-film company The Biting School (alongside his brother Aryo Khakpour.
Niku Dhillon
Niku has been practicing Contact Improvisation for over 13 years, with roots in Contemporary Dance at the University of Calgary. His facilitation and practice live at the intersection of deep listening, biomechanical fluidity, and the poetic expression of the unfolding dance. He loves creating warm, welcoming spaces where people can come together to explore with intention and play.
Alex Mah
Alex Mah is an interdisciplinary performing artist, composer-musician, and CI dancer. He composes mostly weirdo experimental music and sometimes sweet songs for dance and theatre. He has performed in Canada, the U.S., Denmark, and Germany and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hon.) from SFU and an Master of Research Composition from Bath Spa University (U.K.). He is grateful to have worked with Peter Bingham/EDAM from 2015-2025 and was fortunate to be a jam musician for 300 dancers at contactfest Freiburg 2024, Europe’s largest CI festival. He is fond of folk music, loves a good cheesecake, and prefers taking things slowly.
Viktoria Kaslik
Viktoria Kaslike (HU) is a family and systemic constellation facilitator, jurist and artist. She explores nature-sourced laws through systemic constellations, shamanic work, research, writing, legal rituals, and artistic collaborations.
Zoe Jordan
Zoe Jordan is a movement improvisor, artist, and facilitator from Vancouver, Canada (traditional, unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples). With over a decade of movement exploration under her belt, Zoe’s teaching draws from a broad palette of movement practices: contemporary dance improvisation, clown, Gaga, Authentic Movement, Body Weather, Logomotion, Contact Improvisation, and various somatic movement methods.
Zoe’s facilitation approach is experiential and playful, centred on prompts and invitations meant to ground us in our bodies—to ‘think’ from our bodies—following our own pleasure and curiosity into dance that is spontaneous, experimental, and (sometimes) in conversation with others.
Zoe’s current practice and preoccupations include movement in and with nature and the more-than-human, community-building through creative play, and improvisation as a literal ‘meeting the moment’, bypassing the intellect to rely on some other, embodied sensibility. Other interests include soft sculpture and wearable art, childbirth, cats, plants, and performance. https://zoejordan.ca/
“Julia Wu Wei” is an Acupuncturist, astrologer and a community builder. Her roots are in Eastern medicine which offers a grounded understanding of how to work with the elements and vital energy flows in the body. She has been immersed in the healing arts for the past 20 years and graduated from the Canadian College of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine in 2009 and has been teaching Chi Gung on Salt Spring Island and in Victoria for over 10 years. She has extensive knowledge about the physical, mental, emotional spiritual bodies and pulls it all together in her Chi Gung and acupuncture practices.
Julia Wu Wei
Dhar aka Ron
Dhar, aka Ron, is a skilled, intuitive and passionate musician. He enjoys playing in many genres of music. As well as touring worldwide, he has been on faculty at SFU as a dance accompanist in the School for Contemporary Arts for over twenty five years. He can make almost any musical instrument sing and focuses mainly on drums and percussion. Yoga has had a quiet and persistent presence in his life. You are sure to appreciate the depth of focus and musicality that he shares through crystal bowls, gong, flute and voice.
Odette Slater
Sound medicine, movement, family, gardening are the heart of my life. Dance, somatics,,hand drumming, Sanskrit mantra, crystal bowls, have been my healing rocks and my offerings when faced with personal loss, major health challenges, desire for more joy in my life.
I currently teach Yoga at Green Room Yoga,and BC Women’s Hospital. I offer one on one Pilates at my fully equipped boutique Pilates studio. As a doula, I support women throughout their childbearing years. I strive to cultivate and honour authentic presence whether in solitary meditation or in community. In the past I have taught movement and somatic explorations at Simon Fraser University, Arts Umbrella, Richmond Dance Academy, Ballet BC, Exceleration Triathlon Club, Seattle World Rhythm Festival, etc.
George Longshadow
George is a playful and experienced clown, dancer, event organizer, and facilitator. He started studying partner dance in 2002, and clown in 2011, and started facilitating/teaching in 2012, his work blends clowning with various dance conventions in a supportive and playful environment.
George works to create spaces in which people can meet themselves with curiosity and allowance, whether it’s in solo dance, partner dance, or clown. George invites people to play and discover their bodies. Because clowning centers expression and the emotional body, clown-dance renders real impulses and emotions into animated movement. George is curious and passionate about this fun, experimental blend, and how it can be used to uniquely process everyday life stuff through embodiment and play.
George’s values and curiosities emerged through many years of education and research, including clown study with David MacMurray Smith from 2011-2025, and a 3-month contact improv scholarship at Edam Dance in 2011, among other dance, clown, and performance programs. George began teaching in 2012 at Recess Productions, and has continued to teach since; at ConFusion in Washington in 2015 and 2016, at Dance!?! Alt Fusion in 2017 (Denver) and 2018 (Berkeley). In addition to teaching, he also organized ConFusion and Dance!?! Alt Fusion. He also taught many series of classes Montreal: through BirdDog Dance 2015-2016, Queer Swing from 2015-2018, Dance Less Boring in 2017, then through The Delight Factory in 2017 and 2018. Now, his experience is culminating for Clown Dance 2019-now.
Francesca Frewer
Francesca has performed in Vancouver and internationally in works by artists such as Daina Ashbee, Company 605, EDAM Dance, Emmalena Fredriksson, Company Saint Genet, Future Leisure, and Evann Siebens, among others. Her own creative work has been presented by various venues/festivals including The Scotiabank Dance Centre, Left of Main, New Works, PushOFF, the rEvolver theatre festival, the Festival of Recorded Movement, and PAUL Studios Berlin. Francesca also co-produces the itinerant interdisciplinary arts showcase Here For Now, and the underground performance venue Boombox.
Francesca is a graduate of Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (SEAD) and Kelowna Feldenkrais Teacher Training. She also studied English Literature at Simon Fraser University, and contemporary dance with Modus Operandi in Vancouver, where she now teaches.
Sashah Klapkiw
Sashah Klapkiw has been dancing with gravity, curiosity, and other humans for over 32 years through the practice of Contact Improvisation. Teaching for the past decade, Sasha brings a deep well of experience shaped by martial arts, yoga, and dance, and guided by an ever-evolving love for play and connection. In Sasha’s classes and jams, 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. Influenced by many wonderful teachers over the years, Sasha now shares the practice primarily on Salt Spring Island, hosting community jams, co-facilitated labs, and workshops that invite both newcomers and seasoned dancers into the ongoing conversation of Contact Improv.
Julia Goudkova
Julia is an embodiment facilitator, yoga teacher, ceremonialist, and somatic coach devoted to supporting individuals in returning to presence, vitality, and inner connection.
She is deeply inspired by the mind–body connection and the body’s innate intelligence in supporting physical, emotional, and relational well-being. With a foundation in Yin and Restorative yoga, her work invites a gentle yet profound softening into stillness, awareness, and care.
Alongside teaching yoga, Julia facilitates wellness retreats, women’s circles, embodiment and intimacy workshops, and couples work at studios, festivals, and retreats in Canada and internationally. Her offerings weave together mindfulness, somatic awareness, breath, and meditative practices—creating a calming yet empowering space where participants can slow down, reconnect with themselves, and feel more alive in their bodies.
Known for her warm, grounded presence, Julia creates spaces that honour both depth and play, stillness and expression, inviting each person to meet themselves exactly where they are.
Farley Johansson
Farley Johansson began Ballet lessons at age 3, he furthered his dance education at the New Zealand School of Dance where he was first introduced to Contemporary Dance technique. He has performed, taught and choreographed in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, France, Germany, Malta, New Zealand, Serbia and Venezuela. He has been in works that range from Classical and Contemporary ballets, to operas, musicals, TV & film, music videos. The most satisfying work he was able to do was with the Contact Improvisation based company EDAM Dance, based in Vancouver, BC, under the direction of Peter Bingham, a pioneer in Contact Dance in Canada, who is a great friend and mentor.