Contact Improvisation and the Art of Parts

Name: Contact Improvisation and the Art of Parts
Start: 2025-10-04T10:00:00-07:00
End: 2025-10-05T12:00:00-07:00
Location: Dusty Flower Shop

Schedule

Sat, 04 Oct, 2025 at 10:00 am to Sun, 05 Oct, 2025 at 12:00 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

Dusty Flower Shop | Vancouver, BC

Saturday October 4, 10:00 - 1:00 and Sunday 10:00 - 12:00. $120 buck for both days.
"As a contact dancer of forty years I have danced all the parts of myself. That silky EDAM floor has supported the myriad “me’s”: a playful brat, a studious student, a jealous diva, a lumbering pregnant momma, a fluid melted-down griever, a punky anarchist, a kindly-old-lady dancer. I’ve brought every single trouble to the studio and let the floor alchemize it for me."
This is an invitation by Joni Cooke and Dolphin Kasper to explore the healing processes embedded in the wonderous yet simple practise of improvisation (both in contact and solo). Come shape-shift over two days of integrated improvisation and IFS work. Bring your whole self, we'll parce out the parts. Be a whippet, a bull-dog, a maestro, a firefly, a slob, a siren, a manic fiend.
With rhythm and repetition and trance, let's conjure all the forgotten or overlooked bits, let them come out to play! This is a two day workshop with two excellent teachers with adjacent skills keen on finding the venn diagram between dance and healing. On Saturday Joni Cooke will use her extensive knowledge of the body/mind first open our bodies and soften our physical blocks, find our strength and centre and skill. After warming up at all levels, physical and imaginative, we will spend a good hour with concise composition games: improvising "into our corners", finding and embody all our favourite archetypes,
* trickster
* child
* maiden
* mother/father
* crone/wizard
* the Shadow

Let’s use Contact Improv not just as a physical thrill but as the full-spectrum healing art that is truly IS. Through authentic movement practices and contact based compositional work we will learn about our innermost patterns both in relation to ourselves and other. Let's get granular about what parts of ourself we've frozen and how that feels in our body. Let's detail what aspects of our character we lead with and what aspect we're not fully in touch with.
On Sunday, after a deep physical warm-up, Dolphin Kasper will guide us to slow down, listen deeply and get sensitive, and soon enough myriad squashed-parts of our selves bubble up to be expressed. He'll help us find “the zone” where we have access to a wider range of expression. We will explore flow states. We turn down the volume on the monkey-minds and find our breath deepening, our nervous system recalibrating and our relatedness getting rich and subtle. We want to share CI specifically as an tool for self-inquiry, healing and self-expression.
Therefore: we will explore embodied deep listening -- listening both to our own sensations, impulses, and imaginations, and also to our partner. We will try and tease out whether as a dancer we do more "talking" or "listening"; whether we take our inspiration to move from within our own bodies or from our partner. We will use pure improv, witnessing, as well as contact to explore the questions of our “self”.