Contact Improvisation Intensive with Kirsty Simson

Name: Contact Improvisation Intensive with Kirsty Simson
Start: 2025-04-18T10:00:00+01:00
End: 2025-04-19T16:30:00+01:00
Location: Dance Base

Schedule

Fri, 18 Apr, 2025 at 10:00 am to Sat, 19 Apr, 2025 at 04:30 pm

UTC+01:00

Location

Dance Base | Edinburgh, SC

Dance Improvisation Practices that offer Resilience and Support in Difficult Times
Friday 18 April 10:00-16:30
Film Screening / Jam 17.00-20.00
Saturday 19 April 10:00-16:30
£80 Earlybird Price until 18 March
£100 Standard Price
Book with Dance Base:
https://www.dancebase.co.uk/classes/contact-improvisation-intensive-with-kirsty-simson/
There is deep inspiration and rigour in a practice of improvisation that posits vulnerability at its heart. Developing the skills to be able to care for, engage, respect, and respond to that state of openness in oneself, others and our environment generates creative work that is powerful and transformative. Learning from a place of interconnectedness can give us the resilience and insight to face life's challenges and complexities.
In this workshop Kirstie shares the movement practices and underlying philosophies she has developed over forty years of her committed involvement with dance improvisation as a ‘life-practice’ that has helped her negotiate life’s ups and downs. Integral with the physical practices she will elucidate how she views embodied practices as vitally important for developing the resilience to face into and respond to the challenging times we are living through. Having gone through recent life-threatening illness herself, Kirstie draws first hand on how grounded dance practices can guide and sustain us as we face into life’s greatest challenges, and the life-affirming health benefits they offer us.
Kirstie draws from her extensive experience of Contact Improvisation, dance techniques, the Alexander technique, Aikido, meditation, and her broad knowledge of improvisation in performance. She shares her work through facilitated exercises, open time for play and exploration, movement scores, observations, self-reflection, deep listening, discussion, and humour. Much of the work is experienced through partnering and connection with others, balanced with solo time for processing and reflection.
This is a rare opportunity for participants to delve deeply into the wisdom embedded within embodied practices, both in the studio space, as well as the possibility to explore movement scores in the natural environment. Kirstie will facilitate her work, guided by her own depth of bodymind-knowledge gleaned over the years in which she has pursued a dedicated practice of deep listening and inquiry, centered in the essential importance of life-affirming embodied knowledge

About Kirstie
Kirstie Simson (UK) has been a continuous explosion in the contemporary dance scene, bringing audiences into contact with the vitality of pure creation in moment after moment of virtuoso improvisation. Called "a force of nature" by the New York Times, she is an award-winning performer and teacher who has "immeasurably enriched and expanded the boundaries of New Dance" according to Time Out Magazine, London. Kirstie is internationally renowned today as an excellent teacher, a captivating performer, and a leading light in the field of Dance Improvisation, with a dance practice that spans over four decades. From 2008 – 2020 Kirstie held a position as a tenured professor in the Department of Dance at the University of Illinois.
In August 2020 Kirstie returned to her home base in Wales from where she continues to deepen the investigation of her work, sharing her findings with others around the world. Kirstie is framing her work now, in the light of our uncertain future, as practices that can help us develop resilience in the face of challenge. She uses her own experience of facing a life-threatening health issue as a foundation for her ongoing research into the power of embodied intelligence.
www.kirstiesimson.com
Image: Kirstie Simson, photo: Harry Jordan