Contact Improvisation retreat with Vega Luukkonen & Ami Schütte / 28. - 30. November / Bad Belzig

Name: Contact Improvisation retreat with Vega Luukkonen & Ami Schütte / 28. - 30. November / Bad Belzig
Start: 2025-11-28T16:00:00+01:00
End: 2025-11-30T16:00:00+01:00
Location: Bad Belzig

Schedule

Fri, 28 Nov, 2025 at 04:00 pm to Sun, 30 Nov, 2025 at 04:00 pm

UTC+01:00

Location

Bad Belzig | Berlin, BE

Contact Improvisation with Vega Luukkonen
Somatics & Embodiment with Ami Schütte
28. - 30. November 2025
Germany / Bad Belzig / Fläming / Lüsse
One hour from Berlin
Full Info & Registration :
https://empowersoma.de/embodiment-workshops/#Flaeming-Contact-Weekend

Throughout this weekend we weave together Contact Improvisation & somatics to invite ourselves to feel deeply at home in the body and in movement.
We will flow in and out of contact, viewing the dance as a playful dialogue, which breathes freely in time and space. Composing the dance, composing the contact.
I will offer explorative exercises, as well as clear technical tools and pathways to understand underlying physical principles of contact improvisation. We’ll spend time with the floor, sensing gravity, studying how our bodies function.
What makes our movement effortless and efficient ? How do we align our bones to create support and ease in our movement ?
Becoming comfortable with not knowing.
We call in qualities of elasticity & liquidity, and how developing multidirectional availability opens up more possibilities in our movement.
Sharing weight and finding the subtle details and articulation of our shared architectures, will bring us into moving together through levels, through the space & in and out of contact. Using our breath to find synchronicity helps us to ‘tune in’ together.
We will explore ideas around falling and flying. By researching the subtle mechanics of ‘small dance’ and suspension, we progress towards using momentum and spirals of the body to enter fluid ways to lift each other, using the momentum of the fall into ‘catching a ride’. We can look at "lifting" being rather a small weight-exchange through the space - falling into each other - than something big and spectacular.
We will also research how to use our arms and wings as extension of our spine. Arms can be a beautiful pathway to find entrances into lifts, and create space and time in our dances. Breathing in and out of contact. Working with the frame and structure of the arms, we create ways to connect to the space and find counterbalance in the body, providing frames to both lift and be lifted, and offer structures to be explored.
Awareness and presence are helping us to expand the choices and possibilities in our dance. Cultivating conscious listening, breathing, giving and receiving.
Material alternates between contact- and solo tasks, towards trios and group-scores.
Technique and Poetry.
Structure and Freedom.
Playful Beings in Motion.
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Ami Schütte
Somatics & Embodiment
An afternoon to fully arrive in your body and inhabit it from within.
We land on the ground, feel ourselves being held, shake off stress, and surf through elements of movement evolution. We let vitality flow, as well as anything that might be in its way. We sense our fascia as a resource for deep regulation, and our core muscles as a game-changer for effortless, connected, and resilient movement through life.
Through somatic co-regulation with other bodies, we invite deep release and a sense of safety.
From the experience of support the impulse to move, explore, play and be self-efficacious often arises on its own—without effort and without “forcing” ourselves: Support precedes movement. We approach this sweet spot where it unfolds on its own, explore the state of our nervous system, and allow vitality and flow to move through us.
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FULL INFO :
https://empowersoma.de/embodiment-workshops/#Flaeming-Contact-Weekend
REGISTRATION :
https://empowersoma.de/flaeming-contact-improvisation-weekend-registration/
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Participation fee without accommodation but including meals:
Super Early Bird until October 17: €145 – €175
Early Bird until October 31: €165 – €195
Regular price: €185 – €215
We want to make participation possible for everyone, so discounts or helper rates may be available upon request.
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Vega Luukkonen
I am a dancer, dance-teacher, performance-artist and bodyworker made in Finland.
I have studied dance- and theatre pedagogy in Finland, Helsinki - in Theatre Academy of Finland, from where I got my master´s degree 2008. Though - I would say my dearest school in contact-improvisation has been the Finnish contact community, where I have learned so much from my colleagues, friends and fellow dancers, by sharing the dance and rolling point already 30 years...
Some dancers and teachers have been big inspiration for me. Joerg Hassmann, Mirva Mäkinen, Hugh Stanier, Iiris Raipala, and many others have influenced me with their beautiful ways to deliver this dance form.
Contact Improvisation has been in my life since I was a teenager ! So - I´ve gone through many kinds of chapters with this practice. Recently I´m more and more interested in details, fine tuning, listening, presence. Accompanied with deeper understanding of underlying principles of contact improvisation.
How can we break our patterns, explore un-known, improvise with the tools of contact improvisation ? I am interested in the state of mind and body, where we can be open into multiple directions, change, choose, re-direct and play.
Breath plays as well big part in my dancing. It brings me naturally into moments of momentum, falling, flying, swinging and bouncing. In my teaching I´m always weaving in somatics, experiential anatomy and explorative approaches to improvise, as well bringing in specific technical tools and pathways to find ease and efficiency to move in our solo-bodies, as well with others.
In each session we will have time to arrive and land to our own bodies, to tune in and be still and breath. From meeting the floor we develop and evolve into moving in levels and space. Organically building up trust and confidence to move towards each others and the space.
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