Freedom from the Known - 4 days of dance in nature with Anjelika Doniy

Name: Freedom from the Known - 4 days of dance in nature with Anjelika Doniy
Start: 2025-09-29T15:00:00+02:00
End: 2025-10-02T18:00:00+02:00
Location: Nordmarkskapellet

Schedule

Mon, 29 Sep, 2025 at 03:00 pm to Thu, 02 Oct, 2025 at 06:00 pm

UTC+02:00

Location

Nordmarkskapellet | Oslo, OS

4 days of dance in nature with Anjelika Doniy.
29.sept - 02.oct in a serene forest chapel north of Oslo.

"Freedom from the Known"
For those intrigued by the space between dancing bodies, by what invisibly supports us in the dance, like the air we breathe.
What must we actively do, and what happens on its own — shaping us, the dance, the community, the journey.
For example, long moments of lying down, sleep, and non-doing nourish and teach the body to move unpredictably, discovering new patterns, making unexpected decisions while bypassing the rational mind.
What is the spirit of dance? Not the technique, but the spirit that drives us to practice and study technique, and later offers paradoxical advice on how to grow, where to go, which path will ignite the fire of creativity and quench the thirst for love.
Everything is mixed in this house of dance, and we are not here for order.
The universe is a basket of gifts, and all it takes is to reach in — you’ll find something meant for you.
What interests me:
- Dance as such, without names and labels.
- The process of clarifying reality through movement, developing sensitivity, and the ability to respond to beauty.
- The shamanic aspect of dance—its primal, life-giving animal in the body.
- Archetypal images revealing their qualities and nourishing vital forces, such as the elements: earth, water, air, fire.
- Relaxation techniques that release tension and attune us to the dance itself.
I will offer an exploration of collective, spontaneous movement, where, thanks to the experience of CI (Contact Improvisation), there is room for flying and falling, connecting and supporting.
I am interested in movement within small groups, where there are more than two partners. Moving within the kinespheric space, nurturing awareness of the space behind, and placing disorientation on the dance map. Rewriting our usual speeds and focus.
Bring notebooks and pens. There will be conversations about meanings, dreams, and wonders.
I will guide you through the territories of dance by touching ancient rhythms, pulses, synchronicities, and spirals.
This is the key to something larger that dances through our bodies and inspires the spirit.
I will share my experiences of encounters with natural phenomena, inviting you to dance within the earthly boundaries of the body as a *stalker—cultivating compassion, creativity, resilience, and the ability to transform.
Contact Improvisation
We will practice CI in relation to the composition of space, time, and place.
Listening with our kinesphere, through touch, vision, and heart.
Disciplining attention through the small dance.
Exploring exchange, flow, weight transfer, grounding, and suspension.
Rolling with a partner—through points, lines, and volumes of contact, both on the floor and in the air.
We will practice continuity, fluidity, and unpredictability of movement in space.
We will adapt the space behind us into a spherical, interconnected, technically poetic dance.
We’ll experiment with vision, stretching this capacity from a sense of safety to aesthetic pleasure.
We will explore questions such as:
What is visible, predictable, and teachable?
What is hidden, unpredictable, and unteachable?
Can a jam be seen as an accomplished act of art?
How does the witness affect the dancer? How does the dancer affect the witness?
And we will always begin with ourselves and return to ourselves through dance, mindfulness, awareness, and silence.
When times get tough, I intensify the dance and embark on a journey.
*stalker - Someone who is passionate about searching for and exploring little-known, often life-threatening places and who serves as a guide to such places.

Anjelika Doniy is a dance improviser, choreographer and teacher focused on contact.
After 5 years of formal studies of choreography, ballet dance and other stage disciplines at the Higher School of Culture (St-Petersburg), she worked for 10 Years as a theater choreographer. Until…
In 1997, I was at the Impulse Dance Festival in Vienna. There, I saw a wonder of CI, watched Steve Paxton on stage, flew into Andrew Harwood workshop where some 70 dancers were rolling over each other. This was unbelievable, the earth was becoming alive. I saw a realization of my dream of the world growing from connection, interaction, harmony between one and many.
It was love from the first sight. From 2002 I started facilitating first jams and CI workshops in Russia and initiated International Contact Improvisation and Performance Festival in Moscow in 2006–2010.
My path in CI as a teacher began as long journey of workshops for beginners. I love to guide people into the dance, inspire them with their own body, and awaken to what is already there. I love to surprise long-time dancers with secrets of the body as little keys opening a familiar dance into new spaces. This year, I am following a program of the Institute for Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy to go deeper into the body and its anatomy, to touch the cells, to breathe through the navel, and to use this resource in my practice.
My special interest in contact improvisation is clarity. Clarity towards the practice. Honesty towards how I move my weight in the space of Gravity. Attention towards clearing the dance from the personal. Letting things happen as they go.
I am grateful to have met and studied with such teachers as Regine Chopinot, Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, Danny Lepkoff, Benno Voorham, Lisa Nelson, Esther Gal, Yaniv Mintzer, Martin Keo and many others.
Anjelica taught over 200 workshops all over the world for all levels from complete beginners to professional dancers. Her teaching is rooted in many years of work of acquiring and transmitting technical skills and equally long path of meditation and mindfulness practice. She blends them into a life dance, contact improvisation.