Israeli Contact Festival 2006

19 December – 5 January 2007

Friends,

During the turbulent weeks of July and August we prayed for peace and wondered how our festival will be affected. Now that life in Israel is back to normal we are happy to invite you to join us for the 5^th ICF. Like Contact improvisation this festival is complex, diverse, flowing and intensive. The coming festival was created out of many conversations with friends, CI teachers and the festival team. We discovered a desire for change and renewal, some of this change you will see already in the festival program, and more will appear in the festival itself. The festival program is ready but our website will take another week or two. We know that those of you who are coming need to make your holiday plans and to book your tickets, and so we are opening registration today.

We prepared for you in this letter all the important information. We recommend registering early to secure your place in the festival.

To register of to find out more contact Adi:
festival@...
+972-54-4221314
+972-9-7462430

See you soon
Dror

With your permission we will send you several more messages over the next 3 months: When the website comes on-line, when early registration ends, etc.
If you would like to stop receiving our messages just reply and ask. We don’t like junk mail either J

Israeli Contact Festival 2006

December 19 2006 – January 5 2007

The Israeli Contact Festival is the annual celebration of the Israeli CI community and a meeting with teachers and dancers from around the world. The festival spans 3 weeks during which we will meet in different locations to dance, to play, to learn, and to get to know each other. There are many different events in this festival, please take a few minutes to discover how the festival is organized and what's in it.

Teachers

We are proud to present an excellent team of teachers, including the finest Israeli CI teachers and prominent guests from around the world.

Italy: Adalisa Menghini  Canada: Andrew Harwood  Germany: Jörg Hassmann  USA: Stephanie Maher  Spain: Ester Momblant Ribas  Hungary: Judit Keri  Scotland: Merav Israel  Israel: Adi Shaal, Arie Bursztyn, Danya Elraz, Hay Cohen, Ilanit Tadmor, Ilya Domanov, Itay Yatoov, Or Prochter, Orly Portal, Ronen Berger, Ruvik Osovsky, Shahar Dor, Tal Avni, Tali Vertheim, Vered Tzach, Zohar Rabinowitz.

Week 1: The Greenhouse

19-23 December 2006 5 days and 4 nights of dance, love and people in a secluded countryside location, with fresh vegetarian food and communal sleep. Program includes 2-3 classes each day, intensive workshops, long jams every night, performances, outdoor dancing and much more.  During registration you can choose one of these intensives:

·         CI and instantaneous composition / Andrew de l. harwood

·         Performance in CI / Adalisa maghini

·         Momentum & Slow motion / Joerg Hassaman

·         Release based technique / Stephanie Maher

·         Contact through new eyes / Sandra Amsalem

Full description of the Intensives and teachers appear at the end of this letter. If you have no ideas what this is about look at the Greenhouse in the website of ICF 2005.

Week 2: City

26-30 December. 5 days of Contact Festival in the city, offering a wide range of dance opportunities:
6 workshops of different lengths, 9 evening classes, 3 evening jams, and on the last day “Shabat Contact”:  a day-long gathering, including performances and a big Jam. Unlike the greenhouse this is an open structure so you can explore the city and get a taste of Beach-side Tel-Aviv. Here is the gerenal program of this week:

The backbone of the city week are the long workshops, so we offer these to you now, as well as the possibility to take the whole 2^nd week (see registration below)

Workshops of 4 days Tuesday-Friday 12:00-18:00

·         CI and instantaneous composition / Andrew de l. harwood  (Advanced)

·         Release based technique / Stephanie Maher

Workshops of 3 evenings +  1 day Tuesday-Thursday 19:30-22:30 + Friday 12:00-18:00

·         Performance in CI / Adalisa maghini

·         Momentum & Slow motion / Joerg Hassaman

Full description of the Workshops and teachers appear at the end of this letter.

Week 3: Tour

1-5 January 2007. Join us for 5 magical days on the road, as we meet local dance communities and enjoy diverse workshops and jams. We will visit ancient Jerusalem and then head south to the amazing natural treasures of the desert: The dead see, the Ramon Crater, Desert Ashram community, and the Dolphin Reef in Eylat. The full Tour schedule (with pictures!) will be on our website soon.   

Travel and Accomodation

During the Greenhouse and the Tour accommodation is provided. In Tel-Aviv we will suggest several reasonably priced hostels (when the website is ready). European and USA citizens can receive a tourist Visa on arrival in Ben-Gurion , Israel ’s only international airport. Try to book your tickets in advance as flights are busy around Christmas and New Year.

Prices and Registration

Events                           Price           Early Registration
Greenhouse                    1180             1080
Mattress for GH              70                 -
4-day workshops            1020             920
3-evening +1 day WS     650               580
City full program*            1340             1220
Tour                                1550             1450

*Includes a 4-day workshop, 3 evening classes, 3 jams, and Shabat Contact.

Early Registration: This discount is for people who complete the registration by sending the form and arranging payment before the follwing dates: Early Reg. for Greenhouse ends on: 26-October-2006, Early Reg. for Workshops ends on: 30-November-2006. The events may be booked out before the end of early registration…

Cancelations and refunds: The prices include non-refundable registration fees of: 150 Shekel for the Greenhouse, 20 Shekel for each evening class, 100/150 Shekel for the workshops respectively, 200 shekel for the Tour. If you cancel your participation no later than 1 week before the event you will receive your money back minus the registration fees.

How to pay: You can pay by credit card, give us your card details over the phone: +972-54-4221314. Please Note: The payment will appear in your bill as: "Vertigo/Contact festival". If you want to make another arrangement please contact us to see what we can do.

Discount Fund: The discount fund is used to support people who cannot pay the price of the festival. We start the fund with some money from our budget, and you can help support the community by adding some more. Money from the discount fund is used only for discounts and never goes into our "pockets".

To register of to find out more contact Adi:
festival@...
+972-54-4221314
+972-9-7462430

CI and instantaneous composition / Andrew de l. harwood

In this workshop we will examine the role of perception, sensation, expression and imagination in the contact work.

Our goal is to find a sense of timelessness in our dancing- a state of consciousness that is aware but not self-conscious.

We will seek to integrate CI into a greater improvisational universe, and move freely in and out of partnering, solo dances and develop the group mindfulness. Through various compositional strategies, chance procedures and games we will explore how the mind’s beliefs about time & space can be altered, and how this affects our presence, bodies and our dance.

Throughout the practice we will be encouraged to lower expectations and accentuate our inventiveness

Andrew de l. harwood

Director of AH-HA, a Montreal based company, with a main goal of improvisation as a stage performing art.

A senior international teacher, dancer and creator of improvisation and CI since 1975.

Momentum & Slow motion / Joerg Hassaman

Big truths appear within paradox. The little brother of paradox is contrast. Through focusing on a particular contrast both poles become clearer and stronger. The aim of my work is to gain more choice and a clearer, more specific joy.

Momentum is acceleration cause by gravity. it is the joy of sitting in a rollercoaster, only in CI it is more surprising and easier to find. Slow motion is a steady but sometimes fragile balance. Every movement is re-directable. Slowness contains a special sense of not knowing and an incredibly huge amount of surprise. In specific scores and also more free improvisation both polarities can meet each other.

This workshop is basically a technical approach to CI. Precise exercises aim to understand the physics of one and two moving bodies. But eventually I am interested in what happens inside and between dancers to transform movement into dance.

Participants should have solid experience with giving and taking weight.

Joerg Hassaman

Dances CI since 1991 and entered from there the stage and contemporary techniques.

He performed in various Companies e.g. in France , Egypt , Japan und the USA . As a choreographer he led from 2001-04 the dance theater group ConFuss. 2002 he founded with Nele Malte Stauske the dance theater duett XXS-Company

Performance in CI / Adalisa maghini

A workshop based on `Performance and Composition`, our work will explore and analyze the different situations which connect, confront and guide us, demanding presence and commitment to the dance, in performance state.

We will awaken our senses, our curiosity, emotions, we will listen to the skin, to the eyes….sharing moments of creations.

Adalisa maghini

Adalisa studied at the Academy of Dance in Rotterdam , then at the School for New Dance Development of Amsterdam under the tuition of Pauline de Groot, Julien Hamilton, Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith ect…

Completed her education, then returned to Italy, where together with the stage desiner Antonio Utili from Teatro Comunale di Ferrara for a period of three years was responsible for the choreography and direction of GIOCABRIGA ,a trditional theater production which the population of Bergantino, in northen Italy, produce and perform.

Adalisa Menghini’s main interest lies in improvisation. She has worked in projects with Joshiko Chuma, Kirstie Simson and has shown several productions of her own, throghout Europe . As a dancer she worked in Paris with the company TransEurope Theater and in Berlin with Be Van Vark Kollektiv, touring extensivley in Europe, presenting in London , Sofia , Moscow , Volgograd , Leipzig , Koln, and the Expo 2000 in Hannover . For the solo Festival at Theater am Halleshen Ufer in Berlin she presented her trilogy: Corpo a Corpo, Geometrico Scmidt and Vasco and Defina with very positiv reviews.

Adalisa Menghini`s last production: 2etto N.1 (a choreographic work for the company Labor Gras) was shown at tanzfabrik’s 25 year festival in october 2004. Since 1990 she teaches Contact Improvisation troughout Europe, she lives since 10 years in Berlin where she is a regular teacher of Contact and Improvisation at the Tanzfabrik

Release based technique / Stephanie Maher

Release Based Technique will focus on the mover’s connection to the ground, creating a stronger path for the pelvis into the legs and space. Alignment will be tuned by utilizing and noticing the weight, roundness and axis of the bones.

 Learning to take advantage of our reflexes and breath will give us more power and fullness in our dancing. We will take risks as movers; find the rhythm and playfulness in our bodies.

There will be detailed and three dimensional choreographies to learn. We will work on retaining the dance, finding the stamina and detail to gesture.

Stephanie Maher

Has been practicing CI since 1992. Finding the form in San Francisco , she has used it to transform her professional life of teaching contemporary dance, her experience on stage and the social context of locating what is forming in the dance community around her.

 She lives in Berlin and is home to K77 studios and hosts the international Ponderosa Tanz/land Festival in Germany .

Contact through new eyes / Sandra Amsalem

The aim of this workshop is to approach CI from a new place: seeing the contemporary dance within Contact and contact within contemporary dance. Investigating the physical basis of contact, with ground work and developing soft flowing acrobatics.

Another part of the workshop will deal with developing and focusing on the personal dance, before meeting another dancer.

New qualities in contact, from contemporary dance, circus and physical theatre.

The workshop will combine new dance with the Sandciel technique, developed by Sandra.

Sandra Amsalem

Dancer, teacher and creator. Manager of Sandciel new dance center.

Teaches dance technique and unique teaching developed in the center.

Works with different artists, actors and dancers in professional institutes in Israel .

Choreographer of the TEMA dance group and the Sandciel ensemble. Created personal works- “streets”, “contact windows”, Voulez voler”, that were performed/to be performed on different stages in Israel