Beginner friendly pre-jam warmup class 5.30-6.30pm followed by the jam 6.45-8.30pm. Dancers can come just for the class, £5, or stay for the jam, £8.
For more information feel free to contact the teacher/facilitator or info@contactdance.co.uk. We send out regular emails of class descriptions, to get these, please sign-up to our mailing list.
Class Description
Patterns and Habits
This session we will focus on Awareness, bringing our attention to the patterns and habits in our dancing. What patterns of movement do we habitually use? What assumptions do we make about how our partners will move? How can we disrupt these habits to give ourselves new possibilities and pathways in our dancing?
Noel Perkins
I originally trained and worked for many years as a sculptor before beginning to study dance and movement improvisation in 2002. At the time the change seemed quite natural as both were physical practices- sculpture was a kind of very slow dance and dance a form of fast sculpture. Contact Improvisation has been a core interest from the start and my practice has been shaped by many wonderful teachers including Janis Claxton, KirstieSimson, Keith Hennessy, Jess Curtis and many more. My work has evolved through a fascination with improvisation as a performance that creates itself moment by moment and alongside CI, Butoh and Action Theatre are strong influences.
In teaching Contact Improvisation I work with the principles of CI that I believe are essential to the form- listening, sensing, grounding, moving from centre and flow. I try to create environments where we can learn by doing to discover and integrate these as embodied principles in our dance. Whilst the palette of Contact “moves” is useful to learn I’m interested in balancing technique with the unique dance that emerges from deep sensing and listening and how we can use this to dance more fully, expansively and consciously.
I passionately believe in the transformative power of art and have worked extensively in the field of arts for health. I am an associate lecturer at the Peninsula Medical School Exeter and Plymouth where I teach Contact Improvisation and embodied creativity to medical students. I co-facilitate Dartington Contact Improvisation and independently teach CI, creative movement and improvisation.