We are excited to announce the 7th annual Contact Improvisation Dance Festival will take place on Salt Spring Island in 2024.
We will be gathering for 10 days of dance with a medley of classes, jams, silent jams,
music jams, authentic relating sessions, performance night, & nature exploration.
A place where dance, community, art, nature and self discovery all meet in a space of investigation, a time of play.

OUR FACILITATORS

Intensive by
Chris Aiken (USA)
Angie Hauser (USA)

Guest Teachers
Sabine Parzer (Austria)
Brandon Gonzalez (Austin/USA)
Gabrielle Revlock (Mass, USA)
Rebecca Bones (Nevada City/USA)
JP Frank (Missoula/USA)

Local Teachers
Sashah Klapkew (Salt Spring Island)
Selena La Brooy (Salt Spring Island)
Manuel Rochette (Salt Spring Island)

(See bios below)
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FOOD

All food is included in the tuition.
We are very proud of the food we serve and we source from local and organic foods as much as possible.
Meals are wholesome, diverse, fresh, yummy and abundant.
We consider every food restrictions.
We care for your health and aim to provide the impossible fart free diet.
You will remember it for a long time…
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LOCATION

Rhizome Springs
An off grid situation where everyone can camp and live together for the duration of the event.
The views are incredible, the lakes and oceans just a short drive away.
We are presently in terraforming stage. Expect a rugged landscape.
The property is 20 min on a logging road which can be driven by regular cars.
It’s located 25 min from Fulford Ferry terminal and 40 min from Ganges.

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CAMPING, CABINS & AMENITIES

Camping is included in the tuition.
We are on a 40 acre property and there is tons of camping spots to chose from.
Van camping is also possible.
We have showers and use compostable toilets.
Spirit lake and the ocean are a short distance away and we’ll be making daily trips.
We are on a sensitive ecosystem and count on you to respect and honour this land by cleaning up after yourself,
preserving water, being fauna and flora aware and embody the animal this land asks for.

CABINS

The Buddhist Centre located next door is offering simple and modest private cabins to rent.
They are situated at a 7 min walk through the forest from Rhizome Spring.
The price is 65$/night for single occupation and 85$/night for double.
Reservation in advance is hightly recommended.
They include outhouse and hot showers. 
Inquire if interested and we will send photos.

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MARKET TABLES

We have them accessible for you to sell your artful goods. Bring em along! Set your price and manage them.
A great way to cut your cost while sharing what you make and find beautiful.

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SCHEDULE

Schedule TBA
9am to late evening everyday
Classes, Jams, Performances, Labs, Nature, and other synergistic practices
49% Jam - 49% Classes - 2% Magik

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ARRIVAL

Festival runs from July 26th to august 4th 2024
There are two arrival days possible depending if you are attending full or part time.
The arrival days are July 25th OR July 31st

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COST

FULL TIME ATTENDANCE COST
$1090 if you are economically constrained, students and underemployed.
$1200 if you are economically balanced, artists, farmers etc..
$1350 if you are economically abundant, happily sustained, supports the art.
In Canadian dollar. Any amount in between is welcomed. 

PART TIME ATTENDANCE DETAILS
Attendance of 5 days minimum.

July 26th to 30th 

Arrival on the 25th and departure on the 31st in the morning.
If you arrive from the beginning,  you can stay as long as you want. See prices below. 

31st to August 4th
Arrival on July 30th in the evening and departure on Aug 4th in the afternoon.
No beginners to the form are to arrive on the 31st. 

PART TIME ATTENDANCE COST
$660 if you are economically constrained, students and underemployed.
$700 if you are economically balanced, artists, farmers etc..
$740 if you are economically abundant, happily sustained, supports the art.
In Canadian dollar. Any amount in between is welcomed. 

If you arrive at the beginning, and after the 5 day minimum, you can stay extra days at $110/day

Deposit of 300$ upon registration required to save your spot.
Paid by email transfer to ssicontactfestival@gmail.com
International student can use Paypal at the same address.
We can also take cryptocurrencies, please inquire.

Payment to be completed by July 1st.
Deposit refundable (-$50 admin fee) until June 1st
Non-Refundable after June 1st
In case of cancelation of this gathering, all deposits will be refunded minus $50 for admin fee.

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Come, slide, roll, tumble, leap, pivot, fall, run, rest, reach, touch… be here & book your time off NOW!

Registrations and Questions: ssicontactfestival@gmail.com

We value inclusivity & transparency
This event is for all experience levels, genders, sexual orientation, skin colour, ages and other physical differences.
-We acknowledge and are thankful for the lands and waters of Salt Spring Island which have been and continue to be home to Coast Salish First Nations and Metis peoples. We are grateful to the Cowichan Tribes, Saanich Nation, Tsawwassen First Nation, Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group, and the Hwlitsum Claim for this land to be danced on, in utter respect for it’s inhabitant and the ecosystem that nourishes us.

OUR FACILITATORS’S BIOS

Chris Aiken

Chris Aiken is an internationally recognized performer and teacher of dance improvisation and contact improvisation.  Chris has performed and collaborated with many renowned dance artists including Angie Hauser, Kirstie Simson, Nancy Stark Smith, Peter Bingham, Andrew Harwood, Joerg Hassman, Ray Chung, and Steve Paxton.  He has taught throughout North America, Europe, and in Asia.  He draws on years of dance and somatic training, including, the Alexander Technique, Gryotonic/Gyrokinesis, ideokinesis, and myofascial bodywork.  He is currently a Professor at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts (USA.)

Angie Hauser

Angie Hauser is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher whose work is grounded in improvisation, performance, and collaboration. Hauser’s work is marked by her long-time collaborations with artists Bebe Miller, Darrell Jones, and Chris Aiken. She was awarded a BESSIE Award for Creation and Choreography for her work with Bebe Miller Company and has received major fellowships and grants for her performance with Chris Aiken. She is influenced by her other dancemaking collaborations with Mike Vargas, Jennifer Nugent, K.J. Holmes, Kathleen Hermesdorf, and Alex Springer/Xan Burley.  She has taught contact improvisation and dance improvisation throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and in Colombia, and Peru. She received her MFA in dance from the Ohio State University. She is currently a Professor at Smith College in Massachusetts (USA.)

Principles and Practice with
Chris Aiken and Angie Hauser

This workshop will focus on the development of physical intelligence and emotional resonance within contact improvisation.  Physical intelligence is not about specific movements but the ability to solve the emergent tasks that evolve within the dancing.  This manifests differently in each person and includes the ability to provide mobile support, to organize your body so that you can be lifted, to find fluid pathways into and out of the floor, and the ability to push, yield, and pull away from your partner.  

Physical intelligence involves perceptual acuity, the ability to hone in on what is significant to guide your movement, and your capacity to be in touch with yourself, your partners, and your environment.  Emotional resonance, in this context, is the ability to sense how the dancing is affecting you, others, and your environment.  It involves the senses and the ability to imagine how we impact one another.  It includes the ability to inhibit one’s choices and to imagine beyond the sensorial moment to include questions like, “What if we tried something different?” Or, “ What is missing here?”

Our work seeks to help dancers deepen their understanding of the core principles of CI and to become inspired through the interplay of touch, movement, and imagination. 

Sabine Parzer

Sabine Parzer is head and founder of the Holistic Dance Institute (founded 2010). In 2012 she also created the Contact Festival Austria, which she has been the artistic director of until 2017. Her professional experience spans 30 years of teaching, performing, choreographing and researching in the USA, Europe, Russia, Israel and Brazil.

Sabine has a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia College Chicago in Modern Dance, and an education in Systemische und Integrative Bewegungslehre® (an extended Feldenkrais® Training). The in depth practice of Contact Improvisation and Authentic Movement begins 1997. Ongoing trainings since 1995 in Kleintechnique, ZenBodytherapy®, Yoga, White Crane Silat, Rosen Method®, Kashmirian Massage, Psychotherapy and family constellations a.o. She is currently studying Visionary Cranialsacral Work with Hugh Milne.

Sabine is a dancer, choreographer, dance-pedagogue, bodyworker, organizer and business owner. In her institute dancers, artists, bodyworkers, social pedagogues and psychotherapists are trained in Holistic Dance Teachers Trainings, Advanced Teachers Trainings, Retreats and open workshops. She teaches regularly at international dance festivals such as Impulstanz Vienna, Tanzfabrik Berlin, Tanzquartier Wien, Potsdamer Tanztage and has taught intensives at many contact festivals such as Israeli Contact Festival, Moscow Contact Festival, Kontakt Budapest, Contact in Rio de Janeiro, Osterimprofestival Göttingen, Ibiza Contact Festival and more.

Her choreographies and improvisational scores have been performed since 1990 in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Berlin, Moscow, Vienna, amongst other cities. Between 1999 and 2013 she also worked as dance therapist at a rehabilitation center for people after work and traffic accidents. She is a mother of two children

https://www.holistic-dance.at

Gabrielle Revlock

Gabrielle Revlock is an internationally touring postmodern choreographer with twenty years of experience in CI. While living in New York, she was on faculty at Movement Research, one of the world’s leading laboratories for the investigation of movement-based forms and has been a regular facilitator for the Brooklyn Jam and Wednesday Jam in Soho. Additional CI teaching engagements include CI@50, the School for Contemporary Dance & Though, Philadelphia Dance Projects, DNE Dance Camp and Earthdance.

As the creator of Restorative Contact, a mindful touch practice, she has been an invited speaker at the Embodiment Conference, Dance & Somatics Conference and Future of CI conference. She is a recipient of a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award and is currently an MFA candidate/Teaching Fellow in Dance at Smith College. (Although I will be graduated in May!)

Brandon Gonzales

Brandon Gonzalez is a dance artist, choreographer, and educator based in Austin, Texas. He teaches Contact Improvisation nationally and internationally, and has produced community dance events in Austin for over 15 years. Working as a co-organizing member of the Texas Dance Improvisation Festival, he helped establish one of the largest improv-focused festivals in the country. Brandon is a DJ and Artistic Director at Ekstasis, a vibrant community ritual-dance event in Austin. He instigates dance practice as meditation, transmutation, and embodied dialogue by facilitating deep dives into sensory experience.

As an interdisciplinary artist, Brandon creates performance through researching diverse topics such as the biology of love, the poetics of proximity, BRfascia anatomy, object presence, slowness, attention, artificial intelligence, string theory, and the fluid dynamics of a vortex. Brandon has worked with dance artists such as Nita Little, Karen Nelson, Nina Martin, Pat Stone, Lauren Tietz, Philipp Gehmacher, Mary O’Donnell-Fulkerson, Mira Mutka, Michael O’Connor, Jordan Fuchs, Zina Vaessen, Dolores Hulan, Jess Curtis, and Stu Phillips and has presented at the International Contact Festival Freiburg, The Contemporary Austin, The Dallas Contemporary, Mexic-Arte Museum (Austin), Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art, SUNDAY RUN_UP (Stockholm), Mini Movement Festival (Dallas), Texas Dance Improvisation Festival, CQ Magazine, and WUK (Vienna). He is a Lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Texas State University and adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds a BFA in Studio Art from TXST and an MFA in Dramatic Arts from UC Davis.

Rebecca Bone

Her most fluent language being movement, Rebecca Bone is an improvisational dance artist, teacher and facilitator. She teaches from the premise that our bodies are innately intelligent, and is curious about entering into and inhabiting states where new levels of availability in the body seem to open as if by magic. Her teaching is grounded in the fundamentals of CI drawing from her studies with Nancy Stark Smith, Nita Little, Daniel Lepkoff, Karen Nelson, Kirstie Simson and Andrew Harwood among others. Her primary teaching method is directing participants to sensation, felt experience and their own curiosity as access points for learning.

Rebecca has practiced CI for over 20 years, along with contemporary dance, physical theater, Authentic Movement, Axis Syllabus, Capoeira and recently aerial arts. She holds a BFA in modern dance and a certificate in Somatic Education with Moving on Center. Rebecca resides in the Nisenan homelands known as Nevada City, CA where she teaches CI workshops and facilitates a weekly jam and monthly Underscore.
nevadacitycontactimprov.com

JP Frank

JP Frank (they/them) is based in the land of the Salish Kootenai, now known as Missoula, MT, where they facilitate weekly Contact Improvisation classes and offer intimate touch coaching. They tour offering CI workshops specifically welcome to hesitant and skeptical newcomers and find it very satisfying that this kind of welcoming is resonant to many people who have thus far, avoided CI.
JP loves to get completely disoriented falling and flying, but their most passionate CI inquiries are relational.

Their question for this festival is: How can we collectively create brave CI spaces where we can practice and grow to be more skillful in moving with the often deflected dynamics of sexuality, consent, accessibility, and positionality?
How can we make it compelling and maybe even fun!?

When JP is not holding space, they are probably talking to random strangers, reading sci-fi, crying, or expressing complete love for everything. JP is excited to bring their decade plus of experience facilitating trauma-informed movement and multiracial community dialogues to the facilitation of CI classes and edgy conversations at the festival!  
www.touchandchange.me

Selena La Brooy

Selena La Brooy has been dancing in different forms from a young age.  She discovered Contact Improvisation in 2014 and has been fascinated with it ever since.  She has studied and played with various yoga lineages, developmental movement patterning, BMC, Feldenkrais, breathwork, vipassana, clowning, functional movement and circus arts which colour the lens of her inquiry of the form. 

She is an anatomy nerd, certified rolfer and somatic movement integration practitioner which inform her approach to teaching.  Some of her most influential teachers have been Martin Keogh, Kira Kirsch, Frey Faust, Andrew Harwood, Anjelika Doniy, Karl Frost, Alicia Grayson, Nita Little, Ida Rolf and Monica Caspari.  She is most passionate about ways to make contact improvisation playful and accessible to all bodies by empowering choice, inviting deep listening and inspiring perpetual curiosity into what else is possible. 

She is a core member of the Salt Spring Island Contact Improvisation community, Salt Spring Island Contact Improvisation Festival and the founder of Rhizome Springs, a community project hosting multi-day Contact Improvisation festivals and intensives on the unceded terrtories of the Hul’Q’Umi’Num and Sencoten speaking people where she is grateful to work, live, teach and play.

Sashah Klapkew

This form found me at the age of sixteen and I am grateful for all that it has given me so far. I have been fortunate to study with a number of very potent teachers and each of them has gifted me with something unique to explore. From Peter Bingham, I received the value of studentship and movement inquiry, while Karl Frost supported me in invoking relational curiosity. Ray Chung shared with me a love for the details and from Martin Keogh I was given an appreciation for the power of state. These teachers, among others, have all deeply informed my dance. This form has held me through the most vulnerable times of my life and provided a medicine like no other. Seeing how this container also holds space for others in their human experience I am continually inspired to lean into the somatic relational emergence that is contact improvisation dance.

Manuel Rochette

Manuel Rochette is a dancer, facilitator, and host of Salt Spring Island Contact Improvisation Festival in Canada. With nearly 20 years of experience with the form of Contact Improvisation, his personal studies got him closer to teachers such as Martin Keogh, Angelika Doniy, Alicia Grayson, Ray Chung, Scott Wells, Vega Luukkonen, Kira Kirsch, Paul Singh, Andrew Harwood and more. His facilitation approach is at the nexus point where skills, states, play and spontaneous composition merge. 

His dancing style aims at creating ever-changing pathways, opening to novelty, modulating patterns, and the use of momentum and release to ease into authentic movements. Curiosities of the moment: Accessing poly-centricity, how to increase availability & generosity with the body, opening the backspace, falling together, and continuity of movement. 

He has explored and facilitated CI on many continents and communities, harvesting gems from them all.  As an avid jammer while he continues to deepen the practice in classes and workshops.  Manuel is also a DJ and a gardener from which he sources inspirations and metaphors.