JamJam Festival

Multi directionality – multi dimensionality

“Mirrors and photographs give us the illusion that we are two -dimensional. Instead, we have have sculpted fullness, and the curves and angles give force and agility to our body.”

Move through the room, following your personal body flow, dancing up and down through the different levels. Be pulled apart, pushed together.

We will use our breath and micro movements to modulate our inner spaces. We feel an inner pull in different directions and expand our attention in these directions. How can tensegrity and multi-dimensionality be transferred to other aspects of life?

In this workshop we will explore the basic principles of Contact Improvisation, such as giving weight to each other, falling in and out of each other, leaving the floor with ease and being carried. We move from somatic work through technical approaches into composition of the whole and group scores.

About the Person: Angela-Mara Florant studied »Arts du spectacle« (performing arts) in Besançon (France) and graduated with a master’s degree. She teaches weekly contact classes, gives workshops internationally, and organizes jams and festivals. She is co-founder and artistic director of the NORDTANZ Festival in Hamburg, since 2015 she has been in the direction of the dance studio Triade. When she is not dancing Contact, she teaches Pilates, dance and theatre or directs independent productions, mostly based on improvisation. In 2022 she founded the dance company “Contact CompanI” and researches contact improvisation as performance art together with dancers and a musician.

https://www.angelamaraflorant.de/

Music out of the moment

In the workshop ” Music out of the moment ” (sound-, voice- and music improvisation) we will try out improvisational forms of playing in the group/small group.

How to develop a piece of music out of the moment, the rich primordial soup, the silence, to come from consensus to non-consensus, to break down expectations of playing “beautiful music”?

Mastery of an instrument is welcome, but not required. Non-musicians can recognize that they are musicians, musicians can forget performance expectations, both can expand their concept of music. It is about the search for a playful-explorative attitude, the creation of atmospheres and images. We will also try out the relationship between dance and music as a mutual source of inspiration through joint improvisations.

About the person: Leonie Mayer is a violinist and singer, improvisation pedagogue (learned with Peter Jarchow) and music therapist (after Karin Schumacher). Her performative focus is on concerts with her solo project “Gwendolyn&Ich”, as well as improvising and composing music in connection with dance, especially contact dance as well as movement theater.

Spatial resonances and landscape bodies

In this Intensive we are inspired by atmospheres and landscapes we find at Fellershof. In interstitial spaces surrounded by trees, lake and hill, we research and improvise with our bodies, structures, materials and other textures. In the process, resonances, encounters, and contrasts between human(s), object, and space emerge.

Starting with a daily activation of all body layers and our energy balance, we get in touch with the group and the place.

Inspired by scores, images and guided sensory perceptions, we explore the area. From this we move into states of holistic improvisation in which we explore perception in direct body presence. Between bodyart, butoh and site specific performance, we create holistic moment compositions that bring human and environment into dialogue.

About the person: Rosalin Hertrich is a performer and teaches movement and theater at the intersection of art and social space. In search of connections, confrontations and the “in-between”, artistic expression and real life, theory and practice, perception and action, subject and object merge. Rosalin completed a master’s degree in theater and media studies, a BuT® advanced training in theater pedagogy and the advanced training Somatic Education (Moving on Center). In Berlin she is a founding member of the physical theater community Das Kollaktiv.

https://physicaltheatre-collactive.net

Journeys of discovery

You want to make your improvisation deeper and more authentic? You want to leave your patterns and find new forms of expression? You want to be in yourself and with the others at the same time in group improvisations? Let’s try it!

In our workshop we will start with bodywork to explore the inner space of the body. The inner space that is always new, full of creativity, feeling and endless power. From there we can create with playful ease. With the help of partner exercises we will expand the sensitivity and possibilities of our movement. Our improvisation will emerge from this new body awareness: alone, in contact and in the group – with movement and voice. This workshop will include “hands on” work, so get ready to be touched, to move and to set your possibilities free!

About the person: Tabea Gregory lives as a performing artist in Darmstadt. She is internationally trained in Actiontheater, Improv Theater, Contemporary Dance, Physical Theater and Social Presencing Theater. In her own pieces she loves to create poetic stories with language, movement and sound. Her mission is to increase awareness through artistic practice. She teaches through awakening the senses and supports to trust the body and its impulses.

www.tabea-gregory.de

NARROWING THE MIND (Eng/Ger)

The purpose of this multidisciplinary lab is to offer a platform where the interaction of music, theatre and movement arts can be safely practiced in the form of different short improvised ensemble pieces that will be shown to the other participants and discussed afterwards.

Through the use of specific scores, people are invited to transform the given limitations and restrictions into creative resources for their own performance practice.

This is an open container format which does not strictly require a three-day commitment. The course languages are English and German.

About the person: Alex Zampini is an interdisciplinary artist active in the field of music, film and dance. His creative approach is improvisational, based on mutual interaction and (un)poetic and subjective interpretation of set and setting. As a process-oriented animal, his projects are self-generated opportunities to get lost, keep questioning and stay curious. As both visual and sound artist he collaborates with humans from different cultural ecosystems, exploring the in-between gaps across disciplines. As a musician he generates instrumental sound sculptures made of electro-acoustic hybrid textures, harmonic dissonances, distorted guitars and stillness.

www.alexzampini.com

Let yourself dance

We will explore the basic principles of contact improvisation. It is a dance form that plays with encounter, touch, gravity and movement dynamics. Finding contact with my own movement impulses, getting to know touch qualities and opening the space for the others.

Each movement arises directly from the previous one, unplanned, the art of the moment. To find the contact to oneself, to the space we are in and to the others. The dance partners have a common, shifting point of contact, as a basis for communication without words.

We will explore topics like respect and mindfulness with the others. The joy and fun of movement, are the focus. Please bring comfortable clothes, socks and curiosity. Previous dance experience is not necessary!

About the person: Performance artist, nurse, ex-businessman and theater educator, cafe house sitter and incorrigible optimist.

Rolf Schulz has over 25 years of experience in contact improvisation through advanced training with Nancy Stark Smith, Prof. Dieter Heitkamp and Martin Keogh in Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Italy. For 15 years he has been a lecturer in Contactimprovisation at the LAG (Landesanstalt für Arbeit Bildung und Kultur) in NRW, for the voluntary social year. He was organizer of the Essen Contactjam from 2005 to 2020 and is founder and organizer of the ruhrpott-jam 2013/2014/2015.

“In 1994 I encountered Contactimprovisation for the first time. Being more mindful of myself and others became more conscious to me through Contactimprovisation once again. To get in touch with myself and others through movement and dance is a wonderful possibility!”

https://paersche.org/artists/rolf-schulz/

Simon von Oppeln-Bronikowski is an actor and musician. He has been making theater since the age of 15, avoiding traditional and institutional training paths and instead immersing himself in practice. He learned the theater craft at Theater DIE RABEN (Bonn, GER), STUDIO 7 Theater, La gran marcha de los muñecones (Lima, Perú), Groucho Teatro (Rome, IT) and other independent groups. Since 2010 he has been working permanently at the STUDIO 7 Theater in Schwerte (Ruhr area, GER). He learned to sing on the street – it accompanies him since then as a daily practice. Traditional polyphony, which can be learned and sung intuitively, is his passion, which he shares with a group of singers every week in the open “singing workshop”.

Dancing thoughts and creative border walks Improvisation as adventure

Here you have the opportunity to reflect and deepen your individual processes that were stimulated during the JamJam and also to relate to what is happening in the group. In an open and mindful atmosphere we explore, our patterns and blockages, but also our enjoyment of experimenting and experiencing our limits.

About the person: Leo Feuchtenberger works as a psychotherapist in his practice in the heart of Vienna. He is trained in Integrative Gestalt Therapy and therefore works a lot with body processes, focusing on mindfulness and working with the here-and-now and the relational events taking place. Leo has been meditating regularly for over ten years, which he learned from Christoph Singer/Willigis Jäger (Zen) and in the Vipassana tradition according to Sayagyi U Ba Khin, among others.

About the workshop: Dancing thoughts and creative border walks – Improvisation as an adventure

Here you have the opportunity to reflect and deepen your individual processes that were stimulated during the JamJam and also to relate to what is happening in the group. In an open and mindful atmosphere we explore, our patterns and blockages, but also our enjoyment of experimenting and experiencing our limits.