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Dance Improvisation Practices that offer Resilience and Support in Difficult Times
　
There is deep inspiration and rigour in a practice of improvisation that posits vulnerability at its heart. Developing the skills to be able to care for, engage, respect, and respond to that state of openness in oneself, others and our environment generates creative work that is powerful and transformative. Learning from a place of interconnectedness can give us the resilience and insight to face life’s challenges and complexities.
In this workshop Kirstie shares the movement practices and underlying philosophies she has developed over forty years of her committed involvement with dance improvisation as a ‘life-practice’ that has helped her negotiate life’s ups and downs. Integral with the physical practices she will elucidate how she views embodied practices as vitally important for developing the resilience to face into and respond to the challenging times we are living through. Having gone through recent life-threatening illness herself, Kirstie draws first hand on how grounded dance
can guide and sustain us as we face into life’s greatest challenges, and the life-affirming health benefits they offer us.
Kirstie draws from her extensive experience of Contact Improvisation, dance techniques, the Alexander technique, Aikido, meditation, and her broad knowledge of improvisation in performance. She shares her work through facilitated exercises, open time for play and exploration, movement scores, observations, self-reflection, deep listening, discussion, and humour. Much of the work is experienced through partnering and connection with others, balanced with solo time for processing and reflection.
This is a rare opportunity for participants to delve deeply into the wisdom embedded within embodied practices, both in the studio space, as well as the possibility to explore movement scores in the natural environment. Kirstie will facilitate her work, guided by her own depth of bodymind-knowledge gleaned over the years in which she has pursued a dedicated practice of deep listening and inquiry, centered in the essential importance of life-affirming embodied knowledge.

カースティ・シムソン（英国）は、コンテンポラリーダンスシーンにおける絶え間ない爆発です。瞬間瞬間の最高のインプロビゼーションの連続に内包される純粋創造の活力にオーディエンスを出会わせてくれます。New York Times紙に「Force of Nature（自然の力）」と評された彼女はダンサー、講師として様々な受賞歴を持ち、Time Out Magazine紙（ロンドン）に「New Danceの境界線を計り知れないほど広げ、豊かにした」と評されました。「freedom」、自由が彼女の永遠のテーマであり、命のリズムそのものからムーブメントを創るために、姿形や構造の境界を恐れずに越えようと挑んでいます。
彼女は過去45年間、ダンス・インプロビゼーションに熱心に取り組み続け、インプヴィゼーションという共通の関心を持ったスティーブ・パクストン、ナンシー・スターク・スミス、シモーン・フォーティ、マイケル・シューマッハ、ラッセル・マリファント、チャーリー・モリッシーなどのダンサーや、レ・クアン・ニンといった音楽家たちと数多くのコラボレーションを行ってきました。London Time Out紙に「ダンス界における唯一無二の存在」として Dance and Performance Award を受賞しており、New York Times紙のジェニファー・ダニング氏は彼女のダンスについて「カースティ・シムソンの純粋な自然の力から発現されたかのような優美で感覚に訴えかけるダンスに対する英国での賞賛は正当な評価だ」と述べています。
現在、彼女はダンス・インプロビゼーション分野をリードする優れた教師であり、また魅力的なパフォーマーとして名声を博しています。Sasha Waltz and Guests、DV8、Cloud Gate Dance Theater of Taiwanなど世界各国の大手ダンスカンパニーに教師およびパフォーマーとして招聘されており、大学や芸術専門学校、パフォーマンスフェスティバル、プライベートスタジオ等で教えています。
彼女の作品について、映像作家のKatrina McPherson氏によるドキュメンタリー映画「Force of Nature」が制作されており、Amazon.comで購入できます。
カースティは、イリノイ州立大学ダンス学部の助教授としてインプロビゼーションを13年間教え、2020年8月に彼女の本拠地であるウェールズに戻り、現在に至るまで独立したアーティストとして世界を股にかけて彼女のワークを探求しシェアし続けています。
　
Kirstie Simson Bio
Kirstie Simson (UK) has been a continuous explosion in the contemporary dance scene, bringing audiences into contact with the vitality of pure creation in moment after moment of virtuoso improvisation. Called “a force of nature” by the New York Times, she is an award-winning dancer and teacher who has “immeasurably enriched and expanded the boundaries of New Dance” according to Time Out Magazine, London. Simson’s eternal subject is freedom, as she dares to go beyond the boundaries of form and structure to create movement out of the rhythm of life itself.
For the past forty-five years Kirstie has had a committed Dance Improvisation practice, collaborating with many dancers and musicians who share a common interest in Improvisation, including Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, Simone Forti, Michael Schumacher, Russell Malliphant, Charlie Morrissey and musician Le Quan Ninh. She was awarded a London Time Out ‘Dance and Performance Award’ as “a unique figure in the dance world” and Jennifer Dunning of the New York Times said of her dancing “Kirstie Simson is justly celebrated in Britain for exquisite, sensuous dancing that seems to come from some simple force of nature”.
She is renowned today as an excellent teacher and captivating performer who is a leading light in the field of Dance Improvisation. She is invited to teach and perform all over the world working with major dance companies including Sasha Waltz and Guests; DV8; Cloud Gate Dance Theater of Taiwan, teaching in universities and conservatories, in performance festivals and private studios.
A documentary film has been made about her work by filmmaker Katrina McPherson called Force of Nature available through Amazon.com.
Kirstie spent thirteen years as an Associate Professor teaching improvisation in the Department of Dance at the University of Illinois, USA. In August 2020 she returned to her home base in Wales from where she continues to explore and share her work as an Independent Artist throughout the world.
　
https://www.kirstiesimson.com/

Continued Adventures of the Apple

This workshop continues to explore noticing how it feels to move, be moved and move in relation to the ever-changing forces and environments that Contact Improvisation proposes.
We will notice how we notice, and question how we expand our range of what we can become aware of as we move on our own and with other bodies.
The materials we will work are in dialogue with, and draw inspiration and instruction from, Steve Paxton’s Material for the Spine, Lisa Nelson’s Tuning Scores and my own researches in movement and performance.
We will fall and rise, and pour and expand; and float and fly; and tumble and suspend – we will make experiments in what it means to exist as small bodies in relation the larger body of the earth, and play with how that relationship provides the conditions for a vast realm of simple and complex movement to occur.
Our moving will be supported by anatomical maps to explore, experiments in physical/imaginative/sensational interactions, and by scores that open a space for full-bodied/minded dancing to happen.

パフォーマー、教師、コラボレイター、ディレクターとして35年以上にわたって活動。その活動は英国および海外の劇場、ギャラリー、また劇場外での多様な空間で、小規模なものから大規模なパフォーマンスまで多岐に渡る。最近（2023/24）のプロジェクトには、シオハン・デイビスと制作したソロ『スーパーネイチャー』、カンドゥーコとサドラーズ・ウェルズに共同委嘱されたマルケタ・ストランスカとのデュエット『スカーリング』、ルーシー・サゲ―トと行ったスティーブ・パクストンへのトリビュート『ゴールドベルク変奏曲』等がある。彼の作品はスティーブ・パクストン、リサ・ネルソン、スコット・スミス、K.J.ホームズ、カースティ・シムソン、カレン・ネルソン、シオハン・デイビス、ケイティ・コー、アンドレア・バックリー、ルーシー・サゲートなど、長期にわたり活動を共にしてきたアーティストに影響を受けている。
また、イギリスのヨークシャーで、アーティスト主導の実験的なダンスのためのスペース『ウェインズゲート・ダンス』をロブ・ホッパーとともに共同運営し、そこでは定期クラスや滞在制作、ワークショップ、パフォーマンスが行われている。

Charlie Morrissey Bio
Charlie is a performer, teacher, collaborator and director who has been working with movement for more than 35 years.
He has worked with performance at small and large-scales in theatre, gallery and site-based contexts in the UK and internationally. Recent projects (23/24) include Supernature, a solo created with Siobhan Davies in response to her film Transparent at Wainsgate Chapel; Scáling, a duet with Markéta Stránska co-commissioned by Candoco and Sadlers Wells at Schwere Reiter (more coming up in 2025): HERD – a large-scale site-specific sound project with Artichoke and Orlando Gough across multiple sites in Yorkshire; and Anushiye Yarnell’s A Marathon of Intimacies at Chapter in Cardiff; Goldberg Variations – a tribute to Steve Paxton with Lucy Suggate at Wainsgate Chapel.
His work is influenced and inspired by long-term working relationships with artists including Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson, Scott Smith, K.J.Holmes, Kirstie Simson, Karen Nelson, Siobhan Davies, Katye Coe, Andrea Buckley, Lucy Suggate and many others.
Charlie also organises and co-curates Wainsgate Dances with Rob Hopper in Yorkshire, UK – an international, artist-led space for experimental dance. It includes daily dance practice, residences, workshops, and performances.
　
http://www.charliemorrissey.com/