This is the website of Robin Berkelmans, artist in the field of dance and theatre. For over thirty years, I've worked with movement through performing, teaching, and creating — continuously deepening my relationship with the body and improvised dance, dancing both solo and with others.
Here you'll find information about my current teaching and events, with a focus on Contact Improvisation. You will also find an archive of my artistic work: performances I've created and performed in, videos and photographs from my own work and collaborations.
Underlying all of this is a simple conviction: that dance and creativity carry meaning in life. Through movement and dancing together, we can explore our physicality, presence, creativity, and connection. I create environments where this exploration can take place — open, embodied spaces where people can engage with dance in ways that may become meaningful for their own lives.
Since the Corona period I have been a member of Concert Curieus, a dance and music collective. We use improvisation to create performances for 0-6 years old. We are performing in theatres, and local daycare centres for both the children and the parents.
My in-depth CI program will start for the second time in october 2025. It is a 6 month program designed to dive into somatics and yourself as a dancer within Contact Improvisation. You can send me an email if you are interested in joining for the new round in september 2025.
I developed this program out of a wish to share my experience and knowledge. I wish to offer a pathway into the deeper layers of dance and the creative being for people to follow, and together we can discover more of ourselves in dance. CI can become an extraordinary rich experience in itself and valuable for our lives with our bodies. To share this process with like-minded people is a great experience! More info here.
6 months refining your mobility and danceability
This series of Contact Improvisation workshops offers multiple entry points into the practice - somatic awareness, technical exploration, and creative improvisation.
With six ways in, we have a varied landscape of possibilities for movement with each other, inspiration for practice and profound experience. This series is intended to open pathways to clarity, agency and enjoyment of dancing - revealing the many layers of Contact Improvisation as a creative practice of emergent dance.
More info and tickets here:
https://hipsy.nl/shop/robin-berkelmans-dans-en-bewegingstheater
Every first week of the new year I am invited by Renate Müller-Procyk from Freiburg to co-teach a 4 day CI Intensive. Our workshops are designed to be accessible to everyone, regardless of age or experience. Whether you’re new to Contact Improvisation or a seasoned dancer, you are welcome to our warm and supportive environment.
Our approach emphasizes that our existence is shaped by how we relate to the world around us. Together, we’ll deepen our connections to the floor, each other, and ourselves, opening up new possibilities in how we move and experience dance.
For over thirty years I have been a dancer and a movement enthusiast. I perform, I teach, and I research my relationship with the body — all of it feeds into the same ongoing practice.
I perform with the improvisation collective Concert Curieus. I teach at the Amsterdam Mime Academy and have been teaching dance and movement for over twenty years — at academies and universities, with professional dancers, and with people who dance for the sheer joy of it and the value it gives to their lives.
What runs through all of this is a love for researching natural functional movement, somatics, and the intelligence the body carries in how it senses and responds. How movement becomes more refined, more authentic, more aligned with who you actually are. And how stepping into a creative space with other people reaches into something fundamental about being human. I think this is an amazing opportunity to create more meaning in our lives and to experience being fulfilled on a continuous, fundamental level.
Whether in performance, in a classroom, or in daily life, I find it deeply fulfilling to guide people toward more insight and more possibility in their movement and their bodies.
Teaching
Mime Academy, Amsterdam · 2008–present
Risk and high dynamics in Contact Improvisation. Began as contemporary dance technique, Axis Syllabus inspired, and moved into Contact Improvisation.
The Trap, Amsterdam · 2006–2024
Physical performer education. Instant composition, presence for actors, somatic development, chi kung, stage fighting.
Fontys Academy for Dance Education · 2012–2024
Experiential anatomy, release technique, instant composition, Contact Improvisation, solo and group improvisation, artistic coaching.
Fontys Academy for Drama · 2022–2024
Improvised physical theatre and general movement conditioning for actors.
Vooropleiding Hedendaagse Dans · 2015–2020
Contemporary dance.
Amsterdamse School of the Arts, dance-teacher department · 2008–2011
Release technique, Contact Improvisation, body alignment for presence.
5 o'Clock Class West / Rast Theater, Amsterdam · 2007–2008
Movement, ages 18–25.
Amsterdamse Jeugdtheaterschool · 2004–2006
Movement, ages 10–20.
Jeugdtheaterschool ZuidOost · 2004–2006
Movement, ages 10–20.
Amateur Centre of the Arts, Amsterdam · 2002–2004
Daily work with visiting school groups, ages 11–12, making a performance alongside a theatre director and a music teacher. Movement teacher and choreographer.
Research
Research runs through the practice rather than beside it — worked out in the studio, in class and in performance.
Instant composition with actors · 2006–2024 Close to twenty years at the Trap and the Fontys Academy for Drama, with actors trained in text who were meeting physicality as a medium. Group improvisation built from instant composition and elements of Viewpoints, and a solo score refined with students over eight to ten years. The group structure became the basis for the handbook Concert Curieus performs from.
Tai chi · 2011–present Fifteen years of study and practice, ongoing. A movement methodology arriving from a different direction, with both a somatic and a martial quality. Fundamental to how I understand the body and mobility, and to how I teach.
Bodywork · roughly 2013–2018 General massage and Thai massage, studied intensively and practised with clients, including people with burnout complaints. Now an element in the teaching: bodywork at the start of a session prepares the body for moving and for connection, so that mobility becomes available and listening to another dancer comes online.
Experiential anatomy · ongoing Developed for contemporary dance, and worked into Contact Improvisation as that became the centre of the work.
Contact Improvisation · ongoing
Physical theatre and performance · ongoing
Performing
Concert Curieus · 2020–present Performing member. Improvised performance with Instant Composition as the foundation. Began during Corona.
Earlier work for other makers, in small and big theatres, at national theatre festivals, and five years of location and street theatre abroad.
2017 La Reina Madre, Madrid — improvisation
2016 – 2020 WegWerpWereld — Vloeistof, Tilburg
2016 – 2020 Multiples & Werk in Uitvoering — Directie en Co
2012–2014 Signs — Jochen Stechmann
2012 De Boer Op! — De Kwekerij
2011 Platee — Nationale Reisopera
2011 KIJK — Rocco Vermijs & Misha Wolters
2010 Patio — Rachel Zweije
2005–2009 Malaya, Pi-Leau — Close-Act, street theatre
2007 Souvenir — Tineke Veenhof
2007 Pampa Lab speelt vandaag hier — Pampa Lab
2007 Un beso de Mariposa — Sandra Stark
2007 Intimate Distance — with Valeria Primost and others
2006 Anderlandje — De Kat van de Buren
2006 Pampalab 4, Over 't IJ Festival
2006 My body is a battlefield — Toon Ory
2005 Pampalab 3, Over t IJ Festival
2005 Marathon — Wies Merks, Job Cornelissen and others
2004 Zijde — De Lunatics
2004 Pampalab 2
2003 Verse Kerse — Ex Nihilo, France
2003 Dit is 'm — Ruth Wilmans
2002 Mantra — Carolina Ramos
2002 Kristallnacht — Robert Kayn
2002 Conversations — Ilythia de Lignière
2002 Welwitschia — Björn Sluiter
2002 Floorfiller — Coen de Preter
2002 Taptoe — Drie Ons, Tilburg
2001 Wardrobe — Yaël Davids
2001 Bagger 1 & 2 — T.R.A.S.H., Tilburg
Making
Eighteen performances between 2002 and 2017.
2017 Silhouette — with Erik Vink
2015 Happy Once More
2015 Kast, Rats en Luchtkastelen
2014 Swijp
2013 Un|wind — with Zeynep Gunduz
2012 Pina
2012 Het zal wel weer hoi wezen
2011 Jump! — with Tineke Veenhof and Fleur van Zonneveld
2010 GRITT
2009 Strengel — with Esther Eenstroom
2009 Kettingreactie
2009 Slagboomt — Zure Room*
2007 Space Cadet — and others
2006 Ai Jij Ei — Zure Room*
2006 2x Cha
2005 Kaak — with Maaike van de Westeringh
2005 Dikke Witte — Zure Room*
2002 Ratrace — installation performance
*Zure Room · physical theatre collective, founded with Collin van de Broek and Natalie Heevel. After Dikke Witte and Ai Jij Ei, taken on by Orkater, where the company made Slagboomt and toured for a season before disbanding.
Organising
National Contact Improvisation Festival · 2019–present - with Tom Goldhand and Janine Brouwer.
The Gathering · 2021–present - with Tom Goldhand and Janine Brouwer.
The Whole Dancer · 2026–present - Season programme. Grew out of Towards Underscore.
Contakids · 2026–present - Movement class for parents and their young children. Hosted by Factorium, Tilburg.
Building the Contact Improvisation community in Tilburg and Eindhoven · 2015–2022
Weekend and day CI workshops through the year. since 2015
Teaching and lecturing abroad
Contact Improvisation in London, Ghent, Antwerp, Freiburg and Lisbon among others.
2015 Lecture on chi kung and contemporary dance — Conference on Dance and Somatic Practices, Coventry University
2015 Lecture on Western and Eastern somatic disciplines — Coventry University
2014–2016 Contact Impro Festival, Freiburg
2014–2016 Floorwork — Dance Conservatory Ankara
2013 Dance technique and research — K3, Hamburg
2013 Lecture on chi kung, somatics and contemporary dance — Impulstanz, Vienna
2013 Lecture on Western and Eastern somatic disciplines — Impulstanz, Vienna
2013 Floorwork and Contact Improvisation — Tanz Weiter, Karlsruhe
2012–2014 Keyteacher, IDOCDE — European project for contemporary dance education and documentation
Also
2020 Improvisation Collective Waterapen
2019–2020 Tai chi, and Je Burn Out Te Lijf — FysioPlus OSS
2015–2016 Board member, artist collective KUDDE
2014–2018 Co-creator, Thai Massage Collective and Somatic People
2014–2016 Teacher of Thai Yoga Massage, ITM style
Dutch representative and teacher, l'Art du Chi
Education
2001–2003Dance Teacher — Fontys Dansacademie, Tilburg
1994–1999HEAO Marketing — Hogeschool Brabant, Breda
1989–1994VWO Atheneum — Jacob-Roelandslyceum, Boxtel
Gallery
