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Contact Improvisation
I teach Contact Improvisation. I have been doing this alongside performing, creating, and continuously deepening my own relationship with movement and the body.
What drives my teaching is a conviction that CI is a rich practice of dance. It asks something of the whole person — your body, your awareness, your willingness to meet yourself and another person honestly, your aliveness, your capacity for creativity in the moment. When these things come together, the dance opens in ways that go beyond the words and make a lasting impression.
My work is to create the conditions for that to happen. Whether in a single workshop or across a longer programme, I offer tools for somatic development, for understanding what improvisation actually asks of you, and for developing the kind of movement awareness and creative capacity that makes your dancing more responsive, more available, and more your own.
I draw on a background in contemporary dance, physical theatre, somatic practices, and over thirty years of working with the body in motion across multiple cultural practices and age groups. I teach at the Amsterdam Mime Academy and perform with Concert Curieus. Everything I offer grows from the same root: a deep engagement with Contact Improvisation as an art form, a creative somatic practice, that nourishes embodied intelligence and offers a way of being present, alive, grounded and connected.
Below you will find what I currently offer — from single workshops to a six-month development programme, and local and national events.
How I came to teaching CI
I have been teaching dance and movement for over twenty years. A big appetite and curiosity for movement led me through contemporary dance and physical theatre, Thai massage, Tai Chi and Chi Kung. These body-oriented practices inform everything about how I approach Contact Improvisation. Teaching at the Freiburg CI Festival in 2014 was a turning point. Being submerged in CI with experts, teachers and enthusiasts was such a full experience that I decided to commit myself to sharing CI in the Netherlands. I started organising monthly workshops and jams in the region of Tilburg and Eindhoven, and later added weekly classes. In 2019 I began co-organising the yearly Netherlands Contact Improvisation Festival with Tom Goldhand and Janine Brouwer. In 2023 we added the four-day CI Gathering & Intensive to our programme. I also teach a yearly four-day intensive in Freiburg at the beginning of each year, which I have been doing since 2017. Something that holds a special place for me is teaching at the Mime department of the Amsterdam academy. The first years this was contemporary dance technique, but as CI became a bigger part of my practice I developed a form of partnering based in CI — high in dynamic, with taking risks as its main focus. We make the agreement that support can be taken away when you least expect it. We agree that we can jump on each other and use the other's support in a challenging way. The understanding is that these challenges are met supportively and constructively for the dance, however that may look. We are only responsible for ourselves and trust that the other can manage the surprises. This is exciting work, based in the work of Steve Paxton, in which the students and I develop a deeper trust in the instinctual body, learn to deal with a fast-changing environment of mobility, and have a lot of fun. I have a wish to transmit all layers of dance — the artistry, the humanity, the movement craft, the embodied intelligence, the joy and meaning it can bring to one's life. Since 2024 I offer a six-month programme and since 2026 a series of workshops, both dedicated to the somatic, technical, relational and creative dimensions of CI. Within that, I pass on the work of Steve Paxton and Nancy Stark Smith, the originators of the form.
How can you become more available to what is actually happening when you dance? How can you allow the dance that wants to emerge? How can you experience that there is more dance to be danced?
The CI program The Whole Dancer addresses these questions. Over six monthly weekends, we work across the full landscape of what Contact Improvisation asks of you – as an integrated practice that develops the dancer as a whole.
Register HERE
The Whole Dancer is a committed group of CI dancers who stay together throughout a six-month programme. This continuity allows us to build trust, go deeper into the work, and support each other's development in ways that a single workshop cannot offer.
You have been dancing Contact Improvisation long enough to sense that there is more available, and you might be looking for ways to develop further. How to become more aware of what is actually happening when you dance, and what stands between you and the dance you sense is possible — that is where this programme begins.
Over six monthly weekends, we work across the full landscape of what CI asks of you — the somatic, the technical, the relational, and the creative — as an integrated practice that develops the dancer as a whole.
The intention is that more of you and more of what your dance can be is allowed to unfold. We recognise the habits, convictions and assumptions we all carry about the body and its movement — and we explore a wider range of possibilities. Through refinement, through opening up what movement can be, and through a willingness to let the familiar way of doing things stop being the only way.
The programme also includes the foundational practices and scores that are part of the lineage of Contact Improvisation — practices that carry the intelligence of how CI was developed and that can deepen your attunement to the dance.
For CI dancers who are motivated to grow. You need enough experience to be comfortable with sharing weight and the physicality that is typical for CI, and a genuine curiosity about what your dance can become.
REGISTER HERE
Location:
Utrecht, Domplein 4-5, 3512 JC Utrecht
Dates:
10/11 October, 14/15 November, 19/20 December, 16/17 January, 20/21 February,13/14 March
Price:
900-1200 euro (sliding scale)
There are three 100 euro discount places available for people who are financially struggling, contact me to talk about it.
First weekend workshop can be a tryout, after which you decide to commit or not. Price would be 150 euros.
Payment in installments in two/three months is possible - If you wish a different arrangement, let's talk. If not satisfied, after the first you can get your money back minus 150 per weekend. After that no refund possible anymore.
Please check for yourself your income and the worth you put on this experience and myself as a teacher when choosing. I wish to make the program accessible by putting a reasonably low price (consider the hours you get for the money asked).
I do this because some people have lower income than others and I want this program to be in reach for them. And some people have more money - that creates an opportunity to support that this program can be lower priced and so be accessible for people with lower income.
I hope you see the value in this and that you can consider your choice based on this philosophy.
Register HERE
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
Since 2019, every year in july, I co-organise with Tom Goldhand and Janine Brouwer the Netherlands Contact Improvisation Festival. We organise it in a lovely natural environment in Uffelte, for around 100 dancers. Its one of the highlights of the danceseason.
By organizing our events, we aim to make this wonderful dance form accessible for dancers to make a deeper dive into it. Additionally, we aim to provide a platform for CI teachers who are organising classes throughout the Netherlands.
Our vision is to let the magic and fun of CI shine. We invest in learning and creative spaces - dance intensives, workshops and jams - that are rooted in and inspired by the heritage of CI. We take care that our events are present throughout the country and are suitable for building community, learning more, making new friends, personal growth, creative exploration and inspired dancing.
more info: www.contactfestivalnl.nl
Since 2022 I co organise with Tom & Janine also the Gathering & Intensive. It is a 4 day dance event, in which we invite several teachers for some inspired workshops and about 60 dancers for taking part in these workshops. I am also very fond of this event which is organised (usually) in March.
more info: www.contactfestivalnl.nl
Every first week of the new year I am invited by Renate Müller-Procyk from Freiburg to teach a 4 day CI Intensive. This intensive is 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.
more info for jan 2027 comes later, usually around sept/oct