Contact Improvisation

Contact improvisation has been my primary movement practice since 1986. I studied with Bruno Stefanoni, Dieter Heitkamp, Ka Rustler, Kurt Koegel, Howard Sonenklar, Nina Martin, Benno Voorham, Nancy Stark Smith, K J Holmes and many others. I have been teaching the form since 1990.

I used to do a lot of aikido and am influenced by various methods in the field of somatics. My teaching is informed by my background as a professional bodyworker / physiotherapist, my experience with different approaches to communication, and by my politics. I see my interest in radical social theory and my love of contact improvisation as two aspects of the same desire.

I regularly teach in English, sometimes in Swedish or French, rarely in German. I participated in “European Contact Improvisation Teachers Exchanges” (ECITEs) in Denmark, the Netherlands, the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland and Spain. I co-organised ECITE 1999 in Germany and ECITE 2015 in France.

1990 – 2005 I taught mostly in Germany, but also in Belgium, Britain, Italy, Latvia, Romania, Spain and Sweden. 2005 – 2011 I was part of a small network of contact improvisation teachers in Toulouse that organised jams, classes and workshops locally.

2011 – 2014 I mainly taught in London, but also in Bristol, Brussels, Göteborg, Malmö, Paris, Stockholm, Toulouse and Umeå. I was centrally involved in organising four week-long contact improvisation festivals in London (over the New Year 2011/2012, in the summer of 2012, over New Year 2013/2014 and 2014/2015).

Since March 2014 I have been based in Sweden. 2014 – 2017 I was involved in the Gothenburg contact improvisation collective, which organises weekly jams, beginners’ courses, weekend workshops and exchanges with other Scandinavian contact improvisation communities.

In recent years I have travelled further afield, teaching in South and South East Asia (India, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines), quite a bit in China (Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Xi’an, Chengdu, Kunming, Dali, Guangzhou, Hong Kong), as well as in Japan, Australia, Canada and a few places in the US (including the West Coast Contact Improvisation Jam in Berkeley, California, and Earthdance in Western Massachusetts).