Welcome to Spiral & Root: Earthdance’s Professional Contact Improvisation Training. For those who are longing for a deep and durational dive into CI research, pedagogy, and professional training, you’re invited to gather with us for three weeks from January 6th through 26th, 2025.
With nine teachers from Europe, North & South America, and the Middle East representing some of the highest quality of CI instruction available, this one-of-a kind professional training promises to deliver a container for the continuation of targeted and passionate CI research.
Featuring:
- Ray Chung
- Mirva Makinen
- Chris Aiken
- Lani Nahele
- Itay Yatuv
- Sarah Young
- Keith Hennessy
- Meta Bobbe
- Pilar Echavarria
Who is this for?
Spiral & Root is a place of meeting and dialogue between elders and newer generations of dancers, facilitating the continued development and evolution of CI. In addition to developing and refining the necessary technical skills for practicing and facilitating CI, this training will likewise focus on career development and for those who wish to further their professional tools, networks, and offerings. This intensive is especially valuable for those who wish to further integrate CI training and research into their careers and practices of community building. Further, there will also be opportunities for dialogue and inquiry around the original values and intentions of CI.
The Venue
As the oldest intentional community founded on Contact Improv, it’s only natural that Earthdance has long been host to some of the most comprehensive and rigorous trainings for teachers and dedicated practitioners of CI. Since its founding in 1986, Earthdance has been committed to a spirit of improvisation and heart-centered community through CI-informed movement practices and research. As CI and notions of community have evolved and developed further, Earthdance has likewise adapted and integrated the changes that have cohered, playing host to countless jams and trainings that further progress the dance form.
Program
A brief overview of the program (in progress, will likely change):
Week 1: Jan 6th – Jan 12th
- Mornings 6th – 10th: Mirva Makinen / CI Technique & Pedagogy
- Afternoons 6th -10th: Lani Nahele / BMC
- Full day Saturday 11th: Pilar Echavarria/ Earth & Dance
- Scheduled for the 7th: Underscore talk Meta Bobba & Sarah Young /
- Evening 9th: Underscore practice Meta Bobba & Sarah Young /
- Evening Jams & Talks and one open Jam for Community
- Sunday 12th: free day – nothing scheduled
Week 2: Jan 13th – Jan 19th
- Mornings 13th – 14th : Meta Bobba & Sarah Young / Underscore
- Afternoons 13th – 14th: Itay Yatuv / CI Technique & Pedagogy
- Full day 15th: Itay Yatuv / CI Technique & Pedagogy
- Full day 16th: Meta Bobba & Sarah Young / Underscore
- Morning 17th: Itay Yatuv / CI Technique & Pedagogy
- Afternoon 17th: Meta Bobba & Sarah Young / Underscore
- Full day Saturday 18th: Pilar Echavarria/ Earth & Dance
- Evening Jams & Talks and one open Jam for Community
- Sunday 19th: Community Jam in Northampton hosted by Patrick Crowley & Sarah Young
Week 3: Jan 20th – Jan 26th
- Mornings 20th – 24th: Ray Chung & Chris Aiken / CI Technique & Pedagogy
- Afternoons 20th – 24th: Keith Hennessy / CI politics & healing
- Full day Saturday 25th: Pilar Echavarria/ Earth & Dance
- Saturday 25th: Last evening party (& Performance)
- Evening Jams & Talks and one open Jam for Community, Thursday optional Underscore.
- Sunday 26th: Goodbye!
Diversity, resources, and access
Questions of diversity, access, and how to best spread out limited resources are already alive and well amongst us. We hope to strike a healthy balance between acknowledging that this training is happening in the U.S. and will be coloured by U.S. politics and frameworks. However as this is an international training with students and teachers from around the world, we also don’t want to reproduce U.S. cultural hegemony by centering U.S. political themes, strategies, and framings. We wish to create space for the diversity of cultures, languages, and positionalities which will be present throughout the three weeks. Students, teachers, and organizers will have various levels of proficiency with English, and we aim to take into consideration that everyone won’t have the same fluency, and therefore find various ways to communicate and negotiate beyond language and comprehension barriers. As part of our desire to address the need for a variety of diversities, we will be opening up applications for 3 half-scholarships to assist in making the training more financially accessible.
Why is this a “Professional” Training
There has been some rich discussion and questioning of the term ‘professional’ in the title of the intensive. In the end, we are deciding to keep it, and, to also make it clear that we are using the term to mean the support of participants’ professional development and resourcefulness as teachers, facilitators, and organizers, as opposed to any sort of certification process or top-down bestowing of credentials or authority.