Kaisa Kukkonen (1986) is an interdisciplinary artist-researcher based in Finland. She works with the poetry of movement, politics of touch, and somatic practices. Her background is in dance, words, and performance. Her interests are movement and voice improvisation, Contact Improvisation, work around consent, pleasure activism, boundaries and touch as well as work with words in the form of poetry or academic writing. Kaisa´s work changes shape and spirals between multiple forms: she makes performances; teaches workshops and classes in movement, touch and boundaries; organises festivals and events; writes and composes; improvises.
Kaisa has been dancing CI since 2005, and teaching since 2010 in Finland, Sweden, Germany, Austria and Iceland. Her CI home is Berlin, where she learned from Joerg Hassmann, Daniel Werner, Christine Mauch, and Gesine Daniels among others. Later her teachers and/or co-dancers have been for example Katja Mustonen, Anya Cloud, Iiris Raipala, Terhi Rasilo, and Nita Little. She currently dances and teaches in Helsinki.
Kaisa finished her studies at Iceland University of Arts in the MFA of Performing Arts programme (2021-2022) in September 2022 with a performance project “Take This Touch Inside Your Body”. She graduated from the MACoDE program at HfMDK in Frankfurt with a master thesis “Noticing Power Relations in Teaching Touch in Contact Improvisation” (2021). For the thesis she interviewed fourteen Contact Improvisation teachers, collected their strategies and thoughts on how to teach touch.
website: https://kaisakukkonen.wordpress.com/

I'm an interdisciplinary performing artist and teacher, originally from the USA, living in France since 2002. I have been making work collaboratively, teaching, and touring steadily in contemporary dance, music, performance and new circus since 1988.

Regarding my relationship to CI : I began learning CI in San Francisco in 1988, as a member of Sara Shelton-Mann’s performance group Contraband. It was a revelation! We were passionate about mixing CI with other forms, experimenting wildly, and using CI to respond to spiritual and political concerns.

I continue to see CI as a context for personal liberation, community health, a laboratory of hybrid play, a physical prayer, a contemporary expression of the ecstatic dance lineage, a radical practice of decentralized power, an apt metaphor for myriad forms of relationship and a hothouse of connection and empowerment.

I have been living dance and contact improvisation in a surrendered way as a dancer for 17 years (if i do not count my childhood experiences) and as a teacher for 12, and I had the opportunity to travel to more than 16 countries, offering and having classes, intensive courses, workshops, residencies and Jams with different and experienced colleagues, which probably gave me a good "floor" to start with 'not knowing with certain quality' ...
I have also organized, with more people, different meetings and festivals of this beautiful practice, in Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Denmark, Portugal and Mexico. I come from different dance schools at the somatic level and movement research, today I see that I have danced and taught a good part of my life and yet I feel that I have just started. In my practice I have been integrating various techniques and bringing the potential of dance to life. If I ask myself between my name and my body, the second one is the dearest, and if you ask about my deepest interest in dancing and teaching the answer would be around living questions related to dance itself, to the presence and to the Big Mistery.
I Hope through this illusion of you and I being separated, we can drop it, and go beyond our hanging names to explore the in-between field of existence to dance and be danced with and through the visible and invisible forces entangled at each single moment and find the way to be at the arch of beauty.

A dancer and educator. He graduated CUUD Breath Integration School. During his studies in Poznań, he worked in a forest kindergarten, led CI classes and movement workshops dedicated for parents and children.
He organizes jams, workshops and lead classes in various cities in Poland and at festivals (Israel CI Convention, Solo&CI Tirol festival, Warsaw Flow, FRU festival). Paweł draws inspiration from practicing the Feldenkrais Method. He enjoys learning new things, doing less (sometimes too much) and following curiosity and playfulness.
He explores improvisation in motion and playing music - he is fascinated by combining these worlds and the dialogue between them.

I believe that my body is my tool for experiencing life.
Therefore I believe that improving the body and the ability to sense the body experience is the most fascinating endless life journey. with directing the attention into the physical and metaphysical forces operates on the body, learning the anatomic structure of it, work with different images and textures, texts, memories, Imagination, smells and many stimuli that can be imagined, we are opening a door in ourselves to a wider being and wider body experience which are not
accessible in the reality.
Contact improvisation for me is the playground of all that, in which we can research the physical body and the physical forces applying on it in the best way, together with the freedom to open doors from different and various directions to the body experience.
I'm interested in how from the physical sphere something sensible metaphysical can be born, which cannot always be expressed in words. I believe that this is a political action to choose to do on this ground.

I've been dancing and researching contact in the last 8 years. In addition to being a professional dancer, I teach in various settings in Israel and around the world, courses and workshops in professional
dance schools and for the general public.

Synchronous events led Ben to his first CI jam around 15 years ago. It was love at first sight. Ever since he’s been following this path and feels blessed to feel part of the global community.

I see CI as a practice that can reveal the embodied relational wisdom from the depths of the earth and time. Informed by gravity, the physic, energetic, sensual, sensuous, psychic, and emotional information travels within the shared movement of our bodies and the intelligence woven throughout can reveal our authenticity and a healing path.

I try to bring the principles of CI into the approach of facilitation and teaching, forever grateful for the lineage of teachers who founded and continue to enjoy and explore the potential of the practice.

Florian (GERMANY) studied German, Romanic Philology and History of Art in Freiburg, Lyon and Leipzig.
His first encounter with CI through Benno Enderlein was at the same time the discovery of the complexity of Moving Arts at it's core of improvisation. Quickly CI became a home during the years of travelling. In Dresden he finally found a group of dancers seeking for new formats to communicate the touch of CI through stage and non-stage performances, performing in museums and other public spaces.

I am fascinated by improvisation. It allows me to surrender completely to the moment and look forward to the next one with curiosity. Listening to myself, observing my breath, feeling my heartbeat, experiencing the subtle interplay of muscles, bones and connective tissue sparks a powerful feeling of vitality in me.

I’ve been on a journey with yoga since 2005. My approach has constantly changed over the years and is now informed by all the different movement practices I love to engage in, by my own journey of healing trauma and by my connection with nature. In my practice and teaching this manifests as seeking gentleness, simplicity, subtlety and questions I explore somatically. How can we learn to be kind to our bodies? What kind of engaging do the hurt places inside us need? What happens when we let roots grow down from the tips of our sit bones? Do we trust the support of the earth and what sensations come along with that?eibung erscheint hier

Ich sammel den Staub aus Schmetterlingsflügeln
Tanze mit der Stille
Lade das Magische ein

Ich liebe es Musik zu machen für einen tanzenden Raum, da kann ich fliegen….…Piano, Loop Maschine, Gesang, Percussions, Kalimba und andere Klänge…

Sakari Savola is a guitarist and dancer who is fascinated by improvisation. As a musician he is inspired by the contact of sounds and movement in space. Experimenting, inviting, listening. Lean to the ambience, find balances and fly with the shimmering sparkles.

He uses guitar and combines it with effects to create spiraling atmospheres. Sakari's musical style effortlessly traverses genres, from gentle melodies to chaotic rhythms, reflecting his versatile approach to music-making.

Lu Sarmiento entdeckte schon als junges Mädchen ihre Begabung und Leidenschaft in Musik, Tanz und anderen kreativen Ausdrucksweisen.
Auf ihren vielen Reisen fand sie überall Inspiration, wo Melodien erklungen, die ihr Herz berührten, lernte bei unterschiedlichsten LehrerInnen und sammelte Erfahrung als Performerin und Musikerin.
In ihrem künstlerischen Ausdruck liegt ihr Schwerpunkt auf der Verkörperung des gegenwärtigen Moments in seiner Vielfältigkeit. Ihre Musik strotzt voll Zartheit und Wildheit und wird durchströmt von einer Kraft die ins Unendliche schießt.
Sie ist Lehrling ihrer eigenen Medizin und Mitschöpferin jener Räume der Selbstentfaltung, wo sich Stimme, Atem und Körper frei ausdrücken dürfen.
Mit ihrer Einfachheit wird sie uns begleiten, eine Öffnung im Rachen bei gemeinsamen Tönen, Singen, Atmen, Lauschen und Erinnern zu entdecken.

https://youtu.be/HcWzlLJepsg