HumilitySwim Director, Ali Woolwich,has been working in Contact Improvisation (CI) for 20 years, and has taught CI since 1996. Ali has produced workshops, live performance and media through HumilitySwim in the SF Bay Area, NYC, Seattle, and New Mexico. Ali teaches dance/performance in university, studio professional and recreational venues, and in years as a dance teacher has worked with professional dancers, children, gay teens, queer women and trans men, integrated classes of disabled and non-disabled dancers, and seniors. Ali is a union Lighting Designer and Theatrical Electrician (IATSE SF Local 16) and is a founding staff A/V Tech at CounterPULSE. Ali is Director of HumilitySwim Dance/Media Arts producing weekly Class Series, Workshops and annual CI events, live performance and kinesthetically-driven video. In spring 2012, Ali will premiere two short dance-for-camera works, 52 Negotiations, and Tree Wisdom.. Ali credits Peggy Schwartz, Keriac, KJ Holmes and Karl Frost as primary CI teachers. Ali's performance work and teaching is influenced by training as filmmaker and classical musician, and through 20 years of training in post-modern dance/theater, Release Techniques (Joe Goode Performance Group, Lower Left, Umo Ensemble, Kathleen Hermesdorf and Joan Skinner), yoga and massage practice. Currently, Ali is investigating queer tango as a source for partnering innovation.
Project Collaborator, Fumiko Docker,was introduced to Contact Improvisation and Ensemble Thinking by Nina Martin in 1996 at UC San Diego after a life of ballet and modern dance. She participated in early workshops and performances at Sushi Performing Arts Space in San Diego in 1996 and 1997. After a hiatus from dance where she moved to rural Japan to teach English, then to Oregon to get her masters of architecture degree, a return to San Francisco and a major surgery made Fumiko realize that dance had to return as an integral part of her life. Fumiko is intrigued by a creative process informed by the intersection between physical space and improvisational dance. She is interested in developing improvisational works that respond to space, time, form, hierarchy, relationship, and other principles common to architecture and ensemble thinking. Fumiko is growing a collective of dancers whose main interest is site-specific exploration through group improvisation. The goal of this collective endeavor is three-fold: to explore a creative process that uses the physical, social & cultural characteristics of public space as generator of improvisational content, to explore the ways that performance can invigorate and enliven public space, and to create a forum in which non-professional dancers can develop collective opportunities for performance. She is currently working towards her California license in architecture at The Design Partnership in San Francisco.
CI 201 Co-Teacher, Zack Bernstein,mesmerizes audiences with his extraordinary concentration and ability to manipulate objects through space, immediately adding intensity to live performance. In his native San Francisco, Zack currently teaches at the SF Circus Center, performs with Scott Wells, and works at the SFMOMA. In 1997, he co-founded the performance group Capacitor, touring on the university circuit and abroad in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Locally, Zack has appeared as featured guest artist for KQED, BMW Films, Jane's Addiction, the Flying Karamazov Brothers, Earth Circus, and the New Pickle Circus. For the past several years Contact Improvisation has embraced him, overwhelmed him, left him butoh-screaming for more! Inspiring contact experiences and events include: CI36, Las Brusquitas, Contato no Rio, and WCCIF. He currently teaches CI at the Thursday Jam in Berkeley, Ecstatic Dance in Oakland, and Studio Valencia in San Francisco.
Videographer, Amal Kouttab.
www.amaldesigns.com
Project Collaborator, Claire Olivier,
began her movement exploration through the form of gymnastics. This love of movement continued as she began to dance finding structure through Connecticut College's Modern Dance Program where she began choreographing and performing in varied art pieces. After moving to the Bay Area in 2002, Claire's interest took her to examine dance and its connection to community with street performances during Dia De Los Muertos. In addition she performed in Karl Gillick's Human/Nature, a piece which explored the possible relationships and interactions between humans and nature including: improvisational dance, contact improvisation, creative movement, text, and audience interaction. Claire has become integrated in the CI community here in the Bay Area and has performed with Ali Woolwich and Kathleen Hermesdorf in the 2005 NDW event at CounterPULSE. Claire expanded her range of dance through various workshops with The Body Cartography Project, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Martin Keogh, Andrew Harwood, Chris Aiken, and Karl Frost. Currently she is looking at movement as a way to express one's connection with Nature, and specifically contact improvisation as a form to influence our daily interactions and perceptions.
Dancer, Clara Rubin-Smith,
came to CI five years ago. She grew up folk dancing and has explored and trained in diverse movement forms including yoga, modern and release techniques, salsa, Afro-Brazilian, partner acrobatics and aerial dance. She first began teaching CI to a group of folk dancers, and since 2003 has offered a number of CI-based workshops for movers of all ages and skill levels. With a B.A. in Anthropology, Modern Languages and Dance and a background in group facilitation and community development, Clara is also an visual artist and singer/musician with a passion for rhythm. She is currently training as a teacher of Biodanza -- a therapeutic expressive arts system -- and serves as a translator and head of fundraising for the school. Her dance-making is influenced by this ongoing experience and by studies with many teachers, including Balinda Craig-Quijada, Jo Kreiter, Leslie Seiters, Martin Keogh, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Liz Roman, Scott Wells and John LeFan.
Dancer, Kay Ceridwen Bachman,
is currently finishing her final semester for her MA in the Performing Arts and Consciousness Program at JFK University in Berkeley, CA. She has studied Contact Improvisation and Contemporary Performance with Karl Frost, Martin Keogh, Scott Wells, Anna Halprin, Jo Kreiter (aerial), Seth Eisen, and Keith Hennessey. Last year she completed a graduate mentorship with Cassie Terman in Action Theater.
Sound engineer, musician, Rodney Johnson.
www.rodneyj.net/music
Dancer, Yayoi Nagano.
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