[CI-Announce] BMC and CI in San Francisco, December 13-22

[scott wells]

Dear Friends,

Cathie Caraker and I are teaching a ten day intensive on Body Mind Centering 
and Contact Improvisation.  I have found that BMC and particularly Cathie's 
approach to it uniquely alters my body and movement experience. And I have 
wanted more affordable opportunities to study BMC and the other somatic 
wonders that are generally more expensive than contact/dance workshops.

Drumroll.....so at $375 10 days it's a good deal, but we want  to get the 
ball rolling with early registrations so, we've made a 1/3 off discount:  
$250.
(To receive discount send your deposit of $75 postmarked on or before 
November 1.  Check payable to Scott Wells mail to 1805 divisadero, SF 94115  
Attention Winter Intensive)
Space is limitied, so the earlier the better. Please email me at 
scottbwells at hotmail.com so I can keep track.


THE INTENSIVE
Body-Mind Centering®, Contact Improvisation and Performance Research
December 13 -22
Experiential, Technical, Somatic and Acrobatic
For experienced dancers and contactors.

A 10 day intensive with Cathie Caraker and Scott Wells
At Danceground Keriac;  1805 Divisadero, San Francisco

SCHEDULE:
December 13, 14 (Thursday, Friday)  7:30-10pm
Dec. 15-18 (Sat – Tuesday) 10am - 5pm
Dec 20, 21  7:30- 10pm
December 22 3pm-10pm (Performance/party)

Cost:  $375 (priced for artists)
Pre-registration ($75) recommended
Check payable to Scott Wells
Mail to 1805 Divisdadero
ScottWellsdance.com
Caraker.com


BODY-MIND CENTERING® WITH CATHIE CARAKER
Body-Mind Centering® (BMC) is an innovative approach to movement reeducation 
developed by dancer and occupational therapist Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. 
Integrating anatomical, psychological and developmental principles, the work 
leads to an understanding of how the mind is expressed through the body in 
movement. BMC offers an experiential approach to learning about our living 
anatomy, as well as a method of movement analysis which can be useful in the 
creative process. In this workshop we will use the BMC work as a lens 
through which we investigate our creative resources as movers. We will study 
each of the major body systems (skeleton, muscles, organs, fluids, nerves 
and endocrine glands), experiencing their structures, functions and 
individual expressive qualities through intentional touch and improvisation. 
We’ll also explore the developmental movement process, which underlies all 
our movement expression. Reintegrating these fundamental patterns and 
principles helps to increase our clarity and coordinaton as movers, allowing 
us longer and healthier dancing lives. This workshop is highly recommended 
for dancers, actors, movement therapists and others who work with movement.

CONTACT IMPROV WITH SCOTT WELLS
CI into Performance Jam
We take one element (yes, we'll learn some flying and fluid acrobatics) work 
it inside out, practice integrating it into jamming then use it for 
performance experiments.
Performance research:
1)  We start with our own body.  Sensing self, desires, body awareness.
2) We expand our awareness to partners ( contact improvisation).
3) We expand our awareness to watchers (or audience).  We connect to their 
experience.  This is improvisational performance. To connect to the 
audience, we must also practice being an audience.



BIOS
Cathie Caraker is an international dance performer, choreographer and 
teacher. A certified practitioner of Body-Mind Centering® (BMC) since 1992, 
she also holds an MFA in Dance from Bennington College and is an instructor 
of the Pilates Method of movement reeducation. Her teaching work 
investigates the experiential anatomy of the body and its innate states of 
movement and mind, applying this study to dance training, somatic movement 
reeducation, Contact Improvisation and creative sourcework.
Her solo performance work has been presented in NYC by Dance Theater 
Workshop, Danspace at St. Mark's Church, Movement Research at the Judson 
Church, University Settlement House and the New York Improvisation Festival, 
and elsewhere in the US, Canada, Europe and South America. Her 
collaborations with numerous artists have included works with Daniel 
Lepkoff, Felice Wolfzahn, David Beadle and Gonnie Heggen.  Cathie has been a 
guest artist at numerous institutions internationally, including the Holborn 
Centre and Chisenhale Dance Space in London, Bewegungs-Art Freiburg, 
Tanzfabriek Berlin, Brown University, University of Rochester, Amherst, Mt. 
Holyoke and Middlebury Colleges, Omega Institute and Movement Research in 
NYC, Moving On Center in San Francisco and USINA in Brasilia, Brazil. She is 
currently on the faculty of the School for New Dance Development in 
Amsterdam.

Scott Wells discovered the pleasure of contact improvisation in 1981 shortly 
after becoming obseessed with the struggles of modern dance. He stuck with 
both and currently directs a company in San Francisco. Scott has trained 
extensively in contemporary dance and the Alexander technique. and has an 
MFA in dance. In 2005 Scott received an Isadora Duncan Award for Outstanding 
Choreography  and was selected by Dance Magazine as "One of 25 to Watch in 
2005". This year he is teaching in Graz,Transylvania, Romania, Amsterdam, 
Budapest, Croatia and Germany.
Scott‚s style of contact is athletic and emphasizes freedom of movement, 
flying, fluid acrobatics (easy to advanced), safety, precision, pleasure and 
technique. What students often like best in Scott's classes is the variance 
between the meditative, listening, slow and sensual dancing and the daring, 
playful, very physical dancing.  And students appreciate how the scary or 
advanced moves are safe, relaxed and made possible.
"Wells has become over the last fifteen years the Paul Taylor of Contact 
Improv - that is, the first to make dances in this idiom that are deeply 
musical, somehow "normal," imaginative, witty, often hilarious, sometimes 
fierce, but always respectful enough of the concerns of the general public 
so that the audience in Peoria would feel they had something at heart in 
common. In Wells's case, perhaps as in Taylor's, it's rooted in a profound 
need to reconcile deep oppositions, softened and lightened by a Zen attitude 
towards the impossibility of it. For Wells, it looks like to me (and I 
follow Wells as some movie-goers followed Kieslowski) these oppositions are 
between art and athleticism, the masculine and the feminine, the almost 
disembodied breath of music and the deeply muscular nature of movement, and 
the aggressive and the passive modes of being."
--Paul Parrish, Dance View Times