Elske Seidel
🇩🇪Berlin, Germany
About
My core interests in Contact Improvisation are dancing CI, creating the space to dance in and the question of how to teach Contact Improvisation. My inspiration to teach grows out of the experience of dancing. The choice to become a Contact Improvisation teacher is rooted in my love and commitment to the practice. For me it is a circle, dancing CI is a fundamental source and inspiration for life, as well as the ground for my approach to teaching CI and feeling alive. I have a profound respect for the art of teaching. I have been continuously fascinated by the question of how to teach dance since I began my studies at the University of Hamburg, Germany in 1992. While I was questioning and researching during my studies I started to teach dance (1994) exploring and developing new ways of teaching dance and improvisation both philosophically and practically. In teaching Contact Improvisation (since 2004) I open and create space in which CI can happen. It is based on self discovery and exploration, engaging the research mind, understanding subtlety, depth and detail, while opening awareness and possibility. As a facilitator and organizer of CI jams and events I am deeply influenced by Nancy Stark Smith's work, especially the underscore. I am interested in creating dance spaces in which we can share the practice, with self responsibility and awareness of our own process and beyond. Noticing as the dynamics of group and space become composition and community. I enjoy cooperating with other teachers in creating jams and research formats which allow questions to rise from our dancing, rooted in an alive process of sharing living and dancing together. One of my core passions is 'Contact in Nature'. As I – in dancing CI – am constantly listening and researching the physical forces working in my own body, in relation to the space around me, it seems only consistent for me to explore those physics in nature. Moving contact dance onto different surfaces and in different elements changes the body responses, inviting a deepening quality and understanding. I enjoy meeting the place and allowing nature to teach me.