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About Festival

India Contact Festival: Contemporary Perspectives on Contact Improvisation, hosted by ProDancer is a vibrant celebration of movement and connection, dedicated to exploring Contact Improvisation as a profound and transformative movement practice.  Dive into diverse learning opportunities, including intensives, workshops, and jams led by incredible teachers from various countries. 

 

Engage in artistic expression through captivating performances that demonstrate the beauty and potential of Contact Improvisation as an art form. Explore the depths of somatic practices, fostering a deeper connection between your body and mind. Our festival is not just a dance event; it's a transformative experience that goes beyond the dance floor, nurturing personal growth, creativity, and self-discovery.

 

At India Contact Festival, inclusivity is at the heart of our celebration. Our festival provides the perfect space for community building and forging connections. Engage in discussions, conversations, and interactions that foster mutual understanding, empathy, and trust. Enjoy moments of rest, walks in nature, bodywork sessions, saunas, water contact, and more, designed to nourish your body and soul. Embrace the magic of Contact Improvisation and be part of this extraordinary journey of self-discovery, artistic expression, and community building. It's a celebration of movement, connection, and personal growth, where everyone is welcome!

Our Aim

Contact Improvisation has always been more than a technique. It is a practice that continues to question how we move, relate, create and perform.
 

At India Contact Festival, we are interested in where the practice can go next.
 

We explore Contact Improvisation not only through practice and gathering, but through research, choreography, composition and performance.
 

How can Contact become composition?
How can improvisation become a choreographic tool?
How can the principles of Contact be developed for the stage?
How can we create performance without losing the intelligence and spontaneity of improvisation?

What are we curious about?

Can we return to the questions that made Contact Improvisation radical in the first place?


Can we look at the practice through:
Choreography?
Performance?
Contemporary dance?
Artistic research?
Critical and embodied scholarship?
Can we examine how the practice has evolved, where it is today, and where it might go next?
And perhaps most importantly:
Can we expand the practice without disconnecting from the communities that have carried it forward?

What is Contact Improvisation?

Contact Improvisation (CI) represents a unique dance form that centers around the fundamental physical concepts of touch, momentum, and the sharing of weight. CI involves a practice where two or more individuals come together through a common point of physical contact, embarking on an exploratory journey to sense and respond to one another's movements and impulses. Within the realm of dance, CI enables dancers to harness their intuition, delve into their personal interests, and carefully examine their own physical boundaries and capabilities. In the process, CI cultivates a heightened awareness of the present moment, emphasizing a deep connection to the 'here and now.' Each partner engaged in CI becomes an integral part of a constantly evolving landscape, influenced by their individual perceptions of time, space, and energy. Through the language of touch and proprioception, CI practitioners effectively 'listen' to their bodies and those of their partners, continuously observing how human forms can coexist in a seamless and rhythmic flow.

 

The roots of Contact Improvisation can be traced back to 1972 when Steve Paxton, a pioneer in this art, amalgamated his experiences in contemporary dance, acrobatics, and Aikido to create this unique practice. Over the years, CI has absorbed influences from a variety of techniques, trends, and research, along with the distinctive approaches of its practitioners and teachers. This dance form explores an array of skills, including falling gracefully, achieving balance, effortlessly lifting partners during 'flights,' and the ability to communicate and respond to both fellow dancers and the environment. Dancing within the context of CI does not necessarily provide clear-cut answers; instead, it immerses participants in a perpetual journey of exploration and discovery, rendering this practice consistently fascinating and endlessly engrossing.

AMProDancer Infotech PVT.Ltd is a private organization founded in the year 2018 to create opportunities for the dance community and the general public to engage in dynamic programming globally. ProDancer as an umbrella organization evolves on a different level from its members. It is not connected to any particular dance school, company, federation or other institution.

Our Host

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  • Maria Nurieva // Teacher

Maria Nurieva graduated from theatre college as drama actress (2001) Kazan University of Culture and Art as jazz dance teacher (2017-18)

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  • Marcel Nuriev // Teacher

Marcel Nuriev graduated from the Kazan University of Culture and Art, the theater department in 2005. In 2011-2013 studied at the master's course at the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet - Research Laboratory for the composition of modern forms of dance.

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  • Angelo Dello Lacono //  Teacher

Angelo Dello Iacono, former international ballet dancer, has developed his partnering approach through more than 25 years of research, presented in his 2007 book Le Point Zéro. His practice is built around four pillars: Self; Self & Space; Self & Others; and Mindset & Overall Vision Today, his research connects three dimensions: deep physical sensing and reconstruction of movement; dialogue with modern science and physics; and the ancestral cultures in which dance was first experienced as a vital human function. Through weight, gravity, spirals, breath, contact and improvisation, dancers develop presence, trust and creative freedom, using partnering not as a fixed vocabulary, but as a living dialogue between bodies and the world.

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  • Nuria Bowart //  Teacher

Coming Soon..

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  • Shifu Ash // Organizer, Teacher

Shifu Ash is a dance movement researcher, philosopher, choreographer & visual artist based in Mumbai, India. His expertise lies in movement practices such as Wing Chun, Aikido, Modern Contemporary Dance, Ballet and Contact Improvisation with an experience of 20 years. He is also a former member of CID-UNESCO Paris (International Dance Council) and the founding member & CEO of ProDancer. As a movement practitioner he has trained with number of masters like: Grandmaster IP Chun, Nancy Stark Smith, David Zambrano, Frey Faust, Sara Shelton Mann, Kira Kirsch, Andrew De Lotbinière Hardwood, Akram Khan, Desmond Richardson, Era Jouravlev, Stephanie Godino, Terence Lewis, Mia Michael, Sonya Tayeh, Anjelika Doniy, Danny Ezralow, Ohad Naharin… to name a few. ​ He has been invited to teach at some of the prestigious dance festivals & companies in India & abroad like Impulstanz Vienna International Dance Festival, Goa Contact Festival, Portugal Contact Festival, Goa Dance Residency, Berlin Contact Festival, Contact Meets Contemporary Festival Goettingen, Tokyo Nomadic Residency, Chinchintalu Festival Dubai, Divadlo Studio Tanca, Henny Jurriens Studio Amsterdam, Terence Lewis Contemporary Dance Company, Dance Perfect Prague, Nritya Shakti, Institute Of Classical & Modern Dance India, Saint Petersburg Conservatory Dance, Radi Sveta Art, SDVIG Studio Saint Petersburg, etc. ​ In the year 2021 Shifu Ash was titled "The Saint Beast" by the International Martial Arts Federation Japan and was also featured as the cover artist for the martial art magazine Jissen.

India Contact Festival
  • Aric Master // Teacher

Aric Master is a dance movement researcher, educator and choreographer based in Mumbai, India. His expertise lies in movement practices such as Flying Low, Passing Through, Martial Arts, Contact Improvisation, Modern Contemporary Dance, Jazz and Ballet with an experience of 15 years. He is also a former member at TL Inc (Terence Lewis Inc) and the founding member & one of the Organisers of PDF (Partner Dance Festival India). His current project involves assisting in choreographing for Reality Show Indias Best Dancer and an upcoming Webseries in India. He is also co-curating Omniverse.art which focuses on bringing AI and Art together. As a movement practitioner he has trained with a number of masters like: David Zambrano,Terence Lewis, Peter Jasko, Joe Alagado, Laura Aris, German Jauregui , Corinne Lanselle, Marta Coronado, Kathleen Hermsdrof, Vega Luukkonen, Hugh Stanier, Katja Mustonen and many more. After having trained in Contemporary under various renowned teachers around the world, he has developed a new approach called EXFLOOR (Explore The Floor) in which the aim is for a dancer to find the connection of the whole body with the floor; going through the roots and channelising the whole energy to interact with the floor in different levels. The fundamental area of Exfloor plays with the idea of a relationship of the body with the Moving Floor a 3 dimensional space full of spirals and constant momentum using tools from different techniques like Flying Low, Physical Momentum, Centrifugal Empowerment and Connection of Breath and Sound with Movement.

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  • Gopal Agarwal // Teacher

An OG of the Indian contemporary dance landscape, Nakula brings decades of embodied inquiry, precision, and an unwavering commitment to process. A Dravidian from the Deccan Plateau, Nakula was born to parents who left pastoral lives for work in big cities. When he isn’t attempting acrobatics, you’ll find him playing the Jewish harp or tending to a garden before sunset. He dreams of settling near the mountains someday, learning to ski or paint, whichever comes easier, and enjoys visual art and Japanese cuisine in any order they arrive. Currently working with found and pedestrian movement, Nakula continues to deepen his choreographic and compositional research. His presence is not just pedagogical, it’s a transmission of lineage, curiosity, and quiet rigor.

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