Kirstie Simson: Kirstie’s art form is her life practice, and she shares insights gleaned from forty-years experience of living dance improvisation. Kirstie draws from her knowledge of contact improvisation, dance techniques, the Alexander technique, Aikido, meditation and her mature understanding of improvising as performance. Her work explores the huge potential of the body’s response to the primal urge to move, inspired by the energy released through human interaction, physical challenge and a daring to go beyond inherent ideas of limitation. Her current questioning pertains to the relevance of artistic practice in today’s troubled world. www.kirstiesimson.com

 

Katrina McPherson (UK) is one of the world’s leading screendance artists and the author of ‘Making Video Dance’ (Routledge 2006). She works almost exclusively with improvised dance in making work for the screen. Katrina’s most recent films include the multi-award-winning ‘There is a Place’, with Chinese-Tibetan dancer Sang Jijia, ‘There is a Place’ with Rosalind Masson, Dai Jain and Simon Ellis, and ‘Force of Nature’, a full-length performance documentary featuring improvising dance artist Kirstie Simson.