Tanzfabrik
Berlin
School
School

04.08.2025—08.08.2025

SHAPING CHANGES - Contact Improvisation as collective process to cultivate (un)-imaginable future-s –

Workshop
with Nica Portavia
Venue:
Kreuzberg 4
Möckernstr. 68
10965 Berlin
Dates:
Info:
Level: open, beginners welcome
in English
Price: 270€/240€* 

Description

Shaping Change is a concept drawn from Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown. This book will accompany our body research, inspiring us and serving as a collective tool for imagination. In this intensive, we will explore Contact Improvisation as a collaborative practice of shaping change—cultivating agency, awareness, and radical softness. We will approach our bodies as universes shaped by sensations, perceptions, habits, cultures, and beliefs. Through dance, we will engage in dialogue, deepening our connection to one another and the intricate web of relations we create simply by existing on this planet. Contact Improvisation will be our practice of awake awareness, readiness, transformation, and solidarity—an art of presence in each unfolding moment, opening space for encounter. We will explore its technical aspects, focusing on the skeleton, skin, breath, and the dynamics of giving and supporting weight. Together, we will cultivate strategies for being in this world. What does it mean to shape change collectively—softly, radically—for a future that is both imaginable and unimaginable?
Biographies

Nica Portavia

Nica Portavia is an Italian dancer, teacher and researcher of Contact Improvisation, who fell in love with Contact Improvisation very early on. She mainly trained with teachers including Steve Paxton, Daniel Lepkoff, Charlie Morrissey, Angelika Doney, Asaf Bacharach, KJ Holmes, Anya Cloud. She is an organizer of national and international dance events, including the Italycontactfest (International CI Festival which takes place in Italy and has now reached its tenth edition:  www.italycontactfest.com); Being Touch Festival (www.beingtouch.org), and as part of a group the Ecite 2022 Portugal, she is also a communicator for the CI Global Calendar project. More info at https://nica-portavia-dancer.jimdosite.com/project