CI & WAR:

5-11 August 2024

with: Inna Falkova, Rabeah Murkos, Ines Pérez-Wilke, Peter Pleyer

Studio 24

Contact Improvisation – Politics – Somactivism

Three curated weeks of dance, study, jams, labs

Inna Falkova

Choreographer by the first higher education. Studied physical theater and performance techniques in Europe.  Teacher at the Theater Department of Kharkiv National University of Arts. Teacher at the Dance Department of the Kharkiv State Academy of Culture.  Second higher education – Dance-Movement Therapy ( Institute of Integrative Psychology of Professional Development).  Completed a post-graduate program at Kiev Academy of Psychological Sciences.

I’m leading trainings and development programs in Integrative Dance-Movement Therapy, body and somatic therapy. I’m certified in the programs: Body Mind Gestalt Therapy (Arye Bursztyn, Israel) and Integral Body-Mind Therapy (London Somatic Institute) based on Body-Mind Centering.  I was studying in Trauma Somatic Education method. Participant of annual conferences of CI teachers in Europe and America. Organizer of the Kharkov Laboratory of Contact Improvisation. Leading a regular Authentic Movement group. Creator of the performative experimental group « DANCELAB ». Director of the plastique and choreography for dramatic plays. 

I have been working with people since 1995. Working with art projects since 1997. Moving in improvisational dance styles and CI since 2000. Working in psychology and therapy fields since 2005 20 years’ experience of teaching in higher educational institutions.

Since the beginning of the full scale invasion I have been working as a crisis psychotherapist with humanitarian and volunteer organizations in deoccupied territories.  I have experience of working in the « Mental health » department of MSF,  Doctors Without Borders. During this 2 years of war, I took part in the creation of six performances on the theme of war.  An important work for me was the creation of the research process « Alfa of death » for ImPulsTanz festival.

Now I’m leading an Authentic Movement group and a somatic practice group “Nervous system: nutrition, support, lifehacks” in Kharkiv, 40 kilometers from Russian border, and a therapeutic group of support and recovery in the de-occupied territories adjacent to the Russian border.

Surprisingly, I continue combining both of my professional interests: psychology and art projects.

Rabeah Murkos

Inés Pérez-Wilke Lecturer and performer vénézuélienne interested in the process improvisation based on her studies in interculturality. Winner of the PAUSE program of the Collège de France and the Scholar Rescue Fund of Institute of International Education 2021-2023. Titular professor at the National University of Arts (VZLA) and Associate Researcher at the Centre for the Epistemology of Literature and the Performing Arts of the University Côte d’Azur (FR). She has developed collaborative creative works, transmission and research in the performing arts in Latin America in Venezuela, Cuba, Brazil, Colombia and Bolivia where she worked with groups and community associations in research-creation processes through the performing arts. In this way she develops improvisation performative strategies of agency based on popular principles of tunning and collective action. Fields of study: Improvisation, decolonial aesthetics, social transformation, interculturality. Based in France since 2021, she continues her collaborations in Spain, Italy and Austria, with the European Improvisation Network.

Peter Pleyer studied dance and choreography at the European Dance Development Center (EDDC) in the art academy in Arnhem/NL. He worked as dancer and choreographic assistant for Yoshiko Chuma (New York) and Mark Tompkins(Paris). Since 2000 he lives in Berlin with a strong interest in new methods of training dance and composition, where improvisation plays a central role. He teaches internationally, his workshop „history in practice“ that focused strongly on the „post-judson-avantgarde“ was held in the alternative dance academy in Poznan, the Polish Theatre-Institut, Warsaw, MA Choreography ArtEZ/ Arnhem, HZT-Berlin and Tanzquartier Wien. From 2007-14 he was the artistic director of Tanztage Berlin and from 2012 -14 in the programming team of Sophiensæle/Berlin. In 2014 he successfully picked up his choreographic career with the solo „Ponderosa Trilogy“ (Life-Legacy-Project Tanzhaus NRW, Impulstanz Wien), group research and choreography „visible undercurrent“ (2014/16) and „cranky bodies dance reset“ (2017). The solo „triton tanzt – twisted trident“ about the history of release technique, deconstructing masculinity and the death of his father, was performed in Berlin and Prag (2019/20 and 2024). In 2020, in a short break between two corona lockdowns, he founded, together with his partner MIchiel Keuper the Cranky Bodies a/company with the aim of developing a practice of improvised group performances that bridge the dance vs. fine arts divide. In 2022 they realized the traveling project „terrestrial transit“. He was a guest professor at HZT/UdK Berlin in 2015/16.