Dear Friends and Colleagues,
It’s June in Brussels, the first heat wave of summer has already passed, and I’m sitting at my desk after so much time away on tour this year wondering how to let friends and colleagues know something about recent happenings in my work and travel. I write this to share my excitement about these projects and the wonderful people and places I’ve had the good fortune to encounter. I hope this may kindle some inspirations and be the beginning for some new exchanges and dialogues. Thanks for taking the time to read into it, Kurt

Teaching in Schools and Universities
This June marks 5 years of regular guest teaching at P.A.R.T.S. and the EDDC/HKA in Arnhem. The consistent returning to these schools has been a great way to see the students and the programming develop. It’s also offered a way to evaluate my courses (“Organic Effects Technique Training”, “Contact and Partnering Skills”, and “Compositional Mind”) in practice with students over the years. It’s been satisfying to see how well integrated the skills have become for the upper classes, and how this foundation provides tools for their own choreographic research. I like having the occasional new person or a mix of the year groups to see the clear contrast of how the learning has taken root, and enjoy seeing how this systematic approach to contact improvisation is nurturing safe, informed and creative partnering and performance work. At University settings in Arnhem, University of Antwerpen (Lier), ForumDança’s Choreographic Training Program in Portugal, and Korean National University of the Arts in Seoul we also spent a good amount of time with real-time composition (in the Compositional Mind course) and gave public performances of the work.

Festivals, Workshops and Performances
This past May I returned from a month in Japan, having given workshops and performances in Kyoto, Hiroshima, Matsuyama, Oita and Tokyo. This second trip to Japan was very rewarding: I was inspired by the swift learning as well as the creative, sensitive application of the work. This trip was also an opportunity to reflect upon observations I made in the article “On the Road in Korea and Japan” that I wrote after my trip last year. This article proposes an attitude of cultural responsiveness while teaching in different regions of the world.

During the last two years I’ve also had the pleasure of leading intensives at the International Improvisation Festival in Budapest, Hungary; the Contact Festival Freiburg; as well as workshops (some with connected performances) in Amsterdam, Busan, Brussels, Cyprus, Firenze, Grenoble, Kyoto, Lisbon, Lyon, Palermo, Paris, Porto, Seoul, and Tokyo.

In some of the workshops I’ve been able to continue to develop the “Working the Land” project. In Cyprus we have begun a VideoDance project outdoors at locations in the environment. We expect to have a workshop devoted to that theme ready for the 2007 season. Location work was also presented in Porto and Palermo.

Company Trainings
In addition to the workshop and university intensives, I’ve continued to give regular company trainings for Ultima Vez (Belgium), Gallotta Danse (France), as well as for Cie Michele Anne De Mey (Belgium), Company Virgilio Sieni (Italy), and Rosas (Belgium). These trainings incorporate the “Organic Effects” technique principles with an integral warm-up, combinations and short partnering sequences.

Publications, Lectures and Projects
Since the publication of “Accelerating the Learning Curve” in Contact Quarterly in the Fall of 2004 I have proceeded further with the development of these ideas for creating an organized syllabus for the teaching of Contact and Partnering skills, using models and menus for assisting the students in grasping the material faster -- and having it available for use in their dancing. The results have been even better than I could expect: seeing rapid growth in students and professionals as their dance gains clarity and expressive contour in practice and performance situations. An excerpt from this article follows,
“During the past six years, I’ve been developing arrangements of information to help enrich the process of learning Contact Improvisation. This has involved deriving lists and organizing them into “palettes” of principles that I’ve experienced in Contact and partnering, which can be used to facilitate the assimilation and creative application of skills to a wide range of dancing.

I have found that with this logical, graphic organization of the material, the dancers can grasp the partnering principles rapidly in relation to their own choice making. They are also better able to observe the choices of others and make informed responses. Additionally, their problem solving becomes less personal and more objective. The palettes provide concrete tools to identify problems in physical terms—Why are they getting tangled up in the limbs of their partner? Why do the transitions between weight-sharing moments seem heavy or awkward? Why does a moment of flight feel reckless or unstable?—and develop concrete solutions in the dance.

These pedagogic principles have proven to be successful for getting students not only to really fly with Contact Improvisation but, perhaps more importantly, to be able to research and perform with these skills in an articulate, intelligible, and safe manner. They begin to realize a wide spectrum of working possibilities and choices with one side of their awareness—a questioning, reasoning mind that, somewhat counterintuitively, needs to be engaged in order to be quieted. The playful, creative, right side of the brain is then open to be in the moment and engage in the subtleties of movement interaction.”

These ideas are the basis of a forthcoming publication with the working title: “SCAPE”, which stands for “Systems for Classification and Analysis of Partnering Explorations”. Proposals for co-producers of this project are being considered.
In March 2006 I was commissioned by Kunstencentrum Monty and the University of Antwerp to give a lecture during the residency of Felix Ruckert. “Conflict and Coincidence: Contemporary Trends in Contact Improvisation” examines the historical and philosophical background of the work, and then goes on to present eight different contemporary developments and directions of influence in this field. This multi-media powerpoint presentation has since been given in Tokyo, and is also programmed for Romania, Austria and Portugal.

Well, that’s the news from my desk for now. I’ll be hoping that this ‘newsletter’ has been of some interest for you, and that it might serve to open communication between us. I welcome any questions or comments, and wish we may find some opportunity to connect in the near future!

Warm regards,
Kurt Koegel

kurtkoegel@mac.com

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:: Teaching and Pereformances
at P.A.R.T.S., HKA Arnhem
Korean National Univ. of the Arts, Seoul
School for New Dance Development,NL,
Virgilio Sieni Dans Co., Firenze, IT
Teaching at festivals in Kyoto, Japan,
Busan, Korea and Amsterdam ::