An Axis Syllabus and Contact Improvisation Workshop
with Marcus van Duren and Emily Jones
Sept 25–27Santa Barbara, CA @ Dance Hub
Resonance & Response is an Axis Syllabus and Contact Improvisation workshop. The Axis Syllabus is an archive of information that maps the limits and potentials of human movement through anatomy, biomechanics and physics. Contact Improv serves as a space for us to grow our movement vocabulary in a fun, creative, and relational way.
Throughout the workshop we surf between solo explorations, set movement motifs, and Contact Improvisation practices. These different modes of research inform one another and create a multifaceted path toward movement fluency.
Resonance & Response is a space in time for immersive learning held with curiosity, care, and a sense of infinite play.
The weekend will include:
- Hands-on somatic explorations
- Phrase work to expand movement vocabulary
- Efficient, easeful pathways into and out of the floor
- Discovering suspension, buoyancy, and loft
- Lifts that emerge through shared timing, alignment, and structure
- Group scores and compositional improvisation
- Developing sensitivity and responsiveness in motion
Friday
2:00–7:00pm
Surfacing Routes — sequential descents and departures, solo and contact dancing.
@ Dance Hub, Large Studio
Saturday
10:00–11:30am
Maps of Motion — presentation and group discussion of fascia, interstitium, spinal mechanics, and more!
Anatomy Social — coffee & pastries in the park (location TBD)
12:30–3:00pm
The Conversational Nature of Contact — Contact Improvisation as physical dialog: exchanges informed by noticing potentials, following impulse, making invitations, releasing expectations in support of genuine exchange.
@ Dance Hub, Large Studio
4:00–6:00pm
Guided by the Curve — Exploring rolling, crawling, walking, jumping, and all the movement in between while following the nuances of our hips and shoulders.
@ Dance Hub, Large Studio
Sunday
10:00am–12:30pm
Earth to Flight Continuum — revisiting, further developing and expanding themes, movement patterns and scores from previous classes. Part solo dancing, part CI.
@ Dance Hub, Large Studio
2:00–4:00pm
Closing Group Score: Overscore — group score ritual, improvise through a structure, accompanied by a live musician.
@ Dance Hub, Large Studio
Emily Jones
Emily Jones is a dancer, choreographer, movement educator, and bodyworker based in Portland, Oregon. Her interdisciplinary practice centers intuition, embodied learning, and movement-based research, with particular attention to community care, relational ethics, and communication within spaces of learning and collaboration. She has performed with numerous artists in Portland and the Bay Area and is engaged in a long-term artistic collaboration with Hannah Krafcik. Their interdisciplinary work has been presented nationally. Emily facilitates contact improvisation jams, organizes events, teaches and performs with the Queer Contact Improvisation Cohort based in Portland. She is a certified Axis Syllabus teacher and offers classes and workshops informed by this lens both locally and beyond.
Marcus van Duren
Marcus van Duren is a dancer, teacher and musician based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Marcus has intensively studied movement and dance since his discovery of contact improvisation in 2012. He has been teaching CI locally and internationally for more than 10 years. Marcus is an active member of the axis syllabus community and is currently an Axis Syllabus Teacher Candidate. For Marcus, teaching is not just about transmitting information. It's also about creating a safe space for participants to explore, take risks and collaborate. When it comes to teaching contact improvisation, Marcus specializes in merging the technical information of bio-mechanics with play, humor and ritual to create engaging learning experiences that aim to serve the whole person, not just the dancer.