Kindertanz
The class focuses on learning coordination, through interactive games based on somatic development practices and using imagination as the main source of interest. Children are encouraged and guided to solve tasks using their bodies and imaginations. As this is a very fragile age, the class also simultaneously focuses on developing the child's independence and engagement in different environments and activities, socializing with different children, and working together. Because children are deeply musical by nature, our focus will continue to be very much on understanding and developing their musicality.
Contemporary / Improvisation for adults I beginner
This class is an introduction to contemporary improvisation and should be approached as moments of shared exploration in space and time, through dance. The main goal of this improvisation class, will be to bring our creative body in the epicentre of our focus, allowing little dances to so easily happen to us. In this class we will allow the hierarchy between the body and the mind to loosen up, finding an embodied ‘embrainment’, establishing in that way, the body as the main point of entry.
Through physical guidance and imagery, we will attempt to listen, sense, feel and think through our moving bodies. Participants will be encouraged to intertwine external input and specified focus with internal perspectives. We will aim to expand our bodily awareness, challenge our proprioception and collective spatial awareness, along with tuning our listening to internal and external rhythms. Through deepening our understanding with playfulness, we will learn how to find easiness around notions of fluidity and heaviness, research our freedom in expression, whilst experimenting with and beyond our perceived bodily boundaries and forms.
In this class we will tap into different improvisation dance practices as well as somatic practices based on imagery work.
Erika Kookie Filia
After studying speech pathology (BSc, 2015) and music therapy, Erika decided to follow xier/xies passion for dance. After a year of dance training in CobosMika (Spain, 2016), xier/xies continued xier/xies studies at SEAD, Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance and graduated in 2022. Driven by collectivity and creativity, Erika loves to immerse in deep sensory, imaginative physical experiences and extend into the therapeutic realm. Erika's physicality, stems from intrinsic research on xier/xies part, leading to improvisation and various research processes. They often cross the line between performance art and acting. These aspects in dance allow Erika to immerse xier/xies in the multi-layered work and appreciate the expertise of others in the creative environment. Erika believes that these processes increase and expand the level of complexity in her own artistic practice, as the practice is not only related to itself, but more importantly to the coexistence of diversity. Erika has performed works by Elina Pirrinen, Hillel Kogan, Meytal Blanaru, Juxtapoz Company, Nicholas Vladislav, Manuel Ronda, Oded Graf, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, among others, while creating pieces that serve xier/xies own choreographic interests.