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an ongoing artistic practice dialogue with friend and collaborator photographer artist Caro Gervay, immersing into the materials of our family photos and how we want to remember and be remembered… feeling the actual weight of our body members : head, pelvis bowl, hands, feet; re - membering all our parts that may have traveled far away from each other, being witnessed by the heavens, noting a cloud peering through the skylight of the window to watch us work together

Cyanotype reunion with my two paternal grandmas

More to unravel and share soon! ☁️

@carogervay

Workshop plan whirled up into the air last night teaching guest artist session with the young dancers in Swindon Youth Dance Company So enjoyed turning the plan upside down and spilling it into a new shape again and again responding to the creative energy and sensitivities of each dancer and how they work together

Bathe me in your presence

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Video @sophilosofia

What will we do this Sunday at the stroud contact improvisation class with Jan-Ming? 🤓

🤩 🍎 Class material : We will explore ways to roll and shift around our own body through lifting and releasing in relation to our ground. In partnering we will wake up our back space and other parts of us less used in daily life, to practice initiating from, safely. This will head into explorations of full weight sharing, surfing, and merging our centres to travel together with trust. And then we will jam!

Here is a video of me, trying to do contact improvisation with the imagination of all of you who I will dance with on Sunday. Directed & Video-ed by Sophie Marsh 🤓⚡️🌸 The Heavens, Stroud

Class Details : Sunday 10th May 5:30-7pm @ Maypole Hall, Stroud

Drop-in £16
Or book for all 3 remaining classes this term (10th/17th/24th May) at reduced rate

More info email jan.lee.uk@gmail.com

Or visit: https://janlee.org/work/contact-improvisation-6-week-course-stroud/

What are the creative possibilities between each dance partner you encounter - of the specific weight, height differences between you ? As well as the qualities unique to you which empowers you to dance?

This Sunday 3 May afternoon workshop in Bristol :

We invite you to playfully break past assumptions of each other when thinking about our perceived weight, height and strength.

We will explore movement patterns that weave into partner explorations and tools that can be modulated for dances of relatively ‘lighter’, ‘smaller’, ‘heavier’ or ‘larger’ dancer combinations...

Jan-Ming Lee & Joe Evans will guide you through the language of weight, momentum, relationship to our ground, our centre, tuning into shared spaces, energetically & physically, into moments of jamming to integrate material.

Tickets still available !https://www.tickettailor.com/events/bristolcontactimprovisationdance/2082577

✨I enjoy breaking down the caterpillar segments of my spine to sense the easiest way to resist a load from crumpling me. Teaching contact improv in this way means that my mind can keep unlearning itself from manipulating or fixating on ‘progress’ and ‘doing’ or ‘being’ something… planning some more juicy ci material for Stroudies on Summer Sundays evenings - now only 3 weeks left (10/17/24 May) and Bristol Ci Workshop on SIZE with Joe Evans here (3 May). Drop-in / 3-week bundles / Ticket options for jam also available .Hope to see many of you there! ✨

It’s good to talk… while dancing… I actively facilitate this going in between verbal and movement communication in my workshops and this one coming up called SIZE? A contact improvisation workshop with Jan-Ming Lee & Joe Evans utilises this to ask honest questions about our size differences as we find choice in our dancing in physical contact. Sun 3 May, Bristol… book your space now! Free entry to jam after…
More info and to buy tickets:
https://www.facebook.com/share/18YDQXi1D4/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Reflecting on the unique way that dance performance can hold and celebrate a diversity of styles of communicating and expression . I learnt so much in the last year as I co-created with artists with learning disabilities and/or autism. The actors here at Hijinx were so playful and inspiring! Loved all the joyful bumps as we steered the boat together to create something new and unknown to us all.

Not much to say, but so much to move…

Happy to announce that Stroud Somatic Contemporary Dance classes will now run for a 6 week Summer Term in May-Jun!.. Come and join us for the April taster and sign up to the new term!

These inclusive classes welcome all levels and bodies.

It will be meditative, flowing, challenging and fun!

It is rooted in movement patterns that follow the natural angles of our body, using the fluidity of QiGong principles, animal-like movements, elements of physical contact and a grounded approach using floorwork.

More details: www.janlee.org/work/taster-workshop-contemporary-dance-stroud/

Fractals, completing my spinal movements…

… notes about my dance approach which underpins my somatic contemporary dance class, taster session coming up Sun 26 April 11:30-13:00 in Stroud ! ✨🌱🌀

Last year I spent studio time centering the discomforts of my spinal curvatures - in my choreography and my approach to help others similarly through movement.

One motif you can see here is a Fractal motif, where I am finding the completion of my movement in my spine as it resonates in my hands, my feet, my solar plexus, the nape of my neck and anywhere else that wants to curl in and expand out.

I am also interested in how movement motifs resonate and translate across different bodies, where we have similarities and differences in our past stories, our future wishes, our disabilities, our neurodivergences …

This curve which breathes freedom as it permits a head and tail independence, is really beautiful to improvise with, and brings a sense of grounding and expanding to our body expression, as well as being a unifyingmotif that can translate to all spinal bodies to dance together . Gratitude to my mentors and to the Taoist lineages that supported me with this ongoing study.

Why not email me and let me know that you’d like to come to the taster?

I would love to see this class continue as a regular series on Sunday mornings in sunny Stroud ☀️

Please share it to all your friends and let’s make it happen together!

More details : https://www.facebook.com/share/1JTQpNazSu/?mibextid=wwXIfr

#somatic #contemporarydance #stroud #scoliosis #inclusive

A scene in a piece I choreographed with Hijinx Theatre Academy at Chapter Arts Centre ~ Gather A Dance was inspired by the visceral experiences that performers can gift to audiences, which connect us all together. Thank you to the brilliant actors who collaborated generously to co-create and perform this in Feb 2026 on Lunar New Year 2026! Thank you to Papergang Theatre and Hijinx Theatre for all your support

#hijinxtheatre #hijinxacademy #dance #theatre #lunarnewyear2026