ROOTED IN MOTION
BERLIN
August 2025- May 2026
6 Modules spread over 10 months to deepen your knowledge and expand your practice of Dance, Contact Improvisation & Somatic movement.
Join our 10-month modular training in Contact Improvisation, Somatic Movement, and Improvisation. Gain a strong foundation, develop skills to adapt and explore movement, learn to create safe spaces for your community, and leave with tools to continue your personal growth and research in dance.
MODULES
1. Grounding & Earth: Exploring stillness, gravity, and release through somatic techniques to build sensitivity and subtle movement awareness.
2. Spine & Spirals: Studying the spine’s range of motion and power of spirals for efficient, dynamic movement in solo and partner work.
3. Falling & Catching: Techniques for engaging gravity, momentum, and frame structure to lift and be lifted safely.
4. Group Awareness and Jamming Skills: Honing group dynamics, spatial awareness, and improvisation structures for trios and larger groups.
5. Diving into Softness: Deepening connection through breath, fascia awareness, and trust-building, enhancing improvisational clarity.
6. Integration & Expansion: Revisiting core concepts and shaping a sustainable personal practice for future exploration.
Artistic Vision:
It is our experience that the practice of contact improvisation is a deeply complex multi-layered discipline that weaves its way into your life. The form deals with so many modalities and ways of interacting with yourself, with another and with a group and can present a mirror for opening up new perspectives into how we choose to live our lives.
In one moment the practice can feel purely physical and technical - studying bio-mechanics and how the bodies can roll spiral, fall, roll and fly together - in another moment, the stillness of meeting someone in touch can feel deeply therapeutic and soothing, at other times the experience of being in a jam space gives one a wonderful sense of interconnected community rarely experienced in our modern world.
It’s this multifaceted experience of moving oneself and the group that we will share throughout this training program. Bringing together intense physical practice, supportive nourishing, touch and community building skills to create a truly unique program that at the end of it will leave you with the tools to share the practice, build your own community and nourish yourself and others with this fascinatingly complex ever evolving movement practice.
TESTIMONIALS.
Vega and Hugh’s workshop was very impactful for me. They are both very good at teaching techniques and concepts while allowing space for play and exploration. There’s a certain lightheartedness to the atmosphere that makes it easy for people to connect and learn. I also really enjoyed the daily bodywork, it allowed my nervous system to easily regulate and my body felt great and ready to dance more often than not. As a CI teacher, I really enjoyed their concepts and exercises some of which I have used in my own teaching. Besides being great teachers, and dancers they are kind and lovely human beings. Highly recommend studying and playing with them.
Micheal Bernal
Modules:
Module 1: 25th-29th August 2025
Grounding & Earth
The Earth is our first partner. It is always there to support us and catch us. By giving time to sink into stillness, using the breath as a tool to drop tension from the body and release into the floor, we can allow space to open to, and discover new movement possibilities from a place of tuned attention and open curiosity.
Through letting go and yielding to Gravity, the body can find easy strength and soft structure. The more time we can give the body to release and let go, the easier it is to feel the subtlety of these principles. This approach, based more in the realm of Somatics and ‘developmental movement patterns’, requires patience and deep listening. Sometimes it may feel like we are ‘doing nothing’ and this can be quite challenging at first. But going slow can open a greater capacity for the body to absorb new information. A practice of un-doing. Releasing to re-learn.
Through slowing down and taking more time, we sink into the deeper tissues that move slower than the muscles. Feeling the sliding of fascia, the rolling of the organs, the flowing of liquids through the body. Then, when we enter physical connection with another body we have a softer body tone, allowing greater sensitivity and awareness.
Module 2: 22-26 October 2025
Spine & spirals
The spine is an endless source of research, fascination and discovery. We will study how it functions - playing with the many different qualities and ranges of motion. We will offer specific movement patterns for optimal spine efficiency. This material is very helpful for integrating pathways in the body that are useful when entering contact and also opening up new possibilities in your own body, as well as investigating principles to give ‘offerings’ and ‘invitations’ to others.
Spirals are everywhere. The whole universe moves in infinite spirals, and the body loves to move this way too. We often work with the image of the Double Helix (DNA strand) - a brilliant image for 2 spines joining in motion. Spirals are efficient and effective. They can generate power or dissipate energy, build momentum and inertia in any plane or level of motion and transition easily between levels. Opening up the many possibilities of multidirectional movement and entering to the backspace. The more we research spirals in our dance, the more we find…
Module 3: 03-07 December 2025
Falling & catching
We will begin by playing with gravity and momentum, focusing on the ideas of falling and flying- both in solo movement, and in contact. Starting close to the ground and building up through levels, we develop confidence in our own abilities, building trust in the body.
By researching in our solo movement the subtle mechanics of ‘small dance’, suspension & reaching, we progress towards using momentum and spirals to learn, fluid ways to lift one-another through ‘catching a ride’. Working with the frame and structure of the arms, we will explore ways connect to space and find counterbalance in the body, providing frames to both lift and be lifted, and offer structures to be explored. We will focus in on the details and technique of body tone, alignment and small points of contact, that help with finding lightness in being lifted and efficiency in lifting.
As well as these specific focuses, there will also be time given to more free exploration, to integrate the material into the dance naturally and organically.
Module 4: 04-08 February 2026
Group awareness and jamming skills
Contact is a group practice. A continually evolving and changing space held by the attention of the movers present. Coming together to discover, enjoy and witness ways of moving, interacting and being.
In this module we will focus attention more towards how we sculpt space as a group, open our collective perception and look at how we move as an interconnected whole. How we frame dances by watching, giving space, feeling when to move, and when to be still. We will work with structures and scores to frame improvisation, and specific techniques for working in trios and larger groups.
A dance score can be viewed in a similar way to a score of music. A score can have specific focuses and guidelines to give structure and direction to improvisation.
We focus on cultivating a deeper awareness of listening, breathing, giving, receiving, and timing.
Technique and Poetry.
Structure and Freedom.
Playful Beings in Motion.
Module 5. 01-05 April.
Diving into softness
With softness and spaciousness already developed and understood in the body from the previous 4 modules and training in between, we will take more time within this module to slow down even more, and from this space discover the subtle nuances that allow for clearer & deeper communication within the dance. The gentle sliding of fascia that indicates direction of movement, tuning to a partners’ breath to hear their intention and waiting in stillness together to allow the dance to arise from your shared connection are a few of the ideas and principles we will explore in this time. A space of allowing and giving trust to yourself, our dancing partners and feeling more the nature of improvisation.
Module 6. 27-31 May 2026 -
Integration & expansion.
The final module will be an integrative experience, to re-cap, revisit and remember all of the work that will be sitting in the body at this point. A moment to feel the accumulated embodied knowledge that has been discovered over the Year. We will also take some time to look at how to go forward with a personal practice that can continue building your individual learning.
Hugh & Vega.
Hugh & Vega have been teaching together since 2014 and over that time have created a unique approach to sharing the practice of C.I.
THE VENUE
Eden Studios
The training takes place at the beautful Dock 11 Eden studios in Pankow. The studio have a cafe and gardens. It is also possible to book accommodation directly through Eden to be as close to the studio and remove the morning commute! Click the link below for more info about the studios and options for your stay…
PRICING
A deposit of 50€ per module is required upon acceptance of registration (a payment plan can be agreed upon if this is not possible)
each module can be paid in full separately to spread the cost across the year.
Price per Module:
Budget: 380€
Total: 2280€
Regular: 480€
Total: 2880€
The program is intended to be experienced as a complete package. However, life is sometimes not always so simple and other things like available finances or work commitments etc, get in the way , so to take that in to account it is possible to join 1 or some of the modules at a slightly higher price.
Priority will be given to participants joining the full protocol.
Single Module Price:
Budget: 430€
Reguar: 530€
WHO IS IT FOR?
This training program is aimed at anybody wishing to deepen their practice and take movement and dance further into their life.Whether that is going to be directed to developing your own classes or directly for your own practice, this course will give you the tools and techniques to further your relationship to this fascinating and continually evolving practice.Although this is not specifically a teacher training program there will be some elements about how to share the practice through our own specific pedagogical approach and information about how to create safe explorative spaces that foster and support a learning environment for movement practice.
