This year we don’t have intensives, but we try to tie our some of our classes into pathways.
Think of Pathways as a map for navigating through the festival — a map that helps you get a sense of the terrain, without telling you where you have to go.
You might choose one path and stay with it, giving yourself time to settle in, go deeper, and discover what unfolds through continuity. You might follow it for a while, arrive at a crossroads, and feel curious to explore another direction. You might wander into a landscape that feels just right for you, or change the scenery completely. You might try a path, discover it’s not what you need today, and simply turn back.
There is no right way to travel. You can commit to one pathway and let it become your thread through the festival, or move between different pathways, following your curiosity and the encounters that arise along the way. Both can open up unexpected discoveries.
The Pathways are here to offer orientation and possibilities, while leaving the route in your hands. We invite you to shape your own festival journey — a route, a rhythm, an adventure that meets your needs in this particular moment.
And remember: a good journey also includes stopping. Take a break. Rest by the path. Linger somewhere just because you enjoy being there. There is no need to reach the next destination.
Shared Ground
Teacher: Annukka
Pathway: CI Essential
What could it mean to belong to the ground we share?
Through Contact Improvisation, we explore belonging through weight, touch, falling, listening and choice. We move between autonomy and interdependence, sensing how our bodies shape and are shaped by the shared ground.
We open to the space around and between us, exploring how we move with space, shape it through our movement, and are moved by it in return.
What if the ground became a field we participate in and care for? How does recognising our interdependence change the way we move, relate and care for the earth we share?
Weather permitting, we may begin—or even hold the entire class—outdoors, dancing in the snow or on a frozen lake.
Our focus is on attuning to and being affected by other beings while staying true to our own nature. We will allow our imagination, movement, and the quality of our dancing to be inspired and shaped by the nature we encounter, both within ourselves and around us.
Through this exploration, we aim to let our bodies and our encounters dance in response to the living world, opening space for inspiration, connection, and movement that is alive.
Plasticity and mobility
Teacher: Ilona
Pathway: CI Essential
In this class, we open our bodies to fluid, plastic movement in relation to ourselves and a partner, by becoming aware of the mobility of our joints, skeleton, and body mass.
Embodied – Towards body wisdom, flow, and connection
Teacher: Iiris and Jarno
Pathway: Soft Somatic
Through touch, hands-on work, breath, and somatic movement, we open body channels and explore receiving as an active, creative process. How does touch turn into movement, and movement into dance?
This is an embodiment practice: bringing thoughts, intuition, and experiences into the body and physical reality. When they grow roots, they can turn into agency and transformative power. Positioned as channels between earth and sky, we remain open to what wants to flow through us. Through contact improvisation, we explore weight, support, and active listening, building a bridge between inner experience and shared movement. Being seen and sharing movement amplifies the process and makes it more tangible.
Falling
Teacher: Linda
Pathway: Mechanics of Contact Improvisation
Falling down or falling up? Falling through the space? Falling as a letting go or falling as a direction? Enjoying the fall, the disorientation, the excitement, yet maybe also having some fear of falling completely..? Falling as a leap of trust or as a skill that takes years and years of practise..? Falling as one of the original fulcrums of exploration in CI and falling as the one guaranteed way of finding new pathways, of being surprised both on the dance floor and in life…
The creative flow in improvisation and CI
Teacher: Linda
Pathway:
How to enhance and appreciate the creative potential and the creative flow in contact improvisation and in the jam space? How to keep this co-created space alive and free to shift at all times? How to develop the skills of becoming more and more aware of the whole spacetime-universe that we are creating together – now and now and now?
Entering a duet through light touch
Teacher: Malcolm
Pathway: Soft Somatic
We will take time to tune in to ourselves. Tuning to gravity and sensation. Observing where our attention goes and playing with where we can place it. We’ll then enter a duet through light touch and see what happens.
The Weber-Fechner effect describes how our sensitivity to sensation decreases as we exert more effort in what we do. By slowing things down and reducing effort through working initially with light touch the spectrum of sensations that we can play with increases.
The aim is to support our improvisational choice making and create a dependable ground that we can rely on (and return to if needed) as our dances open up and become more dynamic and reflexive.
Dynamic Flying
Teacher: Mirva
Pathway: Mechanics of Contact Improvisation
Together, we will investigate how to generate and receive energy, moving in and out of the floor with efficiency and clarity. Through guided exercises, you’ll develop skills in timing, counterbalance, and responsive partnering—learning how to safely enter and exit lifts while maintaining a continuous flow.
Dynamic flying invites a balance of trust and technique. We’ll work with pathways into the air, exploring how spirals, weight shifts, and directional forces can support effortless lifting and landing. Attention will be given to listening through touch, refining sensitivity so that movement emerges collaboratively rather than through force.
Living In The World As If It Were Home
Teacher: Otto
Pathway: CI Essential
1st part – Gravity.
For reasons unknown to my knowledge, masses attract each other. Since the earth’s mass is so much more bigger than ours, it seems that the earth is pulling us, but we are also pulling it, our mass pulling earth’s mass.
Gravity, or weight if you will, is a force that is flowing/going down, into the earth.
We are like we are because of gravity (and bunch of other things, but gravity is a big one)
How we move in this force field, how it moves us, how it flows through us, into the earth, and how we pull the earth, and it’s support into ourselves and further.
2nd part – Reach
Imagine the smallest possible reach that you can sense/feel. Do it.
Where does it come from?
What is needed in order to reach?
What qualities “reach” request and/or opens?
Title of the classes stolen from the book by Tim Lillburn: https://www.corbelstonepress.com/product-page/living-in-the-world-as-if-it-were-home-tim-lilburn
Leaning Into Motion
Teacher: Panu
Pathway: Mechanics of Contact Improvisation
Class description
What happens when we dare to give more weight, move farther off balance, or let go of knowing exactly where we are? This class explores the core principles of Contact Improvisation through progressive exercises in weight-sharing, momentum, orientation, disorientation, and collective exploration.
Bodywork to trio landscape to authentic movement
Teacher: Samuli
Pathway:
After many days of shared dances and interaction, here you have the possibility to come back to and rejuvenate yourself. We will begin with bodywork in trios, journey through a trio landscape score and end up with authentic movement. Welcome to return to your ground zero.
Arrival class
Teacher: Terhi
Pathway:
Getting to the festival requires an effort. Being at the festival can be an effort. This arrival class offers time to land and settle, time for individual movement exploration and time to open towards space and other individuals.
“Breathing, Falling, Catching”
Teacher: Vega
Pathway: Mechanics of Contact Improvisation
Falling & catching begins with our breath. We can use our natural breath cycle to synchronize and tune in with others, while playing with gravity, momentum and the ideas of falling & flying – both in solo movement, in contact with a partner, and within the shifting dynamics of a trio.
We will begin by exploring falling on a micro-scale, gradually growing our movement towards more complex actions. Through the subtle mechanics of the ‘small dance’, we can discover fluid ways of catching ourselves and each other, using momentum, suspension, reaching, swinging and bouncing. We will explore how these principles can lead into easy rides and weight-shifts, where falling, catching and flying become part of a continuous dance.
Working with the frame of the arms and counterbalance, we will look at how body tone, alignment and positioning can create both support and lightness. We will also explore grounding through the pelvis and feet, rolling into rides, staying mobile underneath a partner, and finding soft, connected landings.
From these principles we will move towards trios, exploring how three bodies can share weight, momentum and space. How do we enter or leave? How can we catch another dancer’s trajectory, support the existing dynamic, or redirect it? We will play with spiraling, orbiting, timing, pausing and changing levels, cultivating our ability to read and respond to the constantly shifting composition.
Trios can bring a wonderful combination of challenge, playfulness and care. Sometimes we fly, sometimes we catch, sometimes we simply witness and wait. By softening, listening and staying available to what is happening in the moment, we can discover unexpected pathways and let go of fixed intentions.
I will offer clear technical exercises and principles, balanced with time for research and improvisation. The aim is to integrate the material into our dancing bodies – cultivating lightness, responsiveness and trust, while enjoying the playful possibilities of dancing together.
Getting older
Teacher: Ville
Pathway:
In this class we are getting a little bit older. But what do we do while years are passing by and the body is not the same as it used to be?
I try to find and get answers on how to practice CI in the old body way. This class provides physical skills on how to manage your passion for dancing and desires for moving experiences. We will slow down movement and simplify creativity. Time and connection in CI practice come more valuable as we are getting older. And maybe we can lab how to have healing and nourishing dances.
Key words: healing, slow creativity, connection, time-space-love, fun, skills, smallness, simplicity, leaning,
