Movement & Contact Improvisation Festival

Curious about the body, art and expression through movement from a very young age, she has a strong background in ballet and contemporary dance, graduating in Dance from the Escola Superior de Dança (Lisbon, Portugal). She sees herself as eternally curious and apprentice, always available to experiment and expand her area of action and training in the various types of approach to movement, such as Contact Improvisation, Movement, Flying Low and Moving Through, Fighting Monkey, to name a few. Her history as a dancer and performer includes work with various companies and independent projects in the field of contemporary dance, as well as dance festivals and competitions. In recent years, she has also discovered her interest as a choreographer, having created her first piece in 2022, “Corpus Vibratum”. In addition to her work as a dancer-performer, creator and teacher, she is co-founder of InnerCore – Festival of Movement and Contact Improvisation, together with Pedro Magalhães.

Classes

Seeing the body as a biological, individual, social, intellectual and spiritual whole, which is vulnerable to all internal and external processes of change and is constantly permeable, it proposes exploring the knowledge of this organic being that resides in all of us as something under construction and constantly adapting – “Permeable Bodies”. Her classes are an invitation to celebrate feeling and being alive, through dynamic exercises and practices, full of rhythm, where the discovery of the individual body, the body together and the body in space are guided by infinite love.

FUNDA GUL (Türkiye)

Funda is an adventurous explorer of movement who has been studying martial arts as part of her spiritual and intellectual journey. Aikido, was the key that ignited her path in 2005, which ignited a passion that shaped her path. Along the way, she also immersed herself in Systema, where she honed her skills as an instructor-in-training, and later she dive into the Yoga philosophy, where during her teacher training, she discovered the power of personalized and adaptable practices. Since 2016, Funda has been deeply involved in Contact Improvisation as a student, teacher, and facilitator.

Classes

Funda has been searching diverse methods to uncover and locate one another’s center and recognize its pivotal role in the dance. She is particularly drawn to the idea of mutual support and the exploration of the common center when two bodies meet in the art of dance. Her goal is to create an inclusive space for movement exploration guided by the profound philosophy that “Function Creates the Form”. Due to her versatile background, Funda includes in her practices all the techniques that inhabit her body.

LEVI GERSHKOWITZ (USA)

Levi is an improvisational dancer and musician, invested in the details of movement, including the layering and removing of silences. As a long term member of Earthdance, a CI-based community located in western Massachusetts started in 1986, he has had the opportunity to dance and study with some foundational teachers of the form.

Levi’s mutual care for people and the natural world are felt in his presence and his approach to facilitating workshops that help to maintain focus on the quality of our relational bodies and ensure we are moving wisely and with purpose.

Classes

With 14 years of Contact Improvisation experience, paired with the somatic vocabulary of various bodywork modalities, his approach revolves around the question: How can we increase risk and care in proper proportion to each other? Recognizing that doing so often leads to developing skills that enable us to abandon governing thought patterns, and the limitations they carry.

Movement practice lies in the contrast of exposing the body to unknown situations, chaos and complexity that are transformative to the moment and the structure. In this confrontation, we learn to deal with the interconnectedness of seeing and doing, doing and feeling, feeling and being through paradigms, questions and puzzles while creating situations of mobility, organic strength, balance, coordination or locomotion. All in all, the practice of Movement empowers and enables forms of global development of a body that moves in an increasingly intelligent and, above all, more human way.

ANDRE DIAS (PT)

With a degree in Sports Science, a father and an eternal curiosity about everything that involves the human body, he defines himself as an eternal student. As a practitioner and teacher of Movement and Martial Arts, he is above all a trainer in subjects related to organic strength, contact with the environment, working in suspension and in partnership. In 2016, he got to know Ido Portal’s method, which made him fall in love with this practice and he never stopped looking for educational paths with other teachers such as Marcello Palozzo, with whom he has studied more closely. In 2016, he became Co-Founder, together with Tiago Martins, of Movement Lisboa.

TIAGO MARTINS (PT)

A former top-level gymnast, expert exercise coach, performer and dancer, he finds himself a complex student of various languages linked to Movement – looking at the body as a whole. The practice of Movement has such a presence in his development that he has become a teacher, while working as a performer who understands the body as a vehicle for physical, intellectual and artistic expression. He is an applied student of a wide variety of disciplines – Ido Portal, Tom Weklser, Nil Tiesnier, Shai Faran, Almog Loven, Karin Avi, to name a few. Co-founder, together with André Dias, of Movement Lisboa.

Natalia Vik received her dance education at Copenhagen Contemporary Dance School, Denmark. She is a certified teacher of Gaga after completing the Gaga Teachers Training Program in Tel Aviv in 2012 and she continued to live in Israel until 2016 working as a dancer and teacher. Natalia lives since 5 years in Palmela, Portugal where she is sharing her work as a teacher, dancer and creator. She is also traveling around Europe to bring movement classes to dance educations, dance companies, festivals and Gaga people classes open for the public. Besides dance practices Natalia is a practitioner of Taijiwuxigong and holds Nature as a great inspiration for her work.

Move through morning practices

Natalia will offer a blend of her movement practices in Gaga, contemporary dance and improvisation. Since the aim is the morning sessions during the Innercore Festival, there will be added the element of qigong more then contemporary dance, and soft stretches to awaken the body together.

Dancer. Pedro is the founder and curator of Arrábida Dance Labs, was born in Portugal and grew up in China. Dancing since childhood, he choreographed his first “full-length performance” for 30 dancers as a young teenager. Graduating in classical and contemporary techniques from the National Conservatory of Portugal, he danced in several companies before founding his own, where he began incorporating somatic approaches into his work. Researcher on the “Unified Field”, Pedro has almost 30 years of professional experience as a dancer, teacher, and director. Being a guest teacher at the Traditional Chinese Medicine School in Lisbon brought him closer to Qigong and self-awareness. Contact Improvisation expanded his embodied and creative interactions.

The Collective Body

We are an intrinsic part of a Collective Body – the Earth – as well part of other temporary Common Bodies. When we are aware of this connection – arising from our uniqueness – we take significant steps towards our full vitality.

Pedro’s approach to dance, movement awareness and contact improvisation is highly appreciated in the Portuguese dance scene for his special way of leading sessions and for his inclusive methods that make everyone feels like being a Dancer.