In honouring our body’s innate attraction and drive towards wholeness, balance, creativity & healing, we will explore embodied intelligence and imagination as we journey through guided movement explorations, shared dancing, and improvisational scores. Our work flows between independent, partner and group work where touch plays a role in facilitating opportunities for depth and experiential self- and collective learning – all movers are welcome.
These sessions are an invitation to witness, together, the transformation that is realised through the challenging simplicity of experiencing our bodies in motion, affirming the poignancy of our human connectedness, and its implications for health and resilience in facing the universal and personal challenges of our lives today.
Kirstie and Charlie’s ever-evolving collaboration is centred on their shared passion and dedication for dance and healing, which manifests through teaching, performing, and co-creating. It emerges from the grounding of care gleaned from their collective experience: 45 years of dedicated dance improvisation practice, professional performing careers, bodywork and holistic healing practices, pre-hospital emergency care and passionate, dedicated teaching practices. Their work expands as it is shared internationally and in the diverse contexts of dance, healthcare and, Life.
Don't miss their 2-day workshop Dancing Practices that Promote Well-being, Resilience and Healing in Challenging Times. A movement workshop with Charlie Brittain and Kirstie Simson, with The Glasgow Jam at Community Central Hall, 5-6 September.
On Saturday 5th September, 19:30-21:00, Kirstie and Charlie will give a special performance: dying duets.
About
Kirstie Simson (UK) has been a continuous explosion in the contemporary dance scene, bringing audiences into contact with the vitality of pure creation in moment after moment of virtuoso improvisation. Called "a force of nature" by the New York Times, she is an award-winning performer and teacher who has "immeasurably enriched and expanded the boundaries of New Dance" according to Time Out Magazine, London. Kirstie is internationally renowned today as an excellent teacher, a captivating performer, and a leading light in the field of Dance Improvisation, with a dance practice that spans over four decades. From 2008 – 2020 Kirstie held a position as a tenured professor in the Department of Dance at the University of Illinois.
In August 2020 Kirstie returned to her home base in Wales from where she continues to deepen the investigation of her work, sharing her findings with others around the globe. Kirstie is framing her work now, in the light of our uncertain future, as practices that can help us develop resilience in the face of challenge. She uses her own experience of facing a life-threatening health issue as a foundation for ongoing research into the wisdom and healing powers we discover through listening deeply into our embodied intelligence.
www.kirstiesimson.com
Charlie Brittain's (UK) passion lies in empowering others to take ownership of their practice and champion their values through dancing. He continues to perform internationally with dance companies, independent projects and in collaboration with other artists alongside his choreographic work, which looks to the processes and innate wisdom of the body as a vehicle for learning and a means to extrapolate compositional methods. He is a sought-after rehearsal director and choreographic facilitator working across a range of artistic environments and ventures as well as a passionate teacher, regularly invited to lead classes and workshops for dance companies, educational institutes and festivals worldwide.
Charlie integrates his art with his practice as a bodyworker, movement rehabilitator, biomechanics specialist, musculoskeletal health specialist and integrative health practitioner, specializing in the treatment, rehabilitation and education of dancers and movement practitioners as well as lecturing and examining on higher education programs in the U.K. and Europe. Charlie continues to practice clinically in frontline pre-hospital emergency care for U.K. emergency ambulance services; he is currently studying his MSc in Acute Medicine from the University of South Wales.
www.charliebrittain.com
Photo by Huiyu