Description du stage 

The title references Steve Paxton’s early musings about the experience of the Newtonian apple as it falls from the tree. It acknowledges the time that’s passed since then, and the incredible journey and evolution of Contact Improvisation as a series of questions and experiments; as a diaspora of bodies; a form; and a complex web of extrapolations and transformations. 

I will return to some of the basic propositions and questions of CI; to how we notice ourselves as bodies/masses in relation to physical forces in a physical world - to visit them anew, to roll our bodies on the body of the earth, to observe ourselves and simultaneously be ourselves as we fall and rise again, as we slide and jump, and bounce and tumble along with the questions, propositions and particularities of the other bodies we negotiate as we go.

I will be calling on my own versions and developments of materials I met and explored in the studio with Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson to inform our explorations, and those materials (for the spine, and for the senses amongst other things) will be woven into my own questions about movement, experience and imagination - how we include in our image of the experience of the apple falling, the other parts of its journey and its return to the tree to fall again.

This is an invitation to widen attention, to include perceived impossibilities and to dive into the adventure of Contact Improvisation all over again.

The work will be explored via simple scores which allow for each person’s own layers of complexity to be noticed and included; there will be physical maps and pathways to research and play with as well as perceptual/imaginative explorations in solo, duet, trio and ensemble scores. 

Charlie MORRISSEY

Charlie is a performer, teacher, collaborator and director who has been working with movement for more than 35 years. 

He has worked with performance at small and large-scales in theatre, gallery and site-based contexts in the UK and internationally. Recent projects (23/24) include Supernature, a solo created with Siobhan Davies in response to her film Transparent at Wainsgate Chapel; Scáling, a duet with Markéta Stránska co-commissioned by Candoco and Sadlers Wells at Schwere Reiter: HERD - a large-scale site-specific sound project with Artichoke and Orlando Gough across multiple sites in Yorkshire; and Anushiye Yarnell’s A Marathon of Intimacies at Chapter in Cardiff; 

His work is influenced and inspired by long-term working relationships with artists including Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson, Scott Smith, K.J.Holmes, Kirstie Simson, Karen Nelson, Siobhan Davies, Katye Coe, Andrea Buckley, Becky Edmunds and many others.

Charlie also organises and co-curates Wainsgate Dances with his partner Rob Hopper in Yorkshire, UK - an artist-led space for experimental dance. It includes daily dance practice, residencies, workshops, and performances. 

www.charliemorrissey.com