- FULL NAME: Johanna Knefelkamp

- PHONE NUMBER: +49 176 87869505

- EMAIL:johanna.knefelkamp@gmail.com

- SHORT BIOGRAPHY (400-500 characters)

Johanna Knefelkamp is dancer, choreographer and dance coach living in the Netherlands and Germany. As dancer she follows her fascination for intellectual and physical challenges and worked with choreographers like John Wooter, Adriaan Luteijn, Jens van Daele and Erik Kaiel. In her work she is constantly searching for new critical questions and testing borders and provocations. As a dancer, dance coach and choreographer she mainly uses the principles of contact improvisation to experiment and to create relations, beauty, conflict, tension, communication and love. Her pieces are often related to recent topics, politics or philosophical questions. During her study at ArtEZ, Hogeschool voor de kunsten, Arnhem and in many workshops of different instructors of all nationalities, she mastered various contemporary styles like flying low, physical dynamics, contact improvisation, movement composition and improvisation.

Laura Saumweber is currently working as dancer, choreographer and teacher in the Netherlands and Germany. She studied at the school of dance Varium in Barcelona for vocational training in contemporary dance and continued her study in the Netherlands at ArtEZ Hogeschool voor de Kunsten.
In her own artisitc work as choreographer she is looking for strong physicality, analyzing and developing her own movement language and aims to challenge performers and public on a physical and intellectual level. Already during her study she danced in choreographies of Nadine Gerspacher, John Wooter or Libertad Pozo Rodriguez and worked together with the flemish choreographer Jens van Daele, in 2016 she was working for the Dance Theatre of Munich and the polish choreographer Mathias Schwarz.

Since four years, Johanna and Laura dance, create and teach together. They started dancing in Germany and met while their dance study at ArtEZ, Hogeschool voor de kunsten in Arnhem. Since almost five years they live and work in the Netherlands while traveling around to share their work at festivals and small theatres. Both are involved in their own researches that includes the principles of contact improvisation as main working elements. They see and feel their perfect partner in each other. Together they share, communicate, investigate, feel, discuss, listen, create, learn and love dance. Because of this strong relation their work expresses trust, calm, energy and body awareness. At the same time, it gives them the possibility to explore and take risks on a high level of dance and movement.

Working as team is their fundamental source of their success and gives them energy, which they share with other artists to keep developing their working and making new experiences.

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- TITLE OF THE ACTIVITY: BEGEGNUNGEN: performance and workshop

- DETAILED CONTENT DESCRIPTION

About the performance:

The starting point of the creation was the question about belonging: where do we belong regarding to your personal identity, the space you fit in, the people you are with, the country you live in and the place you create between or with each other. Do we need to belong to something or somebody? Is it possible to just belong to yourself? What does fit and what does not fit to each other? What belongs to me and what belongs to you? The place you feel home is not always the country you come from. It can be with a certain person, in a certain space or just a short moment. What happens if something doesn’t fit, can it be adapted? What happens if you find one piece of the puzzle? Could you also let it go again to look for another one? 

The idea is to let different body parts communicate with each other. Sometimes there is a natural connection, almost total merging of two body parts. On the other hand there are also a lot of challenges, complexity and difficulties in sharing one’s body with each other. Unexpected meetings can provide beautiful surprises and especially the places you don’t know are worth it to investigate and get to know. Trying to fit in is not always the way how it works- you have to find a way to stay with differences and to deal with it while keep on looking for new ways to connect with each other and the surroundings. The piece investigates the relation to your own personality and to others in a very physical and tender way while the focus keeps staying on the various body parts that communicate with each other. 

The aim of the piece is to investigate different movement qualities which arise from certain combinations of body parts according to their possibilities and limits. The dancers create material, based on principles of Contact Improvisation, where every body part gets his own voice to explore the relation with oneself, the other, the space and the audience. Furthermore, the piece wants to achieve to literally use the public in an integrative way as a part of this shared search of belonging. In how far can the dancers not only use the physical contact with one another but also with the audience to evoke a feeling of belonging together or not?

(25-30 minutes)

About the Workshop:

The workshop focusses on team and partner work with elements of contact improvisation. Regarding to the performance we want to connect the different people in the room. It doesn’t matter if they have experience in dance or not- the aim will be to show the strong opportunity of movement if you connect individuals with each other and create a trustful group/team. Like in the performance we will start with the different meeting points of our bodies. To get to know each other by letting the body parts move and get in contact playful, will create a strong relation between the participants. Through exercises with the partner or the whole group participants get to know basic elements like touching, giving and receiving of weight, weight shift, searching for shared momentum and trust in the partner/group or using manipulation and the rolling point of contact. The class consist of a basic warm-up to rise awareness of breathing, muscle tone and stability, as well as to improve physical strength. Alternating between games, technical exercises and challenging variations. Through attentive and dynamic listening we will discover the balance in falling, redirecting, composing and soaring. It is this balance in listening that allows us to risk the unknown more fully in our dancing. Using the skin- muscle-bone principle gradually sensitivity and confidence for each others bodies will be established in order to be able to go into more complex material during the course of the class. This workshop will give an impression about our researches we doing with the elements of contact improvisation. Connecting different people ( generation, culture, profession) is our main goal of our projects we are doing in the Netherlands/Germany/Israel.

(1,5h-2,00h)

- SUMMARY OF CONTENT DESCRIPTION AND MOTIVATION

Begegnungen is a piece about the question where do we belong regarding to your personal identity, the space you fit in, the people you are with, the country you live in and the place you create between or with each other.

Looking for answers the dancers Johanna Knefelkamp and Laura Saumweber use their bodies to explore the differences, similarities and opposites of different body parts, connecting the ideas of the topic with the facets of their movements. Through searching, touching, exploring, selecting, knowing the different body parts meet each other. Which parts belong where and which parts doesn’t belong there? If it doesn’t fit it, do you force it to? What happens if you can find a part that fits? Would you dare to let it go and look for another one?

This Choreography investigates the relation to your own personality and to others in a very physical and tender way while the focus keeps staying on the various body parts that communicate with each other.

The workshop focusses on team and partner work with elements of contact improvisation. Regarding to the performance we want to connect the different people in the room. It doesn’t matter if they have experience in dance or not- the aim will be to show the strong opportunity of movement if you connect individuals with each other and create a trustful group/team atmosphere. Like in the performance we will start with the different meeting points of our bodies. To get to know each other by letting the body parts move and get in contact playful, we will create a strong relation between the participants. Through exercises with the partner or the whole group participants get to know basic elements like touching, giving and receiving of weight, weight shift, searching for shared momentum and trust in the partner/group or using manipulation and the rolling point of contact. The workshop consists of a basic warm-up to rise awareness of breathing, muscle tone and stability, as well as to improve physical strength. Alternating between games, technical exercises and challenging variations. Through attentive and dynamic listening we will discover the balance in falling, redirecting, composing and soaring. It is this balance in listening that allows us to risk the unknown more fully in our dancing. Using the skin- muscle-bone principle gradually sensitivity and confidence for each other bodies will be established in order to be able to go into more complex material during the course of the class. This workshop will give an impression about our researches we are doing with the elements of contact improvisation as main working elements. Connecting different people (generation, culture, profession) through dance and movement, is our main goal of our projects we are doing in the Netherlands/Germany/Israel.

- SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Johanna and Laura dance, create and teach together. They live and work in the Netherlands while traveling around to share their work at festivals and small theatres. Together they investigate, discuss, create and love dance. Because of this strong relation their work expresses trust and gives them the possibility to explore and take risks on a high level of dance.

- GENERAL INTERESTS, CODE/KEY WORDS

Connection between people

Contact Improvisation

Politics

Teambuilding

Cross-Generational/Cross-cultural Projects

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- Participating requirements (for whom is this workshop for?)

The performance and the workshop is for everyone who is interested in dance elements that can connect people with each other. It would be nice to have as many different people as possible ( different age, profession, culture….)

- TIME REQUIREMENTS (how much time do you need for sharing?)

The performance will take 25-30 minutes. The Workshop 1,5 h- 2h.

- SPACE REQUIREMENTS (what kind of space do you require for your sharing? studio size etc)

It would be possible to present the performance in s studio or in a public space The audience needs to sit in a square around the performance space.

Also for the Workshop a studio would be nice. But we also could arrange it outside or in public space.

- TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS (what kind of technical support do you require? audio, beamer etc)

We only need simple light and at least a performing space of 7x8m for the performance. Music installation for performance and workshop.

- OTHER REQUIREMENTS – comments.

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THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR EFFORTS AND WILL TO SHARE YOUR WORK...