Below notes were taken by Malaika Sacro-Thomas. Full content of the sharings can be found as voice and video recordings at the end of this idoc. Videos were taken by Defne Erdur and voice recordings by Dilek Üstünalan. 

1. Aviv Sheyn- So last year I was surprised to have this 5x5 format and the action of speaking, and so actually I came to the festival this year just for these five minutes. I have a lot of pressure, and yeah. I was speaking with [someone] yesterday and we were talking about this circle ritual we have, where we say our names and the country where we come from, and I find it kind of strange. Last evening I was walking around Freiburg and Insaw these teenagers in the park having a beer, and just feeling the locality here. I had this moment yesterday when I arrived here by walking, when I crossed the lake and it felt like a huge jump—crossing something, and entering somewhere that is disconnected to everything that is around it. And this way of announcing where we are from (saying, “I am from this place but living in this other place”) is about creating this festival where we are, and also about how we are so mobile, and doing what we want, coming to a festival. I saw a film about Sigmund Bauman, who is saying that we don’t like to take risks, and we don’t like to be dependent on anyone. I am thinking about being dependent. Being here I don’t have any locality. I would like for us to find some locality here — and to have some vertical history. And last night I danced with Malaika after we had had a conversation about my life recently and where I was coming from, and the dance had more verticality, like coming from this conversation. And I wonder how we can share our verticality — share more of ourselves to find this verticality in our dances. Maybe it has something to do with not having kids— because having kids is localised. It’s connected too many things around it. I enjoyed being in the washing station during all the meals, and watching what is around. I enjoy also at the meals not to be involved at the tables. And I wish we had this space where, at this table we talk about love, at this table we talk about dying, and this table we talk about community.  If it was like this then I wouldn’t like to be at the dishwashing station— I would like to be at the tables, because this way we have more verticality.
2. Eckhard Müller. Last year I was talking last year about the CI global calendar that we worked for ten years to design. It is a web calendar for all of us to post our events. Last year we had the pre-finished version and now we have the finished version: ciglobalcalendar.net.  I just want to name this as a big moment for this because there is a need to bring all the events into one place and to bring the events together from all over the world. The idea for this calendar is that we create one platform and people just put their events in. You can search for a teacher, a place, a continent, a certain time period. Because with all these other search filters like Facebook or Google you don’t always find such things. I personally think this is a great resource for those who are travelling a lot. And there are many many travellers who are travelling, going to another continent for a CI event. So my wish to you is to look at it, register for it, visit it, post your events there, share this information—give it to your community, give it to people, talk to people— so it is really becoming something that tis supporting the CI community. The idea behind this is that it is a voluntary thing that is really supporting the community, and no one is getting money for it, but that each one can step in sometimes, like a round robin, to take care of it. I am willing to step down, seriously, to give my role to someone else now. Seriously. It was started by Nancy Stark Smith, Dieter Heitkampe, Defne, Romain… we have some other people involved (named some more names). Have a look at it, use it. If it does not get used by a certain amount, it will collapse and fall—so only if it is used will it be successful. And it will only be successful if people see the need of it. Defne: it is a community project and it will only happen if the community supports it. Many of us travel a lot. I don’t know about verticality or locality, but when i go to a place I travel to, I really connect to the CI community. Ecki: So take some cards, and distribute it to your community, and tell people. and  you can donate money, we need money. And we value this as a gift economy—you can offer a gift of a place at a festival. So spread the news—give a gift with money, or other ways—there are other ways of supporting this project.
3. Natividad Insua. I want to introduce you to two projects and to invite you to participate and collaborate. I asked Janet to support me with English speaking today. The first project is a studio I direct in Barcelona - it’s a studio focused on CI, and I want to invite you to come and dance. We are not funded by any external organisation. We are offering CI — a programme of CI and different techniques: contact, aikido, BMC, dance classes. Some teachers here are teaching there: Dani, Ecki, Ray, some local teachers as well. The other project today is more important for me to talk about. In 2015 I spoke about a CI archive in Spanish. It came from one of my necessities to take more information in Spanish about contact. It came from Argentina 15 years ago whe I couldn’t find materials on CI in Spanish. I think we have a very big Spanish speaking CI community, so this is a nonprofit project. Two years ago we finally had a website formed. So I invite you to collaborate, transmit information and to help make it visible. It is totally free and the community supports this website and this project. I say “I” because I support the project but it’s not mine. It’s actually from and for the community, though I started the whole idea fo making this website. It’s my baby, so to speak. So when I first started this website people from the community started getting interested to help in translating, and getting information about CI, and it was interesting to see the reaction from the community. We respect a lot the copyright and try to base our work on the original texts, and for me it’s very important to open this project to more people and open out the hierarchy between the languages. And today I had a very nice surprise because Janet is the translator of Martin Keogh’s book and she found our website and I was very happy for this! Janet: I was just telling her that while I was in the process of translating Martin Keogh’s book Dancing Deeper Still I was in the situation of trying to find words to translate the things that I felt like we didn’t have language for. And I found Natividad’s website and it was great to feel like there were words there, to express what we are doing. Natividad says: so there are a lot of flyers around, and please find us at: contactimprovisacion.org and contactimprovisacion.es

This document is created based on the consent of all the participating teachers during the contactfestival freiburg Teachers Meeting 2019. 

If for some reason you (as one of the participants of this meeting) changed your mind and wish some or all parts of this document not to be published, please contact defne.erdur@idocde.net.