Mario Blanco - July 30 at 2:09 PM 

It's like time to make a written celebration of the ECITE 2019, the European Contact Improvisation Teachers Exchange.... 
As the echoes of it are diffusing, and a certain kind of mild loneliness goes through me...

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Ecite is not a dance festival, but a gathering for the research and the exchange between CI teachers. A place where a big amount of energy is used to reflect on this form of dance and what happens around it, instead of just in moving...

And, a lot happens around this form of dance...

How could it be any other way?

Moving bodies, staying away from any old formal or fixed movement patterns and conditionings and staying away from formalizing new ones, in order to discover and explore the underlying ones, the emerging ones... Allow them to unfold, not attaching... Letting them go...
Somehow, I come to the understanding that it is not bodies that are moving but whole selfs, with emotions, energies, thoughts, etc... 
(However, some claim to move only through physicality... I´m not trying to deny them, but there's not much I can say about it... I just wonder where do they leave all the rest of them...)

And so, whatever was intended back on the 70´s, when this dance form originated, today we find ourselves plunging deep in the waters of community building, gender, interpersonal relations, individual agency, power dynamics, sexuality, race, consent, etc... 
And we do it with our bodies, through our movement. Embodying the questions, living them in flesh and bone... I still haven't found a more authentic way to deal with issues...

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I think ECITE (and meetings as such) is all about that, an attempt to decode and digest the material that underlies our practice, so maybe we don´t get burn so bad when it arises... And we, the so called "teachers" meeting there, as modern shamans, letting ourselves be touched, impacted, pierced by this energies, hoping that in the end we will be able to say something coherent about it. Not easy task for us, indeed we seem to be better off moving than drawing conclusions and reflections...

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I´m not the ECITE scribe, neither its spokesman, there are well distributed tasks, to very capable and willful beings... and an amazing work is being done in order to share the fruits of this research/exchange. And I´m looking forward to see them...

This, however, is my personal narrative...

- I arrived with a compromised ability to dance, with a not yet recovered knee... It was a bit of a hard landing... On the last days I found myself dancing/flying until 2 am.

"The body is a magician"

- I proposed a research on the first day, and I did not attended it... I went to check on the second day, and I was rejected.

"Let go, you don´t own anything... For sure not a ECITE dynamic"

- I was receiving a beautiful bodywork, enjoying full pleasure... I listened a song, Daydreaming (Radiohead), it just cracked me... My soul begins to move as I try to resist with my body... I find myself gentle contracting my muscles, trying not to interrupt the bodywork... trying to stay connected... Begging for the song to end... Now I´m dancing with my eyes, behind my eyelids they jump following the rhythm... didn't knew I could even dance like that...
I have to stop it and go dancing, ecstasy is too much to bear.

"Every time you are choosing, being alive, that's already is a choice"

- I did what was prohibited to do... When it could not be prohibited, where it could not be prohibited

"There are multiple games, infinite games to play... Why get stuck in changing rules?"

- I was part of the group research "Sensitivity, Sensuality, Sexuality and CI Teaching Ethics". Exposing the emotions, the fragility... 
In the ancient Eastern temples, the images of sexuality are in the entrance.... not hidden it in the shadow, while we pretend being the immaculate saints. That´s the way we went into it, not hiding ourselves, not judging ourselves, trusting, mature, building safety...

"People can be so courageous, I am moved"
"Morality without wisdom is a pain in the neck"

- I fell in love 3 times, and I got up 3 times... There was fourth one... I still haven't got up.

"There are ships sailing to many ports, but no one goes where life is not painful"

- On the spur of the moment, in the community circle, an almost unknown person proposed me to co-organize ECITE 2021. I said yes, on the spur of the moment, we said yes, the community said yes. Now I know she´s my soul sister, I love her, we are going to create the wildest ECITE ever.

"Intelligence is great, intuition is greater"
"Trust the universe, it will teach you to land"

- A project was born. To create the toolbox to bring more sustainability to our community gatherings. To learn to be sustainable while in the process, to learn to decompress from the process... Acknowledging that we are inviting people to much more than a dance form, we can take as much care as possible...

"To take responsibility is needed, to take care is healing"

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I recall now names and faces, and I hug you with my soul... as my passage ritual... As my last decompression breath for this beautiful dive... 

Сергей Семичев Марія Бакало Defne Erdur Ann Kristin Holten Nica Andrea Portavia Frederic Holzwarth Hasia Ola Mariia ISLiza AndreyevaKate Taranova Andreas Anabel PestañaJulian Elizari RomeoArye BursztynAnya CloudJo Bruhn Inna PavlichukAlex PostnikovSergio Palomares VicenteDaniele SardellaDan FarberoffKasya Daria Andreeva Kseniy Tusheva Xenia Inna Falkova Noa DarPhoenix Fly Phillip Yuri Vita Kalmutska Антон Мышанов Tonya Alistair Edmunds Ryan Deluz Chef, Chef helpers

Ksenia Tusheva  - August 5 at 6:32 PM

I read Mario's echoes, and it brings me back to 10- 22 July - pritty long time after ECITE 2019, other things are continuing happen, but I still recognize myself very empress and full of experience after this event, so will be simply reflect here.

ECITE - European Contact Improvisation teachers exchange event. I dont define and feel myself as a teacher of contact, even though I gave few classes. But I feel very in contact dance, movement research and also community life forms. 
And huge peace of experience was being a part of the team of organizers, to work with people that I love, to create and support space, to find ways solving situations easy and allow things passing through me.

Other huge part was being in Ecite as a participant, although all rolls that I contained were crossing each other. To be in the festivals, ci camp - differ a lot from processes which happened in ECITE. Facing plenty questions in different aspects of this dance practice. Facing the experiences in different depths of different beings. It was for me like opening new chapter of CI practice, to see other side, beyond dance, acknowledging what is within dance.

I recognized during event and after, that this is kind of communication and interactions that I am willing to be in. Witnessing how human beings able to be together in this free and care way - I am in right place.

Defne Erdur  - July 21 at 3:06 PM 

THANK YOU ECITE 2019 organizers, facilitators, participants -- DEAR COMRADES of this amazing dance form and community spirit! Documents are slowly finding their way into our shared folder on IDOCDE.net. We will share soon publicly! 

Till than I will be personally digesting this incredibly exciting journey! I could not be more thankful! I FOUND MY DANCE BACK! I found more questions to pursue and dance and live with... I found interested colleagues to accompany me in my inquiries! I found maturity, respect, love, joyfully serious seriously joyful dancers! What could I ask for more? Nothing but this simplicity of sharing being! Thank you... 

Thank you Kate, Filip, Kseniya, AnTonia for helping me to transition out from this in peace and calm and fun!

See you next year in UK!

Kate Taranova - July 27 at 2:57 PM 

Just a few words to say about #ecite2019

I feel so much gratitude to everything and everyone who cocreated this happening this year. For me it was deffinately a disjoint process.

I'm still integrating, although the life flow is taking me further.

I have a sense that we are marketing something very meaningful for this world by being able to exist this way with eachothers. Hope more outcomes will appear out loud soon.