5 days of Dancing, researching, community, & jams, jams, jams!
Join us at Dragon Orchard for a week of movement, presence and intensive focused practice of contact improvisation.
Daily intensive with Charlie Morrissey, jams, labbing, bodywork, rest, explore the beautiful surroundings, space to socialise, connect and integrate.
This event places the jam at the centre — the living heart of Contact Improvisation.
We’ll cultivate the skills that make the jam space vibrant, creative, alive & safe:
presence, listening, kinaesthetic awareness, responsiveness, courage and curiosity.
See here for tickets and full info:
https://dandelion.events/e/q24wq
WHAT TO EXPECT...
Daily CI Intensive with Charlie Morrissey.
(Appropriately titled). 'The Apple Returns to the Tree'
Afternoons & Evenings of Jamming
- Labs
- Bodywork exchange
- Participant- led offerings & explorations
-Many experienced dancers holding and caring for the space
Nature & Integration Time
Rest, digest, wander the orchard and local area, integrate and share time with others under the trees.
FOOD & ACCOMMODATION
Fully Catered Meals
All dietary needs supported (vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, plus some meat & fish dishes.)
Sleeping Options
Bring your own tent or van (incl. in ticket price)
Upgrade to glamping (yurts / apartment)
Nearby B&B's also available (self organised)
Dance Spaces
Large indoor dance space 14 x 9 meters
Smaller outdoor dance space 6 x 8 meters
COSTS
£380 - Low tier
£430 — Standard
£470 — Supporter
Helper tickets available from £260
In exchange for 2 hours work per day - (Limited spots)
We invite you to consider the option you choose, if you can support others by paying a higher price we are grateful. We have chosen to make this event as affordable as possible so that people from all economic backgrounds can access it. If this price is still above your capacity and you wish to join, we have helper spots available which significantly reduces the prices in exchange for your time and energy to support the running of the event.
INTENSIVE with Charlie Morrissey
Charlie is a choreographer, performer, teacher and curator whose work with movement spans more than 35 years. He works across theatre, gallery, landscape and community contexts in the UK and internationally.
His practice moves fluidly between performing, teaching, making and producing — each informing the other. He’s interested in how movement and performance can build connection and resilience, invite attention to the present, and open space for complexity, queerness and change.
Charlie co-curates Wainsgate Dances, an artist-led space for experimental dance in a former chapel in Yorkshire. His work draws on long-term collaborations with artists including Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson, Siobhan Davies and Kirstie Simson, and continues to evolve through collective practice and curiosity about how we move — together and in the world.
THE APPLE RETURNS TO THE TREE
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.
This workshop will also attend to the experience of the ensemble — to how we sense being alongside and with when we move. We’ll explore the subtle, shifting dynamics of many bodies in motion: how energy and tone pass between us, how we jam, surf, and ride the waves of momentum, stillness, and change. We’ll work with multi-directional listening — a physical peripheral awareness that allows us to receive information from the space and others as we simultaneously transmit it through our own actions and attention. This is an exploration of how movement communicates and reverberates across a shared field, how perception extends beyond the self into the collective attention.
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, among others) 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 and imaginative explorations in solo, duet, trio, and ensemble constellations.
This workshop invites us to see movement as both individual and collective attention — a continual conversation between gravity, imagination, and one another
ORGANISERS
HUGH STAINER
Guided by the ethos of presence and play, Hugh’s work emphasizes listening to the body’s innate wisdom and exploring movement that feels organic and authentic. His work offers a gentle yet powerful space to reconnect with breath, awareness, and the freedom of self-expression, encouraging participants to find their own sense of joy, balance, and ease in movement.
HARRIET ROBERTS
A dedicated practitioner and facilitator of CI, Harriet has practiced and shared the dance form for over a decade. Originally trained as a contemporary dancer, Harriet travelled extensively searching for homes and hubs which are informed by Contact Improvisation, somatics and community enquiry.
Currently residing in Devon, She runs local durational groups focused on CI and contemporary skills. Harriet is interested in expanding CI practice for individuals and for the community. Both Soma CI and Hari's Open Movement School have been born from this intention.
She is playful, poetic and practical in her teaching, warm in her hosting and intrigued by each and every dance
WIDER TEAM
This is event will be supported by experienced bodies, many facilitators will be present to enrich and infuse the event with their wisdom, their focus and care. You will be held, you will be supported, you will dance beautifully.
This includes: Vega Luukkonnen, Lewis Wilkins, Josh Jones, Brynn Thomas, Zoe Solomons
THE VENUE - Dragon Orchard
The Stanier family have tended this very special patch of Herefordshire countryside for over a century, adapting and changing over time. From yeoman beginnings as a small 22-acre fruit farm, our offerings have evolved and expanded as each new generation has taken up the mantle as custodians of this land.
Since 2000, we have been welcoming people to join us at Dragon Orchard for walks and talks, art, music and food events, and many other celebratory occasions. We have cultivated a particular interest in sharing our space, its produce and our connection to local community with other people.
Now, we open our space for people to retreat to. We offer back-to-nature, self-catered holiday stays in our unique, hand-crafted yurts or our newly renovated studio apartment. We host community festivals, organise annual gatherings and invite others to join the various retreats and workshops held throughout the year.
CANCELLATION AND REFUND POLICY
From June 12th your ticket will be non-refundable, you may transfer your ticket to someone else if self-organised
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