CONTACT IMPROVISATION: practice and perFORMance 2025!
(SECOND EDITION)
A four-day event geared towards CI dancers focusing on furthering movement research and practicing CI in performance. The weekend will consist of classes, labs, compositional scores, and structured witnessing.
JUNE 26TH - 29TH, 2025
CI: practice and perFORMance is organized and facilitated by Lilianna Kane and Anna Vomacka. The first edition was May of 2024. What transpired was so inspiring that we had to bring the project back for round two.
The event will take place at the beautiful GROUNDWORKS space, in Gardiner, NY.
GROUNDWORKS has private rooms, shared dorms, and camping grounds, not to mention a gorgeous 1200 sq ft open hall dance studio with a sprung wooden floor.
Registration to the event includes room and board (home cooked fresh food) morning espresso, tea, snacks, in addition to usage of all of Groundworks’ amenities (wood burning sauna, hot tub, hiking trails, etc.)
Join us!
PHOTO BY JONAH M. DAVID
MEET THE TEAM:
LILIANNA KANE (organizer, teacher) is an artist and chef, primarily invested in the dance practice of Contact Improvisation. She is committed to improvisation as a physical practice of asking questions, paying attention, patience and peace. She values the interplay of rigor, rest, discipline and play. She teaches and shares her practices nationally and internationally, as well as producing and organizing international CI gatherings and intensives. She is currently the head chef and a CI curator at The Field Center (center for performance, dance and multimedia art) in Bellows Falls, VT) where she has the privilege of regularly practicing, teaching, and researching Contact Improvisation. She is deeply indebted and inspired by all of her teachers, dance partners, and dance ancestors, who continually influence her practice. Website: www.liliannakane.com
ANNA VOMACKA (organizer, teacher) is a dance maker, educator and performer from Brooklyn, NY. Contact Improvisation has been a steady thread throughout her life. As a young dancer, CI was foundational in her dance training. As an adult, Anna returned to CI in 2017 where she remains engaged with the practice, continuing to explore principles of weight, risk, intimacy, surprise, and listening. Anna was part of Ryan Kelly & Brennan Gerard’s Bessie award winning instillation “Timelining”, which premiered at The Kitchen (2014) and later shown at the Guggenheim (2015) and Artists Space (2023). Anna has worked with Nami Yamamoto since 2017, performing “Trooper’s Brother” at St. Ann’s Warehouse’s Labapalooza (2019) and World Premiering at Roulette (2022). Anna’s most recent choreographic work is a Contact Improvisation short film titled “listening near an edge (https://vimeo.com/721524947)”. Her previous works (https://www.annavomacka.com/choreography) include short film “null”, immersive dance event “W A S T E in S P A C E”, and “embrace(d)”.
She is currently on the First National tour of Life of Pi (https://lifeofpibway.com/), working as one of the Richard Parker puppeteers.
LENA ENGELSTEIN (GUEST TEACHER!) is a dancer, performer, and choreographer. Her work has been dubbed “The High Weird” by critics and lauded as “subtly campy and hilariously queer” by the Brooklyn Rail. Her recent works Friday Night Rat Catchers and Deepe Darknesse, made with longtime collaborative partner Lisa Fagan, were presented by New York Live Arts through their 2025 Live Feed commissioning program and 2024 Live Artery Festival, respectively. She has performed work by Alexa West, Barnett Cohen, Brendan Drake, the interdisciplinary performance collective CHILD, Isa Spector, Jo Warren, Miguel Alejandro Castillo, and Third Rail Company’s Then She Fell (company member, 2019-2020). She choreographs and performs for the band Lou Tides and will appear in the forthcoming Ben Gassman play and Simple Town feature film. She has taught at SUNY Brockport, Colorado Mesa University, Barnard College, University of Maryland, and The Field Center. Lena holds a B.A. in Mathematics from Colorado College.
LENA’S WORKSHOP: ATTITUDES IN PERFORMANCE
We will utilize the adrenaline of being watched to discover our performative capacities. Improvising through constraints, we will make an effort to discover our hidden agendas, enact them, and likely fail, destroying the fantasy of our performance but uncovering new modes of being in front of an audience.
