Benno Voorham is an international performer, choreographer and teacher from Holland, living in Stockholm since 1995. Since his graduation in 1986 from the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam he has worked internationally as an independent dance-artist, directing his own work as well as collaborating with others in both set and improvised pieces. Together with Sybrig Dokter he started LAVA-Dansproduktion, an international operating association for dance, based in Stockholm. He was a member of the Greek dance-theatre company ‘Wrong Movement’ (1993-2007) and has worked as a dancer/actor at the City Theatre of Stockholm (2005–2007). In recent years he has choreographed several works for children and youth. He is an acclaimed international teacher of Contact Improvisation and Compositional Improvisation. In both his teaching and performance work, he is interested in exploring the creative and narrative potentials of the human body.

Improvising Contact Improvisation

Contact Improvisation will be the common ground to continue and deepen our skills to come into a physical and kinaesthetic dialogue with others. From there we will enter the realm of improvisation in relation to performing. We will play with different scores for improvisation to challenge and sharpen our compositional and spatial awareness. Articulation and playfulness are two keywords for this workshop in which we will dance a lot for and with each other. Dances in which we can expect to be in physical contact at any moment and at the same time keeping an awareness of ones own direction in improvising.
This workshop will provide a playground for those who are interested in exploring territories in which we use our creative potential in dances that are created in the here and now, the present moment of an improvisation.

“In my work as a dance maker and improviser I am interested to explore the crossroads between dance and theatre. Using the potential of the human body to tell stories through movement in a non-literal way.
Contact improvisation is essentially a dance in which we come in a physical and kinaesthetic dialogue with others. A dialogue, a meeting, an encounter in which it is essential to develop and sustain clarity of one’s own presence. A person that is present in his body and mind can navigate more clearly through time and space and will be more ready and adaptive to play with the ever-changing circumstances inside of an improvisation.”