Instant Decomposition | Falling apart – 

Certain improvisers or ‘techniques’ talk  of improvisation as instant or real-time composition. In this intensive we  would like to explore a somewhat different perspective: improvisation as instant decomposition. We would like us to ask how to decompose what we think we know about the world, our bodies, other ‘people’/bodies, the past, the future and the present moment. Our intuition is that it is through decomposition that a ground is created for something really ‘new’ to happen (think of compost). Decomposition is not something one does, it is something that happens (to us, to the relational ecology we are part of, think about compost, again!). We also have the intuition that by starting from the perspective of decomposition we could develop our ability to perceive more acutely the virtual that haunts the improvisation (all the options that have not been actualized, the choices that have not been retained…). We suspect that this virtual colors the affectivity of our improvisation. From this vantage point,  we could reverse the perspective and explore improvisation as a moment born of numerous local and global decompositions. However, as anyone who has tried making compost knows, we can or need to create the conditions for decomposition to be possible. What are the conditions for instant decomposition?  We suspect that  the practice of falling (together) in Contact Improvisation is a fertile ground for instant decomposition. Let’s fall.

Asaf Bachrach

Asaf has been practicing contact improvisation (CI) as well as other types of improvisation techniques (Butoh, tuning score…) since 1994. He Studied in Tel Aviv, New York, Paris and Boston. Among his most influential professors are Steve Paxton, Kirsty Simson, Lisa Nelson and Min Tanaka. Since 2000, he has taught in Europe, in the USA, in Buenos Aires and in Israel. In 2012, he organized an international conference in Paris around CI and ‘mindfulness’. Since 2016 he is a certified Rolfing® practitioner, a student of Hubert Godard. Asaf has been co-leading with Matthieu Gaudeau, since 2013 of the bodylab and the F.A.R nomadic somatics school, a trans-somatic (Feldenkrais, Alexander, Rolfing and CI) experiential research group. Asaf is a practicing cognitive neuroscientist (PhD 2008, MIT) at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). His research topics include  language  (syntax, language comprehension…)  and dance (performance, spectating, joint improvisation, new technologies). He has organized a number of in-disciplinary events around dance, improvisation and cognition bringing together scientists, movement practitioners, anthropologists and philosophers. He is a member for the new ArTec graduate program in the university Paris 8 where he is taking part in shaping the recherche-creation program.

Matthieu Gaudeau

Actor-Dancer-Teacher of the Alexander Technique. He worked as an actoir from 1997-2015 with theatre companies and collectives. Between 2004 and 2006, he co-directed the collective “La Gouttière” in which he developed a work of performative theater-dance and writing. He trained in the Alexander Technique between 2009 and 2013 and so began to rethink his teaching and pedagogy based on the principles of inhibition and directed attention. He is passionate about the organization of human gesture and the relationship between attention and posture. From 2013 to 2016, he worked at the Etimoë center with people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Since 2014, he has been involved in the ICI and ICrEA project (dance and neuroscience project, CNRS); as a founding member he has played a central role in the development of experimental protocols around attention and joint attention. In addition, he is co-organizer of the Rencontres Internationales de Contact Improvisation in Paris since 2014.