teachers / team
Kirstie and Charlie’s work is continually responsive to the gravity of the challenges being negotiated on this planet and the crucial place of embodiment in this context.
Their ever-evolving collaboration is expressed through shared passion and dedication to the immediacy of embodied intelligence and healing; manifesting through teaching, performing and co-creating.
It emerges from the grounding of care gleaned from their collective experience: 45 years of dedicated dance improvisation practice, professional performing careers, bodywork and holistic healing practices, emergency medical care, passionate, dedicated teaching practices and the spiritual context. Their work expands as it is shared internationally and in the diverse contexts of dance, healthcare, and lived Life.
Kirstie Simson
Kirstie Simson (UK) has been a continuous explosion in the contemporary dance scene, bringing audiences into contact with the vitality of pure creation in moment after moment of virtuoso improvisation. Called "a force of nature" by the New York Times, she is an award-winning performer and teacher who has "immeasurably enriched and expanded the boundaries of New Dance" according to Time Out Magazine, London. Kirstie is internationally renowned today as an excellent teacher, a captivating performer, and a leading light in the field of Dance Improvisation, with a dance practice that spans over four decades. From 2008 – 2020 Kirstie held a position as a tenured professor in the Department of Dance at the University of Illinois.
In August 2020 Kirstie returned to her home base in Wales from where she continues to deepen the investigation of her work, sharing her findings with others around the globe. Kirstie is framing her work now, in the light of our uncertain future, as practices that can help us develop resilience in the face of challenge. She uses her own experience of facing a life-threatening health issue as a foundation for ongoing research into the wisdom and healing powers we discover through listening deeply into our embodied intelligence.
“Everything we will ever need in this Life, is inherently present within us.”
Kirstie Simson
Charlie Brittain
Charlie’s practice is deeply surrendered to the natural and embodied intelligences of human beings; he aims to facilitate spaces that reflect his deep respect for the body and imbue them with curiosity, courage and care. He continues to perform internationally with dance companies, independent projects and in collaboration with other artists alongside his choreographic work, which looks to the processes and innate wisdom of the body as a vehicle for learning and a means to extrapolate compositional methods. He is a sought-after rehearsal director and choreographic facilitator working across a range of artistic environments and ventures as well as a passionate teacher, regularly invited to lead classes and workshops for dance companies, educational institutes and festivals worldwide.
Charlie integrates his art with his practice as a bodyworker, movement rehabilitator, biomechanics specialist, musculoskeletal health specialist and integrative health practitioner, specializing in the treatment, rehabilitation and education of dancers and movement practitioners as well as lecturing and examining on higher education programs in the U.K. and Europe. Charlie continues to practice clinically in frontline pre-hospital emergency care for U.K. emergency ambulance services; he holds an MSc in Acute Medicine from the University of South Wales and continues his studies in Remote Paramedic Practice at the College of Offshore and Remote Medicine and Integrative Health Coaching and Nutritional Therapy at Active Health Group.
“To truly care is the quietest and most simply radical thing one can do.”
Charlie Brittain
Team
Diana Bonilla
Dancer, performer, educator, and president of the EXIN cultural association. She has danced with various companies and choreographers, including Cristiane Boullosa (OmosUno Company), Francesc Bravo (Rayo Malayo Company), and Pedro Berdayes, among others. She collaborates as a dancer and assistant to choreographer Meyling Bisogno on numerous projects. She is the co-director of Espacio FCI, a space dedicated to the study of Contact Improvisation, Dance Improvisation, and Contemporary Dance.
Leilani Weis
She is a dancer and movement researcher in Contact Improvisation, ContacTango and improvisation. She organizes together with others ItalyContacFest and Inmersiones Contact Festival and has a long history of collaboration with dance events around the world.
Her life is an ongoing learning experience through movement, dance and improvisation.
Melisa Medina
Dancer, improviser, and curious explorer of the body and/or movement. Performer with the dance company Carlos Penso & Leguras-danza. She has shared creative processes with various choreographers/dancers such as Pau Arán, Sarah Gottlieb, and Cristiane Boullosa, among others.