ABOUT FESTIVAL
This year, we turn toward water — the element that quietly shapes our bodies, landscapes, and ways of being together. Philosopher Jolanta Brach-Czaina writes of a drop of water suspended for a moment before it falls: a delicate form held by tension and circumstance, briefly asserting its presence. Watching it, we pause with a quiet recognition — as if accompanying something fragile yet deeply familiar.
We too are mostly fluid. Beneath the surface of the skin, water moves through every cell, informing how we yield, resist, and reorganise. When attention settles there, gravity is no longer abstract but intimately felt — guiding falling, rolling, landing. In this year’s festival, we follow this embodied knowing. We explore dancing with gravity, sensing inner currents that support softness, responsiveness, and change — within ourselves, in relationship, and in the wider field of the dancing community. Like water finding its path, the dance unfolds through attention and contact, shaping itself in the space between us.
17th Warsaw CI FLOW
Alongside the core festival programme — morning intensives, afternoon labs, and evening jams — we invite you to arrive earlier for focused pre-festival workshops. Michał Ratajski will explore partnering in Contact Improvisation, while Klara Łucznik will open a space for researching the performative dimension of the practice. The gathering will then extend into a post-festival three-day Long Jam at the Pavilion of Dance — a shared, community-led space for listening, dancing, and being together.
At the heart of the festival are three morning intensives:
Faking it With Gravity by Karen Nelson & Nica Portavia – A deep inquiry into presence through the lens of gravity. What does it mean to “fake” in dance, and can this act become a doorway into something real? Through falling, rolling, softening, and sensing, participants explore the gap between ideas about themselves and direct experience. The practice includes surrendering to gravity as a constant partner, engaging risk, touch, and not-knowing, while moving between solo, duet, and ensemble scores. Teaching together, Karen and Nica weave somatic and physical approaches into a shared, responsive field of investigation.
Reframing Flow by Rick Nodine – A questioning of the ease we often seek. Flow can feel pleasurable and expansive, yet it can also lead into habit and unexamined pathways. This intensive examines what flow means in dancing, how we enter it, interrupt it, and redirect it. By exploring both comfort and disruption, participants cultivate agency, alertness, and the capacity for wide-awake improvisation.
Moving me, moving you by Zuzanna Bukowski – An exploration bridging the Axis Syllabus with Contact Improvisation, bringing anatomical clarity and physical principles into relational dancing. Through guided research, participants investigate falling, rolling, landing, and weight-sharing as supportive and responsive processes. Attention is given to structures such as landing pads and the organisation of movement through the body. This work deepens sensitivity, efficiency, and the dialogue between bodies, opening pathways for both grounding and flight.
See you at the MIK and the Pavilion of Dance!
Intensive Workshop
Intensive, 5-day morning workshops, some open to all levels, and others intended for advanced practitioners – to choose from while registering.
Labs and classes
Single labs and classes exploring different facets of CI and other practices supporting CI dancing. Open to all participants, you can just come as you are.
Jams
Evening jams with various flavours, including focus jam, live music evenings, blind jam. Primarily, it is a time to celebrate the diversity and resilience of the CI community. Time to meet in dance.
Conversations, discussions
We will place our practice within the theoretical context; we will discuss the topics relevant to our practice and questions about what bothers us. People involved in teaching, theory and practice will share their research on CI.
Teachers Meeting
A space for sharing experiences and designing the most creative, safe and inclusive environment possible for festival-goers, as well as for developing best practices in the arts.CI library
A space where you can find books, publications and magazines related to CI. Do you have interesting materials, books or articles, or maybe you write about CI yourself and want to share your work with others? Please send us a copy or bring it with you to the festival.