Towards - Centre for Embodied Arts and Transformative Learning

18/06/2026

𝙏𝙝𝙧𝙚𝙚 𝙬𝙚𝙚𝙠𝙨 𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙩 𝙤𝙛

𝑰𝑵𝑺𝑷𝑰𝑹𝑨𝑳
4 week Contact Improvisation Intensive Workshop Sasha Dodo and Dolores Dewhurst Marks
8 July - 5 August 2026

This summer’s Inspiral edition offers an inquiry-based experimental learning environment reflecting the spirit of Contact Improvisation, approaching it as a transformative practice and cutting edge art form.

It is for those interested in learning how to learn, who are motivated to cultivate readiness for radical change and deepen their connection with nature, its forces and wisdom.

This workshop is designed to prepare body-mind for contact improvisation; to bring embodied understanding of the dance form, its fundamental propositions and principles, and open prospects of its current and potential development. The format and its duration offers in-depth study, space for practice and provides conditions for integration.

An integral part of the program will be focused on learning how to learn; beginning with familiarising oursleves with the underlying approach and attitude towards learning that is essential to the practice. It includes the practice of embodied inquiry, agendaless listening, trust in direct experience, cultivation of curiosity and wonder, permission to experiment and improvise, collaborative and mutually supportive attitude, deepening of understanding through writing and sharing with others. We will be crafting an embodied understanding of the principles and ways of supporting the beginner, teacher, organizer, and overall community process.

Part of our practice will take place in the natural environment, as both research and training, attuning the senses and perception to cultivate awareness and responsiveness within unpredictable terrain. Exploring the bodies’ innate intelligence in contact with gravity and other, while actively engaging with various elements and their relationships.

Within the program there will be an essential retrospective study of CI’s origins, and will be approached both theoretically and experientially, including reading and watching materials.

Group size limited to 35 people
Information pack: https://tinyurl.com/SummerInspiralCI54

17/06/2026

Silent Conversations
a two week retreat with
Sasha Dodo and Dolores Dewhurst Marks
in Cappadocia, Turkey
1-14 October 2026

15/06/2026

Dear friends, here is an unfolded letter about our vision for the next two years and insight into the future of Towards.

Next summer, we will have Towards CI55 Contact Improvisation, Performance and Film Festival, June - July 2027 in Chiang Dao, Thailand.

Gathering to celebrate 55 years of Contact Improvisation and 5 years of Towards. A unique opportunity to reflect on Contact Improvisation as a transformative practice and cutting edge art form. The two month program will include an art residency, workshops, laboratories, exhibitions, lectures, classes and jams. The festival will present a selection of artworks created during Towards programs.

The following year, CI56 we are planing to make a program dedicated to documentation of the Towards Centre, including its projects and initiatives developed over the last five years. We will be creating educational and inspirational materials, publications and art works. The program will be open for participation, for people with different levels of experience, those both familiar and unfamiliar with our work.

We see that for this project to be realised it needs to have an end. For us to have the appropriate time and space to comprehend and articulate with care the essence of what has been discovered and developed since we began.

It feels important to formulate and share our experience and insights about the organisational, educational, community and artistic aspects of the work.

After the documentation phase is complete, Towards will no longer function in the same way. We are motivated to continue following our intuitive resonance, questioning and inventing new ways for our work to stay alive and evolve in offering support and inspiration.

For the future we heart-fully desire to be a continuous embodied reality we need to continue changing both internally and externally, staying true to our vision, what we care for and what inspires us.

We aim create a platform of resources featuring diverse materials of individual and collective work, including study books, journals, poetry collections, videos of improvised and set performances, documentaries and experimental films. All will be carefully crafted with hands and hearts, without any use of artificial intelligence, and will be freely or easily accessible.

Thank you for your attention,
Dolores, Sasha, Fern

Photo: Ken Buslay

03/06/2026

Friends, we have exciting news!

Next summer, we will have Towards CI55 Contact Improvisation, Performance and Film Festival, June - July 2027 in Chiang Dao, Thailand.

Gathering to celebrate 55 years of Contact Improvisation and 5 years of Towards. A unique opportunity to reflect on Contact Improvisation as a transformative practice and cutting edge art form. The two month program will include an art residency, workshops, laboratories, exhibitions, lectures, classes and jams. The festival will present a selection of artworks created during Towards programs.

The following year, CI56 program will be the last year of the Towards Centre. It will be dedicated to the documentation of the project.

https://towards.contact/

01/06/2026

LETANEC Contact Improvisation Festival
Czech Republic, 20 August – 5 September 2026

Part 1: BEING Residency, 20 – 30 August
Part 2: KIN Scores for Group Improvisations,
1 – 5 September

LETANEC 8th edition invites you to a residential in-depth study of movement and dance as tools for awareness, creativity and transformation.

The study material is rooted in contact improvisation, and it embraces practices of authentic movement, Feldenkrais method, experiential anatomy, ecosomatics, embodied writing, and drawing.

We will live, move and (un)learn together and with the land we are on.

The event spans 17 days, with the option to engage in the entire process or take part in either part 1 or 2.

It is facilitated by Jana Burianova, Nikola Jankovic, Giulia Ravarotto, and supported by a team of fellow dancers and artists.

LÉTANEC advocates for beauty as a form in which the world becomes worthy of care and for art making as one way to make that care visible.

Part 1:
BEING Residency, 20 – 30 August

The BEING residency is focused on the unfoldment of individual and group processes by engaging with the principles of Contact Improvisation and on cultivating states of presence and their creative expressions in the practice.

PART 1 is followed by 2 days of integration time.

Part 2:
KIN Scores for Group Improvisations, 1 – 5 September

Part 2, KIN is designed to cultivate the readiness “one body – one mind” state. Focus is given to the scores for group improvisation, Underscore from N.S.Smith, long jams, and performances.

Both parts are crafted with the intention to co-create a space of mutual support, creative exchange, care, and beauty.

Who is this event for?

For everybody, regardless of years of experience within the practice of contact improvisation.

For people of all genders, racial and ethnic backgrounds, ages, body sizes, and abilities (although the venue is not wheelchair-friendly).
Since 2019, we have cultivated a space of care and attention, where touch is grounded in listening, consent, and mutual respect.

If you wish to come with your children, please reach out beforehand.

Venue & Food

We will be hosted in an ancient countryside house that has been carefully renovated into an art center by a team of people who deeply care for the land.
It is located on the periphery of the village of Trstenice (Czech Republic), surrounded by nature.

Accommodation is possible in the house’s shared rooms or in yurts and tents outside.
We will be dancing in the spacious dance studio, on an open-air platform, and moving in the surrounding meadows and forests.

Location and how to reach it

The venue is located in the heart of the Czech Republic, midway between Prague and Vienna, and is a 3-hour journey by public transport from either city.

You can reach the venue by public transport, and you can also park your car or camper van safely on the property.

TEAM

Jana Burianova

The vision maker and founder of the festival. She works as a freelance dance artist, teacher, somatic practitioner and creative chef. Her research within a practice of CI spins around ontology and politics of touch, thinking body as presence and CI as a social and performative art practice. For the past 7 years she has been engaged with the practice through the lens of BMC, approaching it as an individual and collective prayer.

Nikola Jankovic

My background is based on diverse studies of somatic and trauma-informed holistic healing practices. I’m a certified Feldenkrais Method practitioner and somatic coach.

Contact Improvisation has been my primary movement practice for many years. I am passionate about the architecture of learning spaces – containers where learning and growth happen naturally. Currently, I am in my third year of coaching education at Aletheia School of Unfoldment

Giulia Ravarotto

Giulia is a dancer and artist who moves through movement, painting, and poetry. Trained in contemporary dance, instant composition, and contact improvisation, she explores different languages that meet in the present moment.

For her,contact improvisation and instant composition is a precious space of listening and freedom, a place to practice being with what is and allowing gestures and images to emerge and reveal themselves. It is also a way to access the body’s material, its archive of stories and experiences, and let them be remembered.

She is also a practitioner of biodynamic craniosacral therapy.

For more information visit website:

🇨🇿 Czech Republic, 20 August – 5 September 2026

29/05/2026

25/05/2026

𝑻𝒘𝒐 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒌𝒔 𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒍 𝒘𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒈𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒋𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒏𝒆𝒚!

Here are little windows into some of the things we will be exploring during the program, alongside the practice of Contact Improvisation and poetry, and the interconnectedness of all these things as part of our lives.

The program consists of two formats of participation:
7 - 14 June (8 days) or 7 - 30 June (24 days)

For more information and application forms: https://tinyurl.com/GIVINGCI54

There will also be To Begin With The Act Of Giving, 3 classes of Contact Improvisation & Embodied Poetry in Chiang Mai this weekend (29, 30, 31 May) for those who would like to meet a part of our work but cannot commit to the longer residential format.

𝑻𝑶 𝑩𝑬𝑮𝑰𝑵 𝑾𝑰𝑻𝑯 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑨𝑪𝑻 𝑶𝑭 𝑮𝑰𝑽𝑰𝑵𝑮
Deep Ecology, Poetry and Contact Improvisation
Experiential Study Program
7 - 30 June 2026
Chiang Dao, Thailand
With Dolores Dewhurst Marks, Maximiliano Bonacquisti, Philippa Arnold and Fern Sripungwiwat

23/05/2026

"Over the years that we have worked in Chiang Dao, meeting P’Auan has opened to us many ways of being, being with, and observing nature in different depth and width. He has a practice of walking daily for two hours, sometimes twice a day. A year ago, I spent hours and hours walking with him; in the village path, in the forest high and low, along the river, alone, with his dog, with his family. He has never asked about the depth of what we do, but he is always there, for some hours every day, around the camp, interacting with the people in the space and the space itself that holds us.

One day he said something that took me by surprise, and touched me deeply. He said; “You know, when I see you guys dancing, I imagine it must be very similar to my practice of walking. I start walking, and I keep walking for a while, and then I reach a different state; a deeper part within myself, a part that is more honest. After two hours of walking, I feel such a sense of gratefulness. I feel full, like I have just had a meal. This feeling of fullness I feel everyday, yet I walk just for a sake of walking. I imagine that’s also how you feel when you are dancing. That’s also what you do.”

That was the first time he has spoken to me reflecting on Contact Improvisation; yet I feel it expresses so precisely how our practices share some deeper ground. It gives such a sense of richness to feel that we can be practicing the same principles through completely forms, giving different access points to the same ground."

~Fern Sripungwiwat

It feels wonderful that P'Auan (Nikom Putta) will be sharing with us years of experience, research and insights he gained through his work with wildlife, environmental crisis and deep ecology. P'Auan is an environmentalist, deep ecologist. He found Chiang Dao Youth Camp over 15 years ago, a space created for experiential learning about and in nature. He works closely with local communities and regularly organizes meetings and education trips in Chiang Dao.

We still have a few spaces for the upcoming program:

𝑻𝑶 𝑩𝑬𝑮𝑰𝑵 𝑾𝑰𝑻𝑯 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑨𝑪𝑻 𝑶𝑭 𝑮𝑰𝑽𝑰𝑵𝑮
Deep Ecology, Poetry and Contact Improvisation
Experiential Study Program
7 - 30 June 2026
Chiang Dao, Thailand
With Dolores Dewhurst Marks, Maximiliano Bonacquisti, Philippa Arnold and Fern Sripungwiwat
Info pack: https://tinyurl.com/GIVINGCI54

15/05/2026

Dear friends,
we have wonderful news to share!

Michal Gregulec and Serafima Darova(Sima Ra) will come to support the research of the summer edition of INSPIRAL - 4 week Contact Improvisation Intensive Workshop, 8 July - 5 August 2026.

𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐟𝐢𝐦𝐚 𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐚 is a dancer, contact improvisation and performance teacher, and facilitator of regular classes and jams over the past several years. She is also an organizer of festivals, workshops, intensives, and other creative projects.

Since 2023, Sima has been supporting the development of Contact Improvisation in Bali while working on Unfold - Contact Improvisation Research Collective.

Dance has been part of her life since the age of four. At seven, she joined Nikolai Ogryzkov’s professional jazz-modern dance studio in Moscow, later continuing her studies at Natalia Fixel’s contemporary dance school. She has worked with various dance companies and theater projects.

Sima first encountered Contact Improvisation in 2012. Since then, she has studied with teachers from around the world. Today, she is especially inspired by the work of Towards, Katya Basalaeva, Jörg Hassmann, and Ruslan Baranov.

For Sima, Contact Improvisation is a practice with the power to heal the world. One of her greatest joys is witnessing how community emerges and grows through the practice.
Her mission is to support the development of CI around the world by creating spaces for direct experience of this dance form and deep exploration.

Today, Sima is inspired by the history of Contact Improvisation and explores how its essential principles can move beyond the dance floor and become part of everyday life.
She is deeply interested in Contact Improvisation as an art form and in how performance can open new possibilities for the evolution of CI.

𝐌𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐥 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐜 is a practitioner of Contact Improvisation and co-founder of Unfold - Contact Improvisation Research Collective.

He came to the movement through practices oriented toward stillness — yoga, meditation, a long personal inquiry into silence and the loosening of the usual sense of self. Contact Improvisation was the first practice in which the unknown was not something to resolve but something to move with.

Based in Bali, he has been studying CI since 2023, both locally and while travelling internationally. He is drawn to improvisation as a practice that interrupts habits of control, identity, expectation, and knowing too quickly.

For Michal, CI is also a way of studying how the fixed sense of "me" can soften in contact with another body, the floor, gravity, and the unknown. In these moments, the dance becomes less about self-expression and more about listening to what is already moving.

His involvement with Unfold came from the same place — following what genuinely pulled, rather than planning where to go. He hadn't set out to build an organisation — but when the question of how to support the practice more directly came up, that became the answer. For Michal, Unfold is another part of the same research: a way to support the practice without trying to own or define what it should become, while creating space to study the history of CI and connect Bali with the wider international community.

Michal has studied with and been influenced by Serafima Darova, Jörg Hassmann, Alicia Grayson, Ekaterina Basalaeva, Sasha Dodo, Dolores Dewhurst-Marks, Adrian Russi, Kirstie Simson, Artem Markov, and many others.

🌀

10/05/2026

LISTENING AS AN ACT OF GIVING

Listening is a foundational practice, and it is in itself an act of giving. In listening we can discover what we take for granted and how we refuse what is given to us.

We are always supported by the earth, its rising support precedes every step we take, yet not being aware to it we push against or collapse into it.

Through listening we can understand what is in our hands, what there is to give. When listening is extended to include other we are able to be in touch with what we share.

Listening patiently and carefully allows for generosity to naturally express itself. The inherent generosity of life is revealed, subverting the ways we have been conditioned to recognize it.

When there is a lack of listening it is easy to be manipulated by the idea of generosity, judging ourselves and others for not being generous enough.

Both listening and generosity could appear as something objective to be achieved. In trying to be generous, expecting particular response or recognition, the outcome is often contrary to what we initially intended.

True generosity could reflect or contradict the existed image of generosity, or it could move through our lives completely unnoticed.

Generosity that comes from listening is central to being human and essential for our life force to flow. It is an invisible axis around which the life we are meant to live is being shaped.

There is a river of rivers in us that flow out naturally. Each day presents us with opportunities to master letting go, to let our gifts to reveal themselves and flow into the world to which they also belong.

Listening and generosity are co-dependent. Through listening we can learn to understand how to give and receive; what, when and how much.

What holds the rivers back is a mystery to discover for ourselves. On the surface there is a memory and sensation of lack we carry through our lives. Our instinctual belief is that first we need to be generous towards ourselves, to have enough in order to be able to give to others.

Even after realizing we have something to give, and how beautiful and meaningful it could be, we tend to postpone, protecting our resources, afraid of the change it could bring to our lives.

Care for the result might also hold us back, when we carry the belief that in order give we need the perfect conditions and we need to be perfectly ready, well protected from failure or mistakes.

There is a dimension of life essential to our wellbeing beyond the logic of exchange. A life in which giving is receiving and receiving is giving.

How often do we find ourselves practicing anonymous generosity? Dedicating our time and energy towards giving something with the intention to remain unknown.

Gravity is invisible yet it brings us together. Without it there wouldn’t be the possibility to give or receive. What would happen if we would begin the act of giving with including ourselves in something that includes everyone?

~ Dolores Dewhurst Marks, 10.04.27, Da Lat, Vietnam

𝑻𝑶 𝑩𝑬𝑮𝑰𝑵 𝑾𝑰𝑻𝑯 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑨𝑪𝑻 𝑶𝑭 𝑮𝑰𝑽𝑰𝑵𝑮
Deep Ecology, Poetry and Contact Improvisation
Experiential Study Program

7 - 30 June 2026
Chiang Dao, Thailand

With Dolores Dewhurst Marks, Maximiliano Bonacquisti, Philippa Arnold and Fern Sripungwiwat

Info pack: https://tinyurl.com/GIVINGCI54

Video by Sasha Dodo