Human Animal - contact improv tango

weekend 20 – 21 September 2025

A movement dance workshop and an unrepeatable experience on different levels of perception. Return to a body that is made for movement, passion and variety.

Contact improvisation and tango are movement and dance forms that focus on the relationship with a partner, on the transmission of movement between partners and the circulation of energy between them. Our original animal body is perfectly adapted for this. It has mechanisms that can withstand dynamic conditions, it is excellently equipped for interaction with the environment, with a partner, with gravity. In this workshop we will activate the movement equipment that our animal body has developed over millennia and use it in dance.

We allow ourselves to break free from the shackles of known correct movements, so that our dance ceases to be a repetition of learned forms and the mind can relax. Dance gains impressiveness and clarity when we learn to follow bodily impulses, natural instincts, when we have sharpened senses and use the full range of movement possibilities that nature has equipped us with. We will discover how many wonderful new possibilities come when we give way to the natural impulses that arise from our animal nature.

We will create a richer and more liberating form: open physical expression, free from superficial rules. A dance in which natural movement possibilities are activated. From the area of tango, we will use: the clarity of the axis and the use of spirals, mutual balancing and the use of counterweights, rhythm and melody. From contact improvisation we will study: falls, getting up, connection with the ground, rising, conscious use of centripetal and centrifugal forces, relationship of the free body to the ground.

Tango combined with contact improvisation, this is a range of diverse movements that are not routine or monotonous and are vital to our well-being. They also provide the ability to use touch as a communication tool. They expand the perception of oneself and the other. It will allow us to be creative, playful and grounded and seek a path to harmony.

We rediscover our own body, which has been shaped by movement and created for movement for millennia. A body that longs for constant changes and that finds new energy in the movement that nourishes it. We get a different view of the body: we begin to perceive its shapes and movements as the result of relationships to gravity, to space and pattern, and as the result of our movement intentions. In such a concept of movement, we can develop and at the same time enjoy freedom. Instead of control, we engage in sensory perception, which guides us precisely and unerringly, allows us to adapt, and evokes the enjoyment of movement.

A workshop for everyone who sees movement and movement creation as a way of discovery, healing, communication and enrichment of their life experience. Ostensibly physical and physical work has a much wider scope. It allows you to understand your physical self, your physical relationship with society and nature. Knowledge of biomechanics, somatics and ecology are connected in it to the concept of the Ecological Body.

There is no need to have any prior experience with these techniques and no need to have a partner. We will get to know dance as an organic effective movement. We will nurture the flow of movement between us and our partners. To create a movement composition together that transcends each of us and at the same time belongs to both of us. We both influence her first without harmony and only gradually work our way to harmony.

Javier Cura (Argentina)

Javier Cura is a teacher, visual artist, theater director and movement trainer who has admirably made a name for himself in the field of movement and dance. He has created many performances in Argentina, Colombia, USA, Italy, Germany and Indonesia. At the international level, he teaches contact tango, physical theater and contact improvisation. He is a great dancer who awakens an irresistible desire to move, dance and express with movement.

As a visionary and movement activist, he encourages all who are willing to listen to him to take care of their own vital movement needs. He believes that the all-round diverse movement we reintegrate into our lives has a huge impact on our emotional, physical and mental health, as well as on the ecology of the planet. He is currently working on the „Ecological Body“ project in collaboration with a UN environmental researcher.

“The main goal of my work is to encourage the student to find connections between: an objective view of the body; (physical elements, body scheme: axis, lines of force, center of gravity, anatomy, etc.) subjective understanding of the body (emotional, expressive, creative consciousness and self-perceived body image) and the body in relation to the other; (its community, social and spiritual nature). In each workshop, participants are able to link learned physical activities with their personal creative expression and re-own them. Whatever the participants perceive and experience in the transient context of the workshop can be and often is transferred to the outside world, to their personal social context. It enriches the dance of everyday life. „

The workshop takes place in Prague.

Most participants are signing up on their own, it is not necessary to sign up in pairs.

The workshop is intensive: Saturday and Sunday 9:30 – 17:30, and is open to everyone regardless of age or prior movement experience.

Price 179 EUR. To reserve a place the deposit of 59 EUR must be paid in advance.

Cena 159 EUR if the deposit is paid before 11 September.