Voice-Off

Why?

From Juliana: I have been experimenting with Voice Off teaching for 2 years, inspired by my own experience as a Deaf person attending movement classes for hearing people. As a learner, I have found that, in the right classroom environment, my Deafness enhances my practice of Contact Improv. As a teacher, I have found that turning off my voice and guiding my students to learn from observation rather than being told what to do produces exactly the state we are looking to cultivate in a dance.

From Vitali: In my own classes and in the classes I’ve taken with others I notice that verbal instructions can be very helpful, but sometimes they create a barrier between our cognitive intelligence and our other intelligences. I find it fascinating and I have been experimenting with using non-verbal teaching since my early years as an educator. I am inspired to create a learning environment that cultivates embodied states instead of relying on verbal instructions.

Juliana Frick is an award-winning physical theater artist, acrobat and former musician based in Berkeley, CA. She is passionate about the creative process and works to build an environment of fierce commitment and wild imagination among collaborators. She is a founding core member of UpLift Physical Theater, the founder and director of Pinecones and Portals Hiking Theater company and produces independent work as Juliana Frick Performance. As a teaching artist, she has experimented with Voice Off teaching in Egypt, Pakistan and at Vassar College in New York. She discovered her love of Contact Improv after becoming profoundly Deaf in 2022.

Vitali Kononov is a movement artist, bodyworker and somatic movement educator, working with improvisation as a performance discipline, therapeutic tool and contemplative practice. He has been teaching contact improvisation since 1997 in Russia, Europe, USA and Mexico. His background includes contemporary dance, physical theater, contact and ensemble improvisation, as well as various somatic disciplines and yoga. Vitali has completed the Somatic Educator, Developmental Movement, Embodied Anatomy and Yoga programs from The School for Body-Mind Centering®. He taught at Moving On Center – School for Participatory Arts and Somatic Research since 2002 and was a faculty member of American Dance Festival (2003-04). Artistic and co-teaching collaborations in the field of CI include Brenton Cheng, Carol Swann, Rosemary Hannon, Andrew Wass, Erika Tsimbrovsky and Vadim Puyandaev, Scott Wells, Taja Will, Jo Kreiter and others.