Boundaries & Boundless

Teachers & Workshop Descriptions

Ilda Freire (they) is a genderqueer Contact Improvisation dancer, manual therapist specializing in Traditional Chinese Massage, and co-founder of CuerpoColectivo, a platform dedicated to exploring, creating, and sharing movement, dance, and performing arts. Their work is shaped by Capoeira Angola, contemporary dance, and a range of somatic and meditation practices, including Shiatsu and Vipassana. From 2014 to 2020, Ilda lived in Beijing, where they co-created The Feathers Project, an interdisciplinary initiative blending dance, artistic installations, and somatic practices, collaborating with diverse communities and festivals across China. Since then, they have taken part in international Contact Improvisation festivals and gatherings in Europe, Asia, and the United States as a dancer, facilitator, and organizer. Today, Ilda teaches regular Contact Improvisation classes in Madrid and leads workshops internationally. Alongside this, they develop creative projects through CuerpoColectivo, organizing programs, retreats, and training experiences such as BRINCA: Galicia Contact Festival.

The Skin as Bridge

This workshop explores the skin as both boundary and gateway in Contact Improvisation. As the body’s largest sensory organ, the skin defines the body’s surface while mediating exchanges of pressure, friction, temperature, and direction. We will focus on the technical dimensions of skin-to-skin contact, investigating how tactile perception and surface awareness influence muscular tone, skeletal support, and the organization of movement in space. Through guided exploration, we will examine how attention to the skin can enhance three-dimensionality, clarify pathways of weight transfer, and support dances in which the flow of contact—its entries, exits, and continuity—allows for precise, light, and fluid weight exchange.

Paula Ibáñez Díez (she) is a human rights lawyer and political scientist specializing in gender-based violence and strategic litigation, working from a transfeminist and intersectional perspective. She is a co-founder of Iniciativas de Justicia Transformadora, a cooperative that addresses harm and conflict through Transformative Justice frameworks, focusing on the structural conditions that enable abuses of power and on processes of responsibility-taking beyond punitive models. Paula advises organizations and collectives on the development of sexual harassment and anti-discrimination protocols, including Contact Improvisation communities in Spain. Drawing on her long-standing professional experience working with consent, boundaries, and power in legal and community contexts, she facilitates workshops on consent within CI spaces. Her teaching brings together embodied practice and critical reflection, supporting dancers of all genders and backgrounds to explore how consent and consensus are negotiated moment to moment. 

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Consent & Boundaries

This workshop explores the meeting point of movement, consent, and collective care within Contact Improvisation. We will investigate how consent and consensus are practiced moment to moment: how listening, choice, agency, and boundaries emerge through touch, weight, timing, and spatial awareness. Attention will be given to how power dynamics shaped by experience, gender, race, ability, age, body norms, and cultural context can surface in dancing—and how they might be recognized and negotiated. Through simple scores and guided explorations, the practice supports attunement, clarity, and choice.

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Gabrielle Revlock (she/they) is a creator, performer, improviser, collaborator, and educator. She is a New York City Bessie Award-winning choreographer and has been a practitioner of Contact Improvisation for over 20 years. Her research on therapeutic touch and movement is published in Resistance and Support: Contact Improvisation @ 50 and has been presented at various conferences including CI@50, the Embodiment Conference, Dance & Somatics Conference and the Future of CI Conference. As a CI teacher, recent teaching engagements include European Contact Improvisation Teachers Exchange (Poland), Brinca Galicia Contact Festival (Spain), Ontario Regional Contact Improv Dance Jam, Montreal Annual Jam pre-festival, DNE Dance Camp, The School for Contemporary Dance & Thought, Salt Spring Island Contact Improvisation Festival and Earthdance. As a dancer, Gabrielle has performed for Lucinda Childs, Makini (jumatatu m. poe), Susan Rethorst, David Gordon, Bebe Miller & Angie Hauser, Christopher Williams, Alex Davis, Vicky Shick, Bill Young, Almanac Dance Circus Theater, Jane Comfort, and Susan Marshall. Revlock holds an MFA in Dance from Smith College.

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Infinite Games 

Contact Improvisation can be understood as an infinite game: we play within the boundaries of the form in order to keep the game going, expanding possibilities and deepening the practice as a co-created spontaneous experience. This workshop offers skills and scores that support clear, easeful communication so experimentation can unfold with mutual readiness. We will ask: how can we remain open to endless possibilities while staying attuned to our partners? Working with tone, directionality, and suspension we’ll explore ways to create compelling invitations, interrupt habitual patterns, and keep the dance alive. Come to play, explore, and transform each moment into a vibrant and responsive physical dialogue.

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