CREATURES: queering contact? (Vol. 2) English Version
28 Juil -3 Aout 2025
A week of contact improvisation in a context of overwhelming queer majority. Beginners welcome. Priority Registrations for BIPOC and/or trans folks open on 30th of March till 1st of May.
REGISTRATIONS
fill up the form:
https://forms.gle/51T3oq3Tswn7PjKf8
pay the deposit to book your spot :
https://www.helloasso.com/associations/larret-en-mouvements/evenements/creatures-queering-contact-vol-2
CREATURES*2: queering contact?
What the fuck is contact improvisation (CI) anyways? CI is a dance form inviting masses to mix and mingle, to roll on the ground and meet mid-air. It's mostly centered around the study of touch and weight shared with human partners, it uses tools from dance, acrobatics, martial arts, and somatic practices. It can be practiced in duets or collective dances, but also as a solo endeavor, or explored in relationship to the environment.
What does it have to do with queer? CI is not exactly a queer practice. True, CI has had weird gender politics: inspired by Steve Paxton’s Magnesium, a rather homoerotic piece from 1972, CI has proceeded into becoming one of the first dance practices where the binary roles of men-lifting-women were suspended, in favor of a more gender-fucked way of sharing weight between creatures-partners. But we don't want to forget that contact has been predominantly centering white, cis, straight, able-bodied experiences, and to be frank, it's been boring the he'll out of us. And so, we wonder: What would happen to contact in a majority queer context? What links to queer and other nonhegemonic cultures and practices would arise? In the first edition of CREATURES, in 2024, we were a majority of trans* folks, some radical faeries were with us ; some bdsm tools were brought along the way, some trans ecosomatics were developed, and much beauty and joy and study and questions arose around questions of somactivism, whiteness, humanimal interactions, sex & sexuality... There's no knowing what will happen this time around. And we can't wait to check it out with whoever shows up.
We who? The event is co-facilitated by a trio of dancers, Emma Bigé, Defne Erdur, and Marcela Santander Corvalán, who bring together queer theory and somatics, trauma informed therapy, and contemporary dance. Together we are a group of cis, trans, fem, butch, latinx, brown, white, queer, dyke, bi, straight, french, chilean, turkish, crip, neurotypical, neurodiverse, and mad creatures. We are contact addicts, but we also love solitude and solo dancing, and we value consent practices, sex positive spaces, and the “co-construction of refuge for rare creatures” (which is an expression we borrow to a dear friend, A* Livingstone).
What's gonna happen? Other than what the facilitators will be offering, CREATURES is largely based on self-organization and mutual teaching. Participants are invited to propose practices or spaces for investigation. Our facilitation will consist in accompanying the day-to-day self-organizing of daily life, and introductory classes (consent in dance context, contact for beginners, queer dance theory…).
Where's that happening? Larret is a collective-run space in Dordogne, France, built around two dance studios and a garden. And, there’s a luscious river and forest all around. Note: the space is not wheelchair accessible. (More info in the geohistory section below.)
Creating a safeR space for ourselves
This CREATURES jam, much like anywhere in the world, cannot promise to be a safe space. Even as CREATURES facilitators will make our best to create a safeR space, we still will be a microcosm within the macrocosm and a multitude of oppressions will still be at play here internally, interpersonally, and systematically. We invite ourselves to commit to working on our internalized and externalized transphobia, pan/biphobia, racism, ableism, ageism, misogyny…
CREATURES intends to be a brave space, where we are encouraged to be bold, make mistakes and take responsibility for correcting harms and making amends. We’re inspired in that by anarcha-feminist poet Beth Strano:
There is no such thing as a “safe space” —
We exist in the real world.
We all carry scars and we have all caused wounds.
This space
seeks to turn down the volume of the world outside,
and amplify voices that have to fight to be heard elsewhere.
This space will not be perfect
.It will not always be what we wish it to be.
But
It will be our space together,
and we will work on it side by side.
For the purpose of the collective care, we will create an awareness and support team, involving whomever wants to participate in risk reduction.
Registration process: Overwhelming queer majority
While it is true that there is a queer history of Contact Improvisation, there is also a history of erasure and oppression within CI spaces, from sexism to queer and transphobia, to racism, ableism and classism. This event will not be based on the principle of chosen mixity (for example: nobody will be checking who y’all are sexing with), but in the registration process, we want to give priority to people facing different forms of oppression that often intersect with queerness.
This is why without excluding registration from any walk of life, people of color, people with disabilities and trans* & non-binary people are given priority in the registration process. We understand that these intersect with queer and with each other, as well as with myriad other names one may have for oneself; we chose to give priority to these, hoping it will inspire similar and/or different foci in the coming iterations of the event.
March 30 st to May 1st: registration for BIPOC, people with disabilities and trans* and non-binary folks.
Practical info
We can welcome about 40 participants. Accommodation will be available in shared rooms/dormitories as well as the camping space (or your own truck).
The price of the event includes studio space, evening classes, lodging and all the food necessary for the preparation of the meals. We will prepare the meals as a group and we will collectively take care of the life and the spaces (cleaning etc..).
Arrival on monday (late afternoon shuttle to train station)
Departure sunday (morning shuttle to train station)
Economy
General price is 54€ a day = 322€ for the week, including food, housing and access to studios and all activities.
DOBST‧NOTAFLOF (Doing Our Best So That No One’s Turned Away For Lack of Funds): You may ask for gratuity or a reduced price (no justification needed) upon registration. If the functioning cost of the event is paid for, Larret will give away free and reduced-price spots. If you need financial help to get to Larret, please let us know.
LOMTSOFLOF (Leaving Our Money To SomeOne Lacking of Funds): You may give more money so as to help others to get reduced pricing.
BUDGET TRANSPARENCY:
2970€ renting of studios & land (* the land that is hosting us was purchased in 2020 and is still under construction, and loans are still being reimbursed to banks; part of the daily price goes to this, as well as to the functioning costs for electricity, water, gas…)
2190€ food & cook salary
900€ logistics & salaries for Larret’s logistical team
2000€ facilitator’s transportation & invitations
= 8060€
This amounts to 322€/person for the six days (if 25 people register). Brought down to a ratio per person per day, this means: approx. on average 54€/per/day.
Any extra money will go to reduce the pricing or helping for transportation for those needing it. If you nee help to asses your relationship to economic privilege compared to others, here’s a visual aid.
Geohistory
23 Impasse du Chalard, Larret – Saint Saud Lacoussière 24470
contact: studio.larret@gmail.com
Since June 2020 Larret is a place of collective life, creation and hosting where projects around dance, farming, cooking, building, thinking are developed in their ecological dimension. An eco-somatic place for those who live there and those who come, dancers, researchers, philosophers, craftsmen, the curious…
Accessibility and life on the land
The studios and collective space are 25 minutes by car from the nearest train station (a shuttle will be in place). The studios, collective dining areas, showers and dry toilets are not wheelchair accessible, and the circulation paths are a mix of dirt and pebbles. There are stairs to access the three-people bedrooms and the 10-people dormitory, but not the studios. From the studios, the river is a 15 minutes walk through the forest, with sometimes steep paths.
Larret-en-Mouvement is a collectively run space on a land that is privately owned by two self-identified cis straight white men. The land is stewarded by a (majority-white, majority-queer) collective and involves dancing, gardening, building, cooking food, and engaging in group-decision training.
Surrounding the studios is a forest, a small part of which is privately owned (not by us), and the most part of which is stewarded by the Parc naturel régional du Périgord Vert. Downhill, the river Dronne runs amid volcanic rocks and regional trees. Its stream and banks are public spaces, although there’s a large part that is seldom visited by locals or tourists. Nudity has been known to happen at the river, please check with your neighbors if that’s okay with them (coz consent is beautiful)!
Facilitators
Emma Bigé (she/her) studies, writes, and translates between the fields of dance, trans*feminism and environmental studies. A PhD in philosophy, she is the author of Mouvementements. Écopolitiques de la danse (La Découverte, 2023) and Écotransféminismes (with Clovis Maillet, LLL, 2025) and she has spent the last years translating and transmitting the works of queer theorists and writers (Sara Ahmed, Jack Halberstam, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Eva Hayward). She curated two dance-exhibitions (Gestures of Contact Improvisation and Steve Paxton: Drafting Interior Techniques) and co-founded lolm.eu, a collective aimed at promoting dance, somatic and academic practices around Contact Improvisation. A lover of queer archives, she recently contributed to the creation of the wrongcontact.zone, a website collecting and celebrating the activist trends within CI hirstories. She wishes she could roll on the ground more, but the world sometimes feels too much in flames, so instead, she is on the run. cargocollective.com/sharingmovement
Defne Erdur (she/her) is trained in Contemporary Dance (PhD), Sociology (BA,MA), Intermodal Expressive Arts Therapy and Creativity, Meditation (World Peace Initiative), and Trauma Healing (Somatic Experiencing, Integral Somatic Psychology, Full Embodiment, TRE, Deep Tissue Release and Trigger Point Massage Therapy. She has been actively practicing and researching towards a deeper understanding of the body as a bio-psycho-social whole. Invested in building safe, inclusive, and collaborative creative environments she offers workshops (Hunting Gathering Cultivating, Every Body Knows, Consent Improvisation) and holds residencies (MA-Pregnant Nothingness, Moving Library, Into the Light) around the world. In the last years, she prioritized founding and coordinating humanitarian task forces for trauma prevention and healing (SE Turkey Covid-19 Support for Health Practitioners, SE Ukraine Task Force, World Human Relief-SE Turkey Earthquake Solidarity). Today she is recovering from burnout, reconnecting to her own resources and building her home. She moves for sharing trauma informed movement practices and resting practices. She believes in joy. defneerdur.com
Marcela Santander Corvalán (she/her) was born in Chile, trained in Milan and then at the CNDC Angers. She also graduated in history and dance from the University of Paris 8. Since 2011 she has been working alongside choreographers Dominique Brun, Faustin Linyekula, Julie Nioche, Ana Rita Teodoro and Volmir Cordeiro. Her collaboration with choreographer Mickaël Phelippeau included the artistic direction of À DOMICILE, in Guissény, Brittany. Since 2014 she has put her name to Époque with Volmir Cordeiro (2015), her first solo Disparue (2016), MASH with Annamaria Ajmone (2017), and Quietos (2019). In 2020, she co-authored the performed conference CONCHA – Histoires d’écoute on the theme of listening, with Hortense Belhôte. She is now involved, with Gaerald Kurdian, in the creation of AGWAS which will be presented at la Briqueterie in 2025. Marcela Santander Corvalán was associate artist at the Quartz theatre in Brest, la Villa Albertine in New York, and at La Manufacture, CDCN Nouvelle-Aquitaine Bordeaux La Rochelle, and she is now the co-director of the art-center Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers. leslaboratoires.org
