COMMUNITY EVENTS

>>>This page highlights special events at the hall.

>>> Follow this link to learn about SENSE OBJECT, our resident artist organization.

>>>For a list of ongoing events, click REGULAR CLASSES/MEETINGS.

>>>For rental availability, please visit the page of the room you are interested in, located under the "RENTALS" tab, and check the availability calendar for that space.

EASTER CHEEPSTER JAM 2024
March 29-31, 2024
A weekend of contact improvisation in community

Jams
Labs
Classes
Underscore
Community Meals by Timna Naim
Special Performance of The Free School of Future Communion

Registration Link: https://forms.gle/kYVU6qVhQr2LUkta8

More information: senseobject.com/easter

Changing States: Fluids and Improvisation, a Body-Mind Centering® workshop with Cathie Caraker
Sat & Sun Feb 10-11, 2024
cathiecaraker.com

Fun fact: about 65% of your body is fluid! The fluids systems are in constant motion, transforming from one state into another as they circulate through the body. Blood, CSF, Lymph, Cellular, Interstitial and Synovial: they have distinct functions, yet all are part of one fluid ecosystem, expressing multiple states of movement and mind. They support our ability to sense and feel, to find lightness and density, to create boundaries, to run fast or rest quietly. They can teach us to be adaptable, ready to shift our state at a moment’s notice – in dancing and in life. We’ll explore the diversity of our fluid expressions through embodied anatomy, intentional touch, developmental movement and dance improvisation. Previous experience in Contact Improvisation and other somatic practices is helpful but not required.

CLOUD TECTONICS:
LIFT, LOFT & DRIFT IN CI
With Ezra LeBank

February 23-25
Friday 6-9pm
Saturday & Sunday 10am-5pm

Is it possible for us to fly and fall without noticing much? Can the drift inherent in momentum compel us toward intuitive pathways above and along each other?

We will begin with Dirt Work: physical training to expand, integrate, and ready our bodies in conversation with gravity and the earth to prepare for Cloud Tectonics – work that aims to reframe our experiences of lift, loft, and drift. Detailed and buoyant exercises will guide us toward a dancing experience that feels full of abundant and radically free choice-making in vertical and spherical space for both ourselves and those we dance with. Instead of relying on each other, we imagine a dance we co-create amidst simultaneous independence and communion while in flight.

Some previous CI experience assumed.

More Info Here

Contact + Improvisation:
Scores, composition and the poetics of presence
with Scott Wells

March 2, 10AM-4PM
Registration & Details Link

A playful and focused approach to dancing together Movement sourcing, contact improv, tuning scores, ensemble states, authentic movement , instant composition, witnessing and improvisation.

Including: movement sourcing, contact improv, tuning scores, ensemble states, authentic movement instant composition and improvisation. This workshop is for those interested in performing and those interested in not performing (for example: discovering our selves as improvisors, connecting with others through movement, deepening our movement practice, and witnessing). The material will range from compositional practice to exploring the intangibles (curiosity, vulnerability, commitment, presence). Sourcing--connecting with your body, impulses + spontaneity Ensemble states--tuning exercises, composition and non-composition, Performance Jam--open space with intention and group focus, but less rigid than a formal performance. Scores--the way in, Aesthetics--how we watch.

MOVING BY TOUCH

2 Contact Improvisation Intensives
with Chris Aiken, Ray Chung, and Andrew Harwood
March 16-22, 2024

movingbytouch.com

***PAST EVENTS***

HEALING PLAY
A playshop for CI dancers and…
with Keith Hennessy

NOVEMBER 11 & 12, 2023
Sat and Sun 10:30AM-5PM
with lunch break 1-2PM
+ Sat eve jam 7-10PM

“Prioritizing improvisation, experimentation, and collaboration we will play in the forests of dancing and healing. There are ancient grandmother trees there. There are baby sprouts of new life growing. There is death and transformation, fire and wind.”

Centered in play this daily laboratory explores the political healing potential of dancing together. What’s up? What inspires you or prevents you from dancing? What activates or impedes your healing potential? Let’s address the many crises of loneliness and lack of solidarity by re-tuning with empathy, curiosity, and connection. How can art and care be realized as a single project or path within the practices of your life? Yes we’ll engage, both in our experimental play and in our embodied conversations, with land, ancestors, power, consent, pleasure, anarchism, belonging, and community. Practices will include fake healing, anti-fascist partner dancing, queer becoming, spontaneous writing, heart circle, and connecting through objects.

Keith Hennessy, MFA, PhD. is a frolicker, imperfectionist, and witch working in the fields of dance, performance, activism, affordable housing, gay sexuality, and teaching. Raised in Canada on Atikameksheng Anishnawbek lands, living in San Francisco in Ramaytush Ohlone territory since 1982, Keith tours internationally. Hennessy’s work is interdisciplinary and experimental, motivated by anti-racist, queer-feminist, and decolonial movements. With a focus on the poetics and politics of relationship, Keith prioritizes collaborations across lines of identity, race, and power. His work has been presented by Impulstanz (Vienna), Black Box (Oslo), VAC Foundation (Moscow), Homo Novus (Riga), SNDO (Amsterdam), Ponderosa (Germany), Movement Research (NYC), SFMOMA, NYLA, PICA (Portland), Kampnagel (Hamburg), and Core (Atlanta). In San Francisco Hennessy directs Circo Zero, co-founded the culture spaces 848 and CounterPulse, and was a member of Sara Mann’s Contraband, 1985-1994.
circozero.org

$100-250 sliding
Zelle contactsenseobject@gmail.com (preferred!)
Paypal or Venmo @senseobject 

3 full scholarships offered: Send a request (one page or shorter) to contactsenseobject@gmail.com to apply. Introduce yourself and tell us why this workshop is important to you right now. You are welcome to share your financial need situation but this is not required.
Scholarships will be awarded by Oct. 15

* The Saturday evening 11/11 Healing Play jam will be open to the public, with light facilitation.
Free for workshop participants. For drop-ins, $5-10 encouraged, pay what you want including zero.

NITA LITTLE is coming to the Finnish Hall for a full 3-day weekend of Contact Improvisation!

***APPLY HERE: https://forms.gle/wYvAzqnB3GYXuZxj9 ***

A Golden Opportunity To Begin The Next 50 Years Of Contact Improvisation

WITH CHRIS AIKEN, RAY CHUNG AND ANDREW HARWOOD

Berkeley Finnish Hall April 10-16, 2023

One week. Two workshops. Three nuanced and refined perspectives on contact practice. Both workshops invite participants to investigate and re-imagine our collective perception of what Contact Improvisation offers us after 50 years of its existence. For more info visit: https://movingbytouch.com/arcs/#two-workshops

EASTER CHEEPSTER JAM 2023 April 7-9

Contact Improvisation weekend with classes, jams, underscore & more!
Featuring:
BMC w/ Cathie Caraker
Healing Play w/ Keith Hennessy
Partnering w/ Megan Lowe
Flying w/ Scott Wells
CI Classes with Bianca Cabrera, Amy Kingwill
Live Music by Tom Djill & Suki O’Kane
Community Meals by Hillary Kennedy
POC Only Jam Friday
Family Jam Sunday

Through March 5 $80
Through March 19 $100
Through March 31 $150
Week of $200
Day of or At the Door $250
VENMO @ANDY-LUNDBERG-1
Short on $? We need Work Exchangers! Please contact: livinglab@gmail.com

* NO DROP-INS! (Except Family Jam & BIPOC jam)
* Registration is non-refundable except in case of illness or emergency.
* Remember to include your name and contact email when sending payment.
* See schedule in discussion area. Subject to change!
* Masks optional but encouraged. We will require them if Alameda Co. moves into orange or red CDC Community Transmission levels.

Movement Archery
with Tom Weksler & Roser Tutusaus

“The right art is purposeless, aimless. The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede. What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen.” - Eugen Herrigel

Fri 24/3 | 6pm-9pm
Sat 25/3 | 10 am - 5 pm (with 1 hour lunch break)
Sun 26/3 | 10 am - 5 pm (with 1 hour lunch break)

449.9 Euro ($437 USD)
Click here for registration:
https://www.movementarchery.com/purchase/berkeley2023
More information:
frontdesk@tapgym.com
info@movementarchery.com

Kira Kirsch

Cultivating Potential Movement Resources
potential within - capacity for resilience

Friday March 3 - Sunday March 5, 10AM-1PM daily
To Register: $150-200, sliding scale
Paypal at mwolodarski@gmail.com or Venmo @Miriam-Wolodarski
2 full scholarships available for POC dancers.
Email mwolodarski@gmail.com for more information/ questions.

With tools from the Axis Syllabus, we are learning how to investigate, break down and describe movement with a strong orientation towards searching sustainable movement patterns. We look at safer and creative falling reflexes, sequential movement, defining individual and contextual range of motion and enhancing kinetic literacy to name a few topics. These practices can be applied to dance and many other movement related fields.
In my classes I aim to create scenarios for textured and embodied dancing and a learning environment where your body can self-organize and thrive. Movement material, sensations, coordination and perspectives of anatomy and biomechanics are proposed to explore. The information ideally self-seeds into resilient and adapted movement fitting your body and environments as well as open new curiosities for autonomous study, practice and application. 

Kira Kirsch is a dance artist, dance educator, dance researcher and community builder. Based in Berlin since 2015 she has been collaborating in building a furthering educational program for dance & movement professionals at Lake Studios under the name of “Movement Artisans”, created an annual festival called “Sensing In” and hosted several dance research residencies and symposiums at Lake Studios and Tanzfabrik developing and collecting collaborative research methodologies for dancers at the intersection of art, science and transmission. She has been a regular guest teacher at the HZT Bachelor and Master program and teaches internationally. In her pedagogical work she celebrates learning through movement and dancing together. Her artistic work is deeply influenced by her 7 years in San Francisco dancing with Sara Shelton Mann, Avi K.productions or Nita Little & the Divisadero Research Company among many others. Recent projects that call in and seek to embody untold stories and portraying unseen relations include dance films, music videos, touch residencies and site specific works. Kira is a also a passionate contact improvisor which constitutes much of her experiential research practice.

www.movementartisans.net 

Scott Wells

Contact Journey January 7th
Follow your nose (or your partners nose) your curiosity, interest and impulses. Skills practice will support a "states" experience. Contact skills, longer passages of exploration expanding from duet to group constellations and dancing.
Registration: tapgym.com
(under workshops)

Zero to Flying. Feb 10-12
at Athletic Playground/ Finnish Hall
Aerial aspects of contact improvisation: flying, catching, landing, fluid acrobatics, deft maneuvers. For the acrobatics everyone will work at their own level and will learn best by building group safety and trust. I aim to connect the work to somatic knowledge. (For example, Jumping ≠ Flying because jumping is a muscular action, whereas flying is in the bones and is affected greatly by emotions and attitude.). Registration: tapgym.com
(under workshops)

PERFORMANCE PRIMERS
FEBRUARY 4 @ 8PM

New performance works-in-progress by Brenda Arellano + Josh Matthews, Ollalie Lackler
Performances followed by Feedback Process
Produced and facilitated by Performance Primers (Hannah Ayasse, Chibueze Crouch, and Gizeh Muniz) in collaboration Sense Object (Miriam Wolodarski), with funding from the City of Berkeley.

SUMMER CONTACT IMPROVISATION JAM: JULY 22 - 24

3 days of CI classes, labs, CI50 share-backs, socializing, conversing, contemplating, community building, and sharing meals outside.
Registering ahead is required! No drop-ins!

Register via:
Paypal: livinglab@gmail.com
Venmo: @Andy-Lundberg-1

$70 Before July
$100 July 1-15
$150 July 15-20
$200 Day before / Day of

* Work Exchange is available!
(WEX is fun & a great way to meet folks. Email livinglab@gmail.com to arrange.)

Stay tuned to the FB event
"Summer CI Jam Berkeley 2022"
for updates and details!

89.7 FM co-presents the Bay Area’s Creative Music Festival July 29th - August 1st

The Outsound New Music Summit is an entirely artist-organized event by OUTSOUND PRESENTS, a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation based in San Francisco.

Every year the Outsound New Music Summit showcases some of the most innovative and pioneering new music that is happening in California and beyond.

Our Goal: To bring highly innovative music and art to the increasing number of people seeking a real “alternative” to the status quo of music being presented in the Bay Area.

The Summit performance schedule includes music and sound ranging from free improvisation, to electronic manipulation, to noise, to sonic sculptural art reflecting genre-busting exploration and creativity. In addition, the festival seeks to promote intermedia arts, fostering cross-pollination through film, dance, and writing. The Summit has supported more than 350 performing groups and artists since 2002.

For more information visit: http://www.outsound.org/summit/

Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2022-outsound-new-music-summit-tickets-356877388877

JUNE 25th at 8PM
Berkeley Finnish Hall Auditorium
Sense Object presents:

2022 Artist in Residence
Styles Alexander's
CATASTROPHIZING ((emphasis on the ass))

(CATASTROPHIZING ((emphasis on the ass)) is a work of disaster. Or a work that reveals how I'm moving through the disaster inflicted on all of us by white supremacy, and the many catastrophes that I inflict upon myself. Catastrophizing explores Chaos, comedy, tribulation and triumphs.

Styles Alexander is an SF based performance researcher, choreographer, writer, conjurer, singer. Styles's work departs from cinematic movement and design techniques, punk performance, and their lineage of rootwork in the Deep South. They're work aims to contain hyper-athleticism, emotional investigation, and tales of surviving late stage capitalism and environmental collapse.

https://sebastian.fit/workshops/

FALL HALL JAM 2018
a weekend of Contact Improvisation practice

Class, Labs & Jams! 
Community Dinner Saturday night
...schedule & details coming soon... 

Sliding Scale Pricing
Paypal to livinglab@gmail.com. Please make sure to use the "send money to a friend" option! You can also bring cash/check to the Tuesday jam. Pay early to save money, and help us plan ahead!
$60-200 through October 1
$80-200 through October 31
$200 day before/ day of 

https://www.facebook.com/events/1935553026511466/?active_tab=about

Upcoming Moving On Center Workshops at the Finnish Hall:

Body Mind Centering with Diane Elliot

Thurs., Fri., Sat. Oct. 25, 26, 27, 9:15-11:45am

Bartenieff Fundamentals with Brenton Cheng

Thurs. Fri., Sat., Oct. 25, 26, 27, 1:00-3:30pm

Laban Movement Analysis with Peggy Hackney

Thurs., Fri., Sat.,Jan. 2019, 24, 25, 26, 9:15-11:45am

Hakomi Somatic Therapy with Manuela Mischke-Reeds

ONLY Thurs., Fri., Jan. 2019, 24, 25, 1:00-5:00pm

http://www.movingoncenter.org/

New Year's Eve
C.I. Gathering
at The Finnish Hall

Come transition into a new year with a full day of Contact Improvisation in Community

December 31, 2017

VALA TANZ
Tuesday December 5th at 8PM
Finnish Hall Auditorium

Valentine Tanz is an experimental choreographic project created by Vala/ Tomasz Foltyn. This work is a collage of Valentine’s works, a fearless life/art process that refers to the history of crystal ancestors, queer nature of the universe, as well as challenges the aesthetics of drag culture. The form of the show is oscillating between grotesque theater, expressive dance, performance art and oral pleasures of talking. 
www.facebook.com/valentinetanz

This performance is part of "Fem_Ness/How do we keep on dancing?", an exchange between Kraków based artists Tomasz Foltyn, Justyna Stasiowska & Bartolomeu Koczenasz, and Berkeley artists Rosemary Hannon & Miriam Wolodarski, funded by TMU, the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

Join us for the show, discussion, and dancing afterward!

Performing Arts Salon
Friday May 20th at 8PM
in the upstairs Meeting Room!

With new work by:

Karla Quintero
Andy Strain
Rosemary Hannon
with Mindy Zarem
and Diana Lara
 

Join us for works in progress, experiments, and improvisation. Feedback, discourse, hangout. Performance, discussion, mingling!

Spring 2017 Residents
RANDY REYES & GABE CHRISTIAN

Randy & Gabe join forces to bring us Pu$$y Pop for Jesus / Ballsacrilegious,  a tongue-in-cheek spin-off on traditional Sunday Services that intends to queer the memory-space-time of “Sunday mornings” by disseminating spiritual and non-spiritual texts, building queer spiritual ecologies, warm-up/praise and Serwoman sermon/intention-setting, yoga, dance improvisation, and shaking our @$$es to celebrate our individual and collective resilience.

*** PUBLIC SHARING the evening of June 18! ***

JUNE 2 & 3 at 8PM in the Auditorium

Rent Romus Life's Blood Ensemble
April 29, 2017

Easter Cheapster Jam
April 14th - 17th 2017

Axis Syllabus/ Movement Artisans
with Kira Kirsch and Antoine Ragot
July 7-10 2016

RASANBLE! Haitian Arts & Culture Festival
July 22 - 24 2016

Northern Winds & Voices
Concert and Springtime Festival
May 7 at 4PM

Crane & Crocodile 2.1: Domestic Interrogations
a new dance performance
by Rosemary Hannon
and Miriam Wolodarski
April 29 & 30 2016

Axis Syllabus Workshop
with Kevin O'Connor and Kelly Keenan
April 29 - May 2

Axis Syllabus Intensive
with Frey Faust and Francesca Pedulla
March 7 - 13th 2016

Fall Hall Jam
a focused and affordable weekend of Contact Improvisation
October 28th - 30th

Halloween Time Travelers Ball
Oakland Intergroup Alcohol Free Party
October 31

SALTA Dance Collective
Wednesday October 28th
Show at 8:30PM

Swing Dance
October 17th
starts at 7pm

VîV Soft Open
October 2nd
Show at 8PM