Once upon a time, two years ago, a group of friends met in Catalunya to vision a community based on contact improvisation. They recognized that in the forms that contact is practiced - the jam and the festival –instant communities easily emerge. Yet during meeting it became clear that there were several different visions of creative community - not all of which centred on CI. They started dreaming of bringing more people together that are interested in community living and the creative arts to see if any of those seeds could take root and inspire a group to take them forward.

 

As if by magic an ex-Marist seminary center was discovered by a friend near Girona. It was felt the site could be fertile ground to explore what it takes to build a community and in July 2015 the group daringly and with loving inspiration opened it up for a summer artist residency.

 

The residency opened with a vibrant and organic intensive exploring community and dance. It was a mixed and fluid week with many artists of diverse interests coming through the gates and offering movement labs, music, journeys in sculpture and drawing, and performances that filled the unique space of the monastery. After a full 3 months of collaborations and festivities, a committed group emerged with the wish to pursue a living community integrated with dance and creative expression. We withdrew for a winter of focused harvesting, re-visioning and restructuring the project to support our return to the monastery. With energy strengthened we will once again enter the monastery this coming April for six months of living together, dancing, creating and of course always always always doing what we do best, improvising…

 

The summer calendar is already full of events such as Dancing in the Dirt which is a eco-somatic research week. Other beautiful events will follow including theatre and mask workshop Divine Rediculous, the Solstice Contact Festival investigating social change, Tuning Scores and Logomotion, CI Family Holiday, Aguahara, Butoh Festival…and others! Check out the programme page.