Pre-Retreat Workshop (Optional)

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”

With Anjelika Doniy

11–14 August 2026 — Nordmarkskapellet, Oslo

This four-day workshop is an invitation to deepen your listening, expand movement awareness, and cultivate embodied presence through Contact Improvisation and Authentic Movement before entering the silent field of the Silent Contact Retreat.
It brings together breath, flow, composition and relational practice in a shared space of investigation.

10% discount on the total if joining both events

What this Workshop Is About

 

About the possibilities and limitations.
About relationships with the other and others.
About the flow of movement and consciousness.
About contact with yourself, despite the constantly changing circumstances.
About joy.

 

Who dances, watches and enjoys at the same time?
Where is this “pleasure muscle” located?
How can we train it, stretch it, use it?
How do we turn from just eccentrics in love with CI into aesthetes, finely tuned to the beautiful, funny, sensual?

One of our natural needs is to be visible.

This gives us strength, energy, motivation to realize ourselves and to live fully, with taste. In dance, this manifests in the way I look and can see the movement, and how others look at me and give feedback in the form of attention, movement, in words. We can call it presence.

 

And our other need is to be invisible, free and unconditioned by the external environment.

 

Not to check if we do our tasks correctly—basing our view on the authorities or opinion of elders; to do, to try, to encounter the result ourselves and to choose our own path.

 

Let’s call it totality.

How to combine these two healthy needs?

 

By experimenting! Improvisation is a game with the known and the unknown. With rules to be followed or broken. With a degree of freedom that is respected or violated. Improvisation can only be learned through practice and improvisation.

 

By practicing continuity, flow, unpredictability of movement in space. By adapting the space behind to a spherical, connected, technically poetic dance. By experimenting with vision, stretching this possibility from safety to aesthetic pleasure. By training what can allow you to be spontaneous in the unpredictable world of dance. To be ready for new offers, to play, to tune in. To allow others to look at you and learn to accept the support of the beholder.

 

By integrating this into CI practice.

 

We will remember that we can perceive, feel, see, hear beauty.
To expand, to explode, to feel the flow, to stick a curious nose into movement and stillness, silence and sound.

 

For this we have time and place, music and silence, presence and disappearance.

 

Authentic Movement

 

Authentic Movement is a beautiful tool to connect to inner impulses. It is a possibility to express feelings, images and information from the subconscious that come through our bodies.

 We will be experiencing the movement and finding pathways inside the body in relating to others with an inner guideline. There will be exploration of a range of touch qualities in stillness and while moving.

This excerpt  from “Offering from a Conscious Body: The Discipline of Authentic Movement” book by Janet Adler describes what continuously brings me to Contact Improvisation:

“Here, in this studio on this day, as in life anywhere on any day, experiences happen simultaneously that are vastly different from each other. One is alone, one is not alone. One feels a sense of belonging and another does not. Longing, belonging, soaring, withdrawing, sleeping and walking, individuals take turns descending into different aspects of being human in the presence of each other. Consciously embodying one’s truth in the presence of others can create an experience of wholeness, belonging and completion as well as an experience of incompletion, frustration, and alienation. “I am because you are” seems true regardless of our experience of suffering or freedom from suffering. 

 

Time passes, commitment deepens. The inner witness becomes increasingly stronger and more accepting of oneself and therefore of others. Language that naturally surfaces from conscious embodiment names this love. Presence becomes this love.”

 

Janet Adler

Anjelika Doniy

Anjelika Doniy is a dance improviser, choreographer and teacher focused on contact.

 

After 5 years of formal studies of choreography, ballet dance and other stage disciplines at the Higher School of Culture (St-Petersburg), she worked for 10 Years as a theater choreographer. Until…
In 1997, I was at the Impulse Dance Festival in Vienna. There, I saw a wonder of CI, watched Steve Paxton on stage, flew into Andrew Harwood workshop where some 70 dancers were rolling over each other. This was unbelievable, the earth was becoming alive. I saw a realization of my dream of the world growing from connection, interaction, harmony between one and many.
It was love from the first sight. From 2002 I started facilitating first jams and CI workshops in Russia and initiated International Contact Improvisation and Performance Festival in Moscow in 2006–2010.

My path in CI as a teacher began as long journey of workshops for beginners. I love to guide people into the dance, inspire them with their own body, and awaken to what is already there. I love to surprise long-time dancers with secrets of the body as little keys opening a familiar dance into new spaces. This year, I am following a program of the Institute for Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy to go deeper into the body and its anatomy, to touch the cells, to breathe through the navel, and to use this resource in my practice.

My special interest in contact improvisation is clarity. Clarity towards the practice. Honesty towards how I move my weight in the space of Gravity. Attention towards clearing the dance from the personal. Letting things happen as they go.

I am grateful to have met and studied with such teachers as Regine Chopinot, Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, Danny Lepkoff, Benno Voorham, Lisa Nelson, Esther Gal, Yaniv Mintzer, Martin Keo and many others.

 

Anjelica taught over 200 workshops all over the world for all levels from complete beginners to professional dancers. Her teaching is rooted in many years of work of acquiring and transmitting technical skills and equally long path of meditation and mindfulness practice. She blends them into a life dance, contact improvisation.

Practical Information

Dates: 11–14 August 2026

Location: Nordmarka, Oslo, Norway

Language: English

Duration: 4 days

Group size: Limited

Food: 3 vegetarian meals

Accomodation: Camping, Room in chapel

Pricing: from € 340

10 % Discount in total price if joining both events.

*Only applicable to non promotional prices.

Register

Prices & Accommodation

All options include the full program, vegetarian meals, and accommodation for the duration of the event.

Solidarity Price

 

Limited to 5 spots, for participants with limited financial resources. These 5 spots are supported.

Shared room or Tent (chapel)

€ 340

Standard Price

Shared room or Tent (chapel)

€ 430

Ready to join?
Registration is open. Places are limited.

Register

Final confirmation of accommodation and price depends on availability.
We trust participants to choose the price that best reflects their current financial situation.

FAQ

What exactly is the Silent Contact Retreat?

The Silent Contact Retreat is an immersive experience where the research and pursue of silence — understood as a state that goes beyond the absence of words — unfolds through Contact Improvisation, Authentic Movement, and carefully curated scores.
Each element supports and amplifies the others, deepening states of presence, listening, and embodied awareness.

Do I need experience to join?

Yes — you should have contact improvisation experience (classes, jams, workshops), but mainly you should feel comfortable navigating a jam space independently.
If you are uncertain about your level of experience, we invite you to reach out for a short conversation so we can sense together whether joining is supportive for you and for the group.

Prior exposure to contemplative practices (meditation, stillness) is helpful but not required.

Will there be music or instruments?

No. There will be no music, instruments, or guest musicians, and participants are asked not to bring or play music.

Music powerfully shapes rhythm and emotional tone. In this retreat we choose to explore the body, movement, and silence without an external guide, supporting an equal and shared field where no one directs the experience of others.

Is sexual or romantic contact permitted?

CI practice and the Silent Contact Retreat do not frame the container as a space for sexual encounters even if sexual energy is a natural part of human experience. Boundary awareness and consent are central, and respectful practice holds physical + emotional safety first.

We encourage participants to observe their experiences while remaining focused on the practices.

What about physical safety and consent?

Contact Improvisation is built on consent, mutual respect, and awareness. Touch isn’t automatic — it’s continu­­­­ously negotiated through presence, movement, and non-verbal signals. And sometimes, through simply moving away from a situation, dance, or person.

Are meals included?

Yes, the retreat provides three vegetarian meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner), tea, snack fruits and water; dietary needs are gathered on registration.
You are welcome to bring your own supplements/snacks.

What should I bring?

The usual things you will take to a dance retreat.
Clothes for movement (avoid zippers and metal accessories), layers for the weather, water bottle, and personal items. Sleeping bag for the Chapel rooms, and camping gear if camping.

What shouldn´t I bring?

Musical instruments

Clothes with legends (texts, distracting logos)

Noisy things (a noisy bottle, for example)

Camera

Is there a deposit, cancellation, or refund policy?

Yes, we require a non-refundable deposit corresponding to approximately 30% of the total retreat fee, payable within 21 days of receiving our welcoming email.

Deposit amounts

Retreat:

• Solidarity Price (€ 420 total) → € 130 deposit
• Standard Price (€ 480 – € 520 total) → € 160 deposit
• Modern Cabin (Single room) (€ 650 total) → € 200 deposit

Pre-Retreat Workshop:

• Solidarity Price (€ 340 total) → € 110 deposit
• Standard Price (€ 430 total) → € 150 deposit

A Spot on the retreat is only confirmed once the deposit has been received. We are unable to hold places beyond 21 days without prepayment.

The remaining balance is due no later than August 1st, 2025.