Workshop for professional dancers

Nadine’s work explores contemporary dance, incorporating movement tasks and situations which playfully connect people and focus on the energetics of body language. She generates a warm atmosphere and inspires students to work intelligently and push the edges of their limits. The workshop consists of exercises to awaken the body and generate awareness of the entire physical instrument. Attention is given to breath, joint articulation, muscle tone and stability to improve physical strength. Nadine invites everybody to participate in technical exercises, including floor work, games, and challenging phrase composition. Students learn to activate and ground their centre in a way that allows them to experience optimal freedom in their movement. Partner work, guided improvisations and theatrical tasks highlight the class activities to support playfulness and creativity in movement and expression. Her physicality is defined by a raw, powerful movement balanced with a special attention to detail, particularly in the movement of the hands.

About Nadine Gerspacher:

Nadine Gerspacher, born in Freiburg im Breisgau, is a freelance dancer, choreographer, lecturer, and artistic director of her own company Cia Nadine Gerspacher, based in Freiburg. She has been working internationally for over 20 years, choreographing for companies and universities worldwide. Among others, she danced for five years with the internationally renowned dance theatre company Dave St. Pierre from Montreal, which strongly influenced her own choreographic work. In 2015, she worked as a choreographer for the Cirque du Soleil project „Heart“. In 2016, she received the Isadora Award from the Iwanson-Sixt Foundation in Munich for her exceptional achievements in the field of contemporary dance. In October 2022 Nadine Gerspacher and Nicolas Ricchini opened „Free Zone“, a centre for movement, creation and performance. In addition, Nadine Gerspacher is the co-founder, together with Tina Halford, of the Nexo Festival in Fribourg. Cia Nadine Gerspacher receives guest performance funding from Tanzland in 2022 and the Inthega houses for 2023-2026. Cia Nadine Gerspacher is an independent artistic project based in Freiburg. It serves as a platform for Nadine Gerspacher’s own work as well as for co-productions with other artists, dance institutions and companies.

Nadine Gerspacher’s central field of work is dance theatre inspired by everyday life. She creates small worlds inhabited by eccentric characters, where the absurd, the poetic and unfiltered physicality come together in a narrative way. Humour, transformations, grotesque moments and vulnerability play a central role in her pieces. In their choreographies, the company creates surprising images that touch the audience emotionally and captivate younger or inexperienced spectators.

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