Our Guest Faculty.
Nina Wehnert
BMC® Practitioner and BMC®Teacher
Nina lives in Berlin and teaches Body-Mind Centering® in classes, workshops, trainings and festivals around Europe.
She studied Contemporary Dance, is still dancing, exploring, teaching Contact Improvisation over more than 20 years, and has taught for more than 15 years Yoga extensively. Early she discovered her passion for anatomy, movement research and the quest of being human and studied BMC® with moveus and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen in Germany and the US. She is now part of the regular teaching team of moveus, the BMC® Certification Training Program in Germany and since some years offering her own BMC® Training Programs in Berlin and Bavaria. In Berlin she is giving regular BMC® Classes at Tanzfabrik, Berlin, since April 2020 also online.
Kelly Keenan (Montréal, Canada)
Kelly Keenan is a mother, dance artist, teacher, researcher, and event organiser based in Montreal/Tiohtiá:ke/Mooniyang. With 20 years of teaching experience both within and outside of institutions, locally and internationally, she began working as a professor specialising in new approaches to technique and training at UQAM's Département de Danse in December 2022. As a dancer, Kelly collaborates with various independent choreographers including Erin Hill, Hanna Sybille Muller and Katie Ward. In her role as an event organiser, she has orchestrated numerous workshop festivals, teacher laboratories, and founded the Montreal Movement Educator’s Forum in 2012, hosting over 50 teachers from diverse fields of practice and enthusiastic participants to exchange, reflect and re-inspire their teaching practices. Kelly's research delves into the foundational values of dance training and diverse complementary training methods, approaching the subject from a genealogical and feminist perspective. Her dedication lies in creating spaces for dialogue among movement educators and practitioners to renew and innovate socio-culturally informed approaches to dance and movement training. Kelly was a certified Axis Syllabus teacher from 2006-2015 and is honoured to again dance and teach alongside beloved collaborators Kira Kirsch and Antoine Ragot (Movement Artisans) and their vibrant community of curious movers.
KATJA MUSTONEN (Finland)
is a Finnish dancer, teacher and dance maker, who is based in Outukumpu and works as a nomad. She graduated from the Vocational Dance School in Outukumpu, Finland 2004 as dancer, and holds a MA degree in „Contemporary Dance Education“ from the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany. Since 2008, she’s been teaching Contemporary Dance Technique, Improvisation and Contact Improvisation internationally. She is curious about the states of presence and the body’s ability to transform, embody, and transmit images, into knowledge, emotions and atmosphere’s. She is interested in jointing photography, video and text among other interdisciplinary approaches into her artistic work and continues being in awe with the dance as her teacher.
Johannes Anzenhofer
live - accompagnement
Johannes Anzenhofer is a sculptor, musician and movement artist.
He is playing Accordion, Guitar, Flutes and Percussion. His Dance Experience is based on Capoeira, Contact Improvisation, Contemporary and African Dance. He plays music for Dance -Events, -Festivals, Jams, Performances, Weddings etc. and is familiar in switching roles from playing music into dancing. He lives with his family around Munich as a freelance artist and pedagogue.
Baris Mihci
Axis Syllabus
Baris Mihci was born 1976 in Wuppertal, Germany and is currently based between Turkey and Europe. He graduated with degrees in social pedagogy, German language, Sports and special education for physically disabled children at the University of Cologne. He completed his studies with a social-cultural research thesis referring to Pina Bausch's Tanztheater and its artistic research about human relationships. Baris then began his dancing life. His curiosity about the art of dancing was strongly influenced by following the work of Pina Bausch for over 14 years. Coming from an athletic background, movement was always a big interest to him. In 2001 he was introduced and immersed himself in the Axis Syllabus . Baris acquired a teacher's certificate after 4 years and has been teaching regularly for dancers and non-dancers alike across Europe since. He has taught at Studio Hybrid, Dancetrumjette, Espace Catastrophe, the Nomadic College, DOCH, the Cullberg Ballet among many other professional dance training institutions. Baris’ performance work is based in solo, site specific and improvisation. He has presented solos at Belgart Moment Festival, Festival tanzhautnah, RAC Festival (Brussels) among others. He has also collaborated extensively with Collectif en Transit, devoted to bringing dance to urban public spaces. Baris is a key organizer of the Nomadic College since 2004 and a member of the Axis Syllabus member assessment panel.
Since 2012 Baris is teaching workshops world-wide in schools or festivals and lives between Turkey and Europe.
Jörg Hassmann
Contact Improvisation
I never thought of becoming a dancer, since dancing was one of the things I was scared of the most. But life seemd to have this strange idea with me that started more than 25 years ago with a CI class. Now I teach it, perform it, write about it and travel the world through it - happily and passionately.
Developmental movement patterns, an anatomical focus on the skeleton and the fascia system, Capoeira, Release Techniques and many kinds of sports have guided my understanding of the moving body and keep me researching. And ending is not in sight. joerghassmann.wordpress.com, www.dancecontact.de, www.contact-meets-contemporary.de
Yulia Dolgova
Axis Syllabus
Her dancing career was started in Novosibirsk in 2005, where she studied Contemporary Dance and Contact Improvisation. She graduated from Novosibirsk State University with a degree in Mathematics earlier in the same city.
After moving to St. Petersburg in 2008 she started teaching dance and became one of the founders of Contact Improvisation Studio "Kiwi". As the organizer of dance classes she built for herself an independent training program by inviting teachers like Steve Batts, Benno Voorham, Adrian Russi, Otto Akkanen, Natanja den Boeft, Katerina Basalaeva, Alexander Andriyashkin, Ilya Belenkov and others, as well as taking part in various dance projects and performances.
Her interest to exploring the body in dynamic situations and to consciousness in actions led her to meeting Axis Syllabus - the system of movement analysis and training method, which significantly influenced her approach to dance and teaching. From 2010 to 2013 Yulia lived in California, studying Axis Syllabus with teachers like Kira Kirch, Ana Flecha, Frey Faust, Baris Mihci, etc. In 2015 she became a certified Axis Syllabus teacher.
In 2015 she received masters in choreography from the Vaganova Ballet Academy, (Research creative laboratory of composition of contemporary dance forms). Since 2013 she has been living in St. Petersburg, where at the moment she teaches Contact Improvisation, Axis Syllabus, Contemporary Dance. She also pursues postgraduate studies in the Vaganova Ballet Academy, where she teaches in the master's program "Artistic Practices in Contemporary Dance". She is one of the organizers of the Festival of Contemporary Dance and Contact Improvisation “Dance Connect”, as well as one of the founders of Axis Syllabus Study Group Russia where she performs organizational, educational and research activities.
Axel Does
Chinese Medicine - Tui Na - Acupressure
Axel is a passionate educator and healer in the traditional chinese medicine field with decades of experience and an eclectic backround in dance, acrobatics as well as being a teacher and practitioner of Chinson Hapkido, a korean martial, movement and healing art. Axel teaches at the Heilpraktiker Ausbildung in Berlin, runs a Tui Na certification course at the Shou Zong school in Berlin and is organizing and teaching at the yearly TCM congress in Rothenburg Germany. For deepening his knowledge he has been visiting China for studying at different universities of TCM.
Cristina Crippa (Italy)
is an interdisciplinary artist, movement and art teacher. She studied sculpture and painting at Brera Arts Academy of Milan. While at the Academy, she studied different kinds of dance until falling in love with contact improvisation, composition and improvisation.
The curiosity and passion for dance and movement shifted her attention from the canvas to the body and its relation with the environment and people. Her interdisciplinary nature leads her to experience art through different channels and means of expression: actions and performances, dance, photography, drawings, video and installations. The center of her investigation is body-mind, movement, the relationship with space and with each other.
In 2016 and 2017 she was one of the organizer of the "Contact Camp", an international non-profit event that creates and supports a space for the practice and research of contact improvisation. In 2019 she completed the European training of Ilan Lev Method, a bodywork practice developed in Israel from ilan Lev.
She currently teaches contact improvisation at Artichoke, professional training in contemporary dance in Milano, and she is invited to teach in different contexts in Italy and Europe.
As a performer Cristina has worked with the visual artist Paola Anzichè in Milano and Essen (Pact Zollverein), dance and video artist Tara Rynders with the performance “You and Me” at Earthdance in Massachusetts, Freiburg and Austria, with Alberto Gianfreda in the research group of "reading the territory with art" with a final exhibition at the Mo.Ve, partner of the MAC - Museum of art Contemporary of Lissone and in 2020 as a performer in the remake of Simon Forti's Huddle and Censor performances in the exhibition"Simon Forti. Close to the heart", ICA Foundation, Milan.
During the first Lock Down I create the theoretical and practical course “Artist's body and action” which she currently teach and research the birth of performance and focus on visual artists who put the body at the center of their artistic research.
Jérôme d'Orso (France)
With a degree in biology and psychology, Jérôme learned the performing arts and became an actor-acrobat, tight-roper, dancer and choreographer.
The art he practices is essentially based on three approaches to movement: acrobatic theater, the Axis Syllabus, and traditional martial arts. These three teachings complement each other or come together in the interpretation, in the transmission, or in the accompaniment of artistic projects. He is co-creator of the company Les Art's Felus and dances for various companies.
He is a certified Axis Syllabus teacher and an active member of the Axis Syllabus International Research Meshwork.
