Glaciers&Tigers

What happens when a dance form founded on non-hierarchical improvisation and physical negotiation meets the vertical structures of the society that surrounds it? In this conversation, Contact Improvisation facilitator, researcher, and writer fran joins Fabio in the studio to dismantle the idea of the "neutral body," unpack the unspoken power dynamics that lurk in emergent spaces, and share insights from Every Bodies Are Political — a self-organized, free-to-join gathering in Bologna exploring movement through a radical decolonial, feminist, and horizontal lens.

The conversation opens playfully with princesses, property, and paternal figures. Fran rejects kingdoms and ownership outright: "Nothing belongs to anyone on this planet. Not even what you make, not even your language." Recalling the moment at age 13 when he recognized the limits of paternal authority, fran reflects on finding mentors who became peers and friends. A vivid childhood memory of a Sicilian substitute teacher who leapt onto a desk, rang the recess bell, and shouted in dialect reveals the early spark of realizing that authority structures are arbitrary — and that teaching can be self-appointed rather than institutional.

Echoing Steve Paxton's famous observation that Contact Improvisation "gives you something to do while you're having your realization," fran grounds his pedagogy in awareness and relationality. In a dance where every mover brings their unique patterns to a non-verbal "potluck of movement," the essential question becomes: What are we factually doing to each other with our bodies? Simply taking up physical space in a room alters what is possible for everyone else. With awareness comes accountability: once we notice how our presence shapes the room, we can no longer plead innocence.

"What's most important for me is self-awareness of not who I am, but what am I doing by being who I am? The most important thing is: I am in relation, hence I am."

Fabio and fran reflect on their time together at Towards, an intensive Contact Improvisation residency in Chiang Dao, Northern Thailand. While recognizing the rare value of immersing in practice for 10 hours a day, fran pinpoints a recurring danger in so-called "emergent spaces": when facilitators claim a space has no fixed hierarchy or rules, but still enforce unspoken boundaries when crossed. When power exists but is made invisible, it becomes unaccountable.

"If someone invites me to their house for a rather specific reason and then doesn't tell me the rules... but is ready to point a finger when I break them, power exists but is made invisible so as to pretend it doesn't."

Fran addresses the widespread tendency in somatic and dance circles to treat movement retreats as apolitical bubbles where people simply "meet as bodies." He rejects this as a form of willful blindness. From birth, every body is marked by gender socialization, geography, passport privilege, socio-economic class, and historical trauma. Pretending bodies are neutral ignores who can afford the plane ticket, who is missing from the room, and how societal power dynamics inevitably enter the studio floor.

"There is no such thing as an apolitical body. There's no such thing as a neutral body. There is no way we can come and meet as bodies, period... Saying that we can just meet as bodies is trying to say: let's be color blind, let's be culture blind, let's just pretend all of this doesn't exist. I find it extremely hard and far-fetched."

To test whether a movement gathering could dismantle these hierarchies in practice, fran, Nika Portavia, and 40+ collaborators created Every Bodies Are Political in Bologna. The design was uncompromising:

Why is Contact Improvisation the ideal vehicle for this political inquiry? Unlike competitive sports or vertical dance forms, CI was born in 1970s counterculture with no steps, no choreographic hierarchies, and no prescribed gender roles. Paxton called it "true democracy" — living the politics of mutuality. If the dance itself is fundamentally non-impositive, cooperative, and horizontal, why do CI communities continue to organize festivals and workshops through vertical hierarchies of teachers, organizers, scholarship-holders, and paying participants?

"The practice itself is in the center; everything else revolves around it. We dance horizontally, why do we organize vertically to do something that is horizontal by nature?"

When asked if there are limits to practicing equality, fran expresses a radical optimism: true equality has no downside, but our social conditioning makes it excruciatingly difficult to practice. Society trains individuals to prioritize personal desires over collective well-being. Real horizontality requires actively turning down the "ego volume" so the "community volume" can emerge.

Fran closes with a distinction between aesthetic performance and authentic negotiation. A dance can look gorgeous from the outside while subtly coercing or manipulating a partner; conversely, a dance that looks clumsy can be profound because both movers are genuinely listening to one another.

"That dance looked terrible, but felt amazing, because, wow, there was so much space for the both of us to coexist and negotiate. And I was actually more interested in what you had to say than in what I had to say. And you were also."

What happens when theatre stops being a presentation of fixed stories and becomes a collaborative dream architecture where the fourth wall dissolves? In this episode, theatre maker, performer, and facilitator Nia (@nialejander) joins Fabio in the Radio Helsinki studio to explore The Imaginarium — an immersive, collective improvisation score that invites participants into a shared dream state.

Together, they delve into Nia's transition from social work and Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed to choosing art full-time, the mechanics of holding space for spontaneous creation, studying real-time composition with Portuguese master João Fiadeiro, and how collective flow allows us to remember who we really are beneath societal conditioning.

The conversation begins with Nia's playful self-description: "Part forest fairy, part clown — with an internal censor freezing everything live on air."

Nia shares her background in social work, using Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed with teenagers in refugee accommodation to explore systemic power and rehearse alternatives to real-world dilemmas. Four years ago, following a pivotal "conversation with the moon," Nia made the conscious decision to commit fully to art. For Nia, making art is not about personal ego, but about becoming an open channel:

"My main job as an artist is to be a vessel. An instrument, a channel to bring into existence whatever wants to manifest itself. What can I do to create conditions that are beneficial, so that things can manifest through me?"

Nia explains Augusto Boal's participatory format developed in South America, inviting the public to step onto the stage, alter the narrative, and rehearse alternatives to real-world oppression.

Shortly after dedicating her life to art, Nia received the vision for The Imaginarium — an experimental, participatory theatre architecture she has staged 20–30 times across different communities.

Rather than imposing a linear script, the Imaginarium is narratively framed as a dream:

"When we enter into this flow state, it is not only our small minds, our small human consciousness that is dancing, writing, playing... but we are being danced through, we are being written through."

How do you prevent a completely open participatory space from collapsing into chaotic noise? Nia details the physical tools that structure the stage:

While the Imaginarium can run spontaneously from scratch, Nia emphasizes the necessity of an anchored crew to support the infrastructure and hold the container for participants.

Nia's dream crew brings together diverse disciplines:

While developing the Imaginarium, Nia discovered the work of Portuguese artist João Fiadeiro, who has spent over 25 years in Lisbon researching Real-Time Composition (RTC). After undertaking a five-week intensive training with Fiadeiro, Nia found the engine that powers the inner mechanics of the Imaginarium:

"It's basically a system of values and principles that support us to enter into a flow state when we practice artistic improvisation in a group. It feels really like he extracted these rules from life."

When Fabio playfully asks her to name the rules on the radio, Nia laughs: "No, it's a secret!" — pointing to the experiential truth that certain relational practices can only be learned by doing.

Why does collective flow matter so deeply in group improvisation? For Nia, entering these spaces is less about acquiring new techniques and more about shedding social conditioning:

"For me, it's a lot about remembering. I have a tendency to forget what's the point, and I have a tendency to forget who I really am. In a way, I feel I can actually only really exist in these kinds of spaces."

Fabio reflects on how authentic artistic experiences carry an eerie familiarity — not like encountering something alien, but like recognizing a profound truth you had known all along:

"A remembering. Yeah, it's a very interesting way of seeing things. I resonate with it a lot... some things just seem so obvious that it is as if I had done them before and it's just me encountering them again. Like, I don't know, a very good book that you read a long time ago."

After facilitating 20–30 editions, Nia noticed a recurring limitation: starting from scratch with each new group kept the work on an introductory surface level.

To move beyond the introductory cycle, Nia is developing an extended two-week artistic residency:

In closing, Nia reflects on a fundamental paradigm shift in how she approaches artistic work and life:

"From capitalism, we are trained to be in this pushing mentality. And I'm trying now to get more into a receiving state — to be open. When people approach me, to just say yes. And since I stopped pushing, people start coming and saying: 'Hey, do you want to do the Imaginarium in Graz?'"

A four-year teacher training programme that uses the world as a classroom — from a bus trip through West Africa to communal life in Graz to a hundred-person community in Denmark.

DNS (Necessary Teacher Training College) combines experience-based learning, communal living, and student-driven education. The programme grants an academically accredited diploma from a university in Mozambique — a deliberate choice that reflects its decolonial approach to knowledge and education.

The first year begins with an extraordinary project: 13 students buy a public transit bus, convert it into a travelling home, and drive it through West Africa for four months. "You just start, without any specific knowledge," says Asia from Italy. "And then you learn how to cut wood, how to cut iron — things you'd never normally do."

The route runs from Denmark through Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, and into Guinea-Bissau — with the intention of meeting people and understanding first-hand why the world looks the way it does.

In the second year, students experience Europe from a new angle — twelve people in a shared apartment, a shared economy, and jobs at McDonald's or Foodora. The programme is entirely student-funded: everyone earns, everything is pooled, and all decisions are made together.

"I only worked at McDonald's for one month, but I saw things I didn't expect to go through. It shows me on a very different level how inhumane the capitalist system lets us treat each other."

Students share not just housing and income, but their daily lives. "I had a terrible day at work at McDonald's and I messaged the group — guys, can you please stay up until midnight because I'm coming home and I need support," Sarah recalls. "And people got up to support me afterwards."

Eric from Catalonia also notices who actually works these jobs — people for whom McDonald's in Graz is a dream, a destination he first encountered in Africa. "That's a reality you can only fully grasp when you've actually been there."

DNS grew out of the Danish teacher movement Tvind, founded in 1972. In the 1980s, the community lost its government funding, followed by years of lawsuits and media reports of embezzlement and cult accusations. Sarah investigated before applying — going "undercover" for a volunteer week: "I arrived and found a very wholesome, green community with happy young people. And I started asking different students — have you heard about this? Can you leave? Do they have your money? And everyone was a bit disappointed."

Damir explains the political context: the community's shared economy created a legal grey zone that was used as a pressure point — not because any lawsuit succeeded, but because constant litigation wore the founders down until they left the country.

The programme's home is a self-governed community of around 100 people in the countryside, fifteen minutes by bicycle from the nearest town. Decisions are made by consensus democracy — 100% agreement, not a simple majority. Students take on responsibility for the garden, the windmill, bookkeeping, or event organisation, driven by their own interests.

"I think many of us believe that being a teacher is not an apolitical position," says Sarah. "If you're a teacher, you will be shaping the next generation." This runs through the whole programme: the McDonald's shifts, the communal life, the West Africa journey — all designed to prepare future teachers to navigate systems they can't change, and make a difference anyway.

As Sarah puts it: "I am at McDonald's and McDonald's really want me to behave like all the other minimum wage workers who will just follow what is told and put up with bad treatment. And I am here trying out — how can I stand up against this system that is obviously not made for me? And I think that is a struggle many teachers also face."

Asked what they hope for in five years, the students answer in similar terms: to be surrounded by people they love and who empower them; to do work that doesn't feel like work; to be proud of their students. "Everything is going great because I finally became the person I was wishing to become some years ago." — Asia

DNS Teacher Training College: www.dns-tvind.dk

Participants: Eric (Catalonia), Sarah (Netherlands), Asia (Italy), Damir (trainer)

Programme duration: 4 years

Academic diploma: University of Beira, Mozambique

Jaka Škapin is a Slovenian vocalist, researcher, and facilitator currently based in London. A conversation about collective vocal improvisation, relationality, and the ancient technologies we keep forgetting.

Jaka's musical journey moved in 5–7 year cycles: classical choir singing in Slovenia, music studies in London, and then a turn toward free vocal improvisation — sparked by a Facebook ad for a voice improvisation course. He went deep into the American tradition around Bobby McFerrin, studied with Meredith Monk and has since been weaving Slovenian folk singing traditions into his work.

How important is it to sound good during improvisation? In the communities Jaka works with, the operative word is relationality, not "good or bad". How does this music relate to oneself, to others in the space, to the more-than-human, to ancestors, to the land. Technical quality is not the point. The point is what opens up in the space between people.

"In many cultures, there's no such thing as a word for improvisation — because it's not needed."

Jaka is part of Anthropos, a vocal quartet that creates complete collective improvisations — nothing pre-planned, using only invented language (no spoken language of any member). The project aims for a pre-modern context for music-making: before music was a commodity, before it was a profession. Their debut recording Songs of Humanity happened in three hours, in the middle of the pandemic in July 2020.

The project is also a technology for transcultural exchange — exploring how collective vocal improvisation can facilitate communication across diverse groups, including in dementia care settings.

Since 2016, Jaka has worked with people with Parkinson's disease and dementia in various social settings. This, he says, was the real groundwork for how he improvises:

"I had to sing in such a way that another body could express, or move, or kind of feel supported — feel like they can link with other bodies in the space, feel like they can open up and relate."

He is also part of the The Well - Global Vocal Improvisation Network, which experiments with vocal improvisation as a transformative social tool, like for example in a recent experiment in Canada — making politicians sing and improvise together.

The conversation turns to what Jaka calls the "technological spectrum" — and the importance of repositioning ancient or embodied practices alongside (not against) modern technology. Somatic and eco-somatic practices, he notes, are largely rooted in Indigenous knowledge — a lineage that needs to be named, not erased.

"The right kind of technological emptiness can then mean that everything else does reorient itself in the way that is needed."

Jaka's closing invitation: you don't need a course, a workshop, or even a song. You need a moment in your day. Start with humming — to yourself, to someone in the room, or to your phone. It grows from there.

Jaka Škapin — vocalist, facilitator, researcher. Based between Slovenia and London.

Anthropos — collective improvised vocal quartet.

Music played: Ote Taya Ko (Rising) — Anthropos, Songs of Humanity EP

The Well.- Global Vocal Improvisation Network

Hawkwood College

Braziers Park

A conversation with Jing-Hong Okorn-Kuo, a dance artist from Singapore who splits her time between Asia and Graz, exploring the philosophy of creative vulnerability, the social conditions we must shed to make authentic art, and how movement can excavate the layers within simple gestures.

Silver Lining A solo exploration of exile through the lens of the WWII Pacific theater, from a Singaporean perspective.

Location: Stadtpark Graz, Passamtswiese

Dates: June 21 to July 1.

Times: Every Sunday and Wednesday at 5:30 PM.

A conversation with Asaf Bachrach, recorded in Slovenia's flower-filled mountains. We meet at training course hosted by Moave and funded by the European Union, where we work on approaches for bringing somatic practices into the world in different way. In this conversation we are exploring how palliative approaches to care offer alternatives to our curative, fix-it culture — and how this approach can help us navigate the polycrisis.

Asaf Bachrach is a cognitive neuroscientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), a somatic dancer and teacher, and is involved in collective living in rural France. His work bridges scientific with embodied practice. Through movement and community experimentation, he explores the nature of attention, collective responsibility, and how we physically co-create our reality.

Palliative vs. Curative Approaches

The distinction between fixing problems (curative) and improving well-being while living with difficulty (palliative). How this extends beyond healthcare — being with what is rather than rushing toward solutions.

Somatics and Non-Separability

What somatics encompasses beyond specific methods — it's an attitude recognizing our ecological interconnection. "Difference without separability": we're distinct but not separate from each other or our environment.

Somatic practice

Asaf uses exercises with sticks to help people experience the responsibility of their attention. This is especially interesting for scientists, who are  trained to create artificial separations that somatic work can help illuminate.

Matter is Alive

The stick practice reveals agency as distributed in relationships rather than residing in separate beings. Drawing on Steve Paxton's insight: "The dancer always dances with the floor."

Community Living and Responsibility at Scale

Asaf lives in the community "Larret" in rural France. How smaller-scale living provides direct feedback about consequences, enabling more responsible choices. "Being responsible is being able to respond to consequences."

Drawing on Donna Haraway's "Staying with the Trouble," Karen Barad and her insights on the entaglement of matter and meaning, and Martin Buber's I-Thou relationship — the episode covers feminist epistemology, somatic practice, and community living.

Join for a conversation with the Graz-based choreographer Jadi Carboni. 

We talk about her relationship to dance and the body. What is contemporary about contemporary dance? What is modern about post-modern dance? What is the role of experience in dance? How did the role of the dancer evolve from an instrument to a sensing, living, feeling human being?

What is the role of experience in dance from the point of view of a dancer, a choreographer and the audience? How to bridge these gaps? Do we need to?

What does it mean to become the dance?

Their conversation follows the questions that guide her practice—what attracts us, what repels us, what moves us—and opens them to the audience. In her project Shadows of Freedom, shared weight and physical constraints meet a different invitation: to follow the movement of awareness.

"The physical body is much quicker than our intellect.”

For further reading, Jadi recommends Contact Quarterly, a journal of dance and improvisation, and discusses artists including Steve Paxton, Deborah Hay, and Barbara Dilley.

Jadi is now working on an inclusive, collaborative dance piece titled "Shadows of Freedom" which will be part of Lendwirbel on Saturday, 2nd of May 2026. 

Fabio erzählt die Geschichte eines neuen Projekts, das aus einer zentralen Frage geboren wurde: Wie können wir uns als Menschen wirklich begegnen? Wild Care will Räume schaffen, wo Kunst zur Begegnung wird — jenseits von Perfektion und Selbstinszenierung.

Das Projekt wurzelt in Martin Bubers Philosophie des "Ich und Du" versus "Ich und Es" — der Unterschied zwischen echter Begegnung und dem Reduzieren anderer auf Objekte oder Werkzeuge. Zentral ist das Konzept der Mutuality (Gemeinschaftlichkeit): das aktive Schätzen und Teilen dessen, was uns verbindet.

"Alles wahre Leben ist Begegnung"

Fabio teilt seinen Weg vom Studium der internationalen Beziehungen zur Erkenntnis, dass systemische Veränderungen an der Brutalität der Welt zerbrechen. Seine Konsequenz: "Ich muss tanzen" und die Welt auf einer anderen Ebene als nur der intellektuellen erfahren. Die Veränderung, die er sich wünschte, musste in der Veränderung unserer Erfahrung und Realität liegen.

Der Dreh- und Angelpunkt von Wild Care ist Kontakt-Improvisation: ein spielerisches Forschen mit Schwerkraft, Gleichgewicht und Berührung. In der anarchischen Struktur einer "Jam" — ohne feste Regeln oder Hierarchien — entsteht spontane Ordnung und Kooperation.

> "Diese Abwesenheit von Regeln macht es mir möglich, Dinge zu tun, die ich noch nie getan habe. Formen zu finden, die ich mir nicht mal vorstellen kann."

Laufender Kurs: Montags um 17:45 Uhr, Orpheumgasse 11, Graz

Einführungskurs: Ab 11. Mai, sechs Wochen kostenlos (mit Unterstützung von Askö und der Bewegungsrevolution)

Website: wildcare.space

Langfristig soll Wild Care zu einer Gemeinschaft werden, die verschiedene Formate entwickelt — nicht nur Bewegung, sondern alle Arten kreativen Ausdrucks, wo Leistungsdruck abnimmt und Kunst als Begegnungsinstrument zunimmt.

Eine Sendung mit Gedichten über Selbstzweifel im Community Radio.

Eine Sendung mit Fragen über das Sendungsmachen.

Eine Sendung.

How do we design a space that alters our reality? In this episode, we travel to Chiang Dao in Northern Thailand to discover Towards—an immersive, transformative, and embodied learning project created by Sasha Dodo, Dolores Dewhurst-Marks, and Fern Sripungwiwat in 2022.

Towards is a residency that feels like an immersive piece of art where the pristine natural environment and the people within it co-create a space for learning and expression unlike anything I have ever seen. The shift in reality is immediate. Normally, I might write two poems in a month. Here, I wrote five in a single day.

I sit down with Pip, Ido, and Liane to reflect on what we learned there. We discuss what the practice of Contact Improvisation is for us, the role of poetry and what it means to be philosophical in a world designed to be practical.

At Towards, questions are at the center of the work. Everything is designed to encourage "creative agency"—an attitude that deems the strange worth considering and the impossible a direction worth pursuing. We explore questions like:

Can we move not from you and me, but from the dance?

How do I soften myself in order to meet you?

How do I support your direction without supporting you?