Teaching

Contemporary Dance and Improvisation

In this semester course, we focus on the human body as a fascinating, sensitive and intelligent matter. This dance training is an enjoyable exploration of and immersion into one’s own physical logic, presence and quality of movement. With dance sequences, structured improvisations and choreographies, we explore our own body awareness in relation to gravity, musicality, space and aesthetics. This includes, in particular, deepening our understanding of our own anatomy, strengthening muscular connections and learning choreographies and techniques for consciously differentiating between movement qualities and presence.

Joyful, energetic dancing, powerful movement, playful curiosity and sensitive, attentive physicality – Contemporary dance is based on the feeling of movement, a healthy approach to the body and the expansion of one’s own movement repertoire.

The courses contain:
– Combinations of modern and contemporary dance techniques on the floor, standing and moving through space
– Guided, structured improvisations
– Exercises for body awareness and placement, strengthening, stretching and coordination
– Learning contemporary dance techniques
– Expansion of one’s own movement repertoire
– Interaction as a group
– Insights into dance practice, artistic creations and dance history
– And much more

Semester course with 15 units
Winter semester 2025/26
30 September / 7 October / 14 October / 21 October / – / 4 November / 11 November / 18 November / 25 November / 2 February / 9 December / 16 December / – / 13 January / 20 January / 27 January / 3 February

Summer semester 2026
from 10 February
Changes and exceptions are possible and will be communicated in advance.

Maximum number of participants: 12 people
Course leaders: Inge Gappmaier and Steffi Sternig (alternating in blocks)

Course fee €350
Early bird discount for the summer semester until 30 December 2025: €330

>> Registration for the semester course

WORKSHOP
Sensorial Landscapes – dramaturgy of knowing bodies
Sat. 7 and 8 February 2026 | 10 am – 2 pm | Raum für Tanz, Vienna
Registration deadline: 7 January 2026 via E-Mail

– Sensorial Landscapes – dramaturgy of knowing bodies
This workshop invites participants to immerse themselves in the body’s inherent physical intelligence, playfully exploring its logics, poetics, and inner musicality. By guiding attention through both inner and outer bodily landscapes, the workshop will delve into varied sensations of presence, while encouraging reflection on movement qualities and choreographic aesthetics. Participants will engage with dance sequences as rule-based games and explore structured improvisation as a space for free-form creativity—rehearsing the empowering practice of play. Constant dance companions and partners include gravity, space, sensation, curiosity, intuition, and choice. 
Through the recognition of the body’s organising patterns, the workshop aims to deepen physical awareness, highlight their poetic articulations, and observe the dramaturgy that unfolds. Grounded in the analysis of early modern, postmodern, and contemporary approaches to dance and choreography, the focus will shift from the visual articulation of movement to a musical composition and a co-creation rooted in sensation.

– We are organised by Dancing
CONTEMPORARY DANCE, CHOREOGRAPHY and IMPROVISATION invites you to explore and immerse yourself in your own sensation of movement and physical self-awareness. With guided improvisations, dance technique sequences and excursions into dance history, as well as joint reflections on dance and choreography, we devote ourselves to the body as a fascinating, sensitive and intelligent matter that organises itself in space and time.

– Being Bodies
In Being Bodies, the focus is on your own sensation of movement. We devote ourselves to the body as a fascinating, sensitive and intelligent matter that we are and immerse ourselves completely in the here and now. Joyful, energetic dancing, powerful movement, playful curiosity and sensitive attentiveness – with mindfulness exercises, we navigate through different movement-centres of our body and explore their logic and momentum in guided improvisations and dance sequences. Let’s dance!

– Immersion into concrete space
In this workshop, we immerse ourselves in the concrete materiality of the body and explore its movement intelligence, logic and momentum using movement sequences and guided improvisation. How does the materiality and presence of the human body relate to its concrete environment? What spaces are created by bodies, and what physical sensations are created by concrete spaces?
Reference: Photo project and Exhibition without body

– Physical Resistance with/in gravity
In the dance workshop Physical Resistance with/in Gravity, we focus on the body and its natural resistance to gravity, as well as how to playfully interact with it. Based on my choreographic practice – inspired by Klein Technique, Rosalia Chladek’s method, and others – we explore different movement logics of the body and its freedom of movement.

– Body Balance – Deep muscular body training
Body Balance invites you to take the time and space to sink into your own body, activate connections, explore your own freedom of movement and move with self-confidence. Based on the anatomy of the body, we will use movement sequences (inspired primarily by Klein Technique and Pilates) to strengthen deep tissues and sensitivity, analyse movements, balance tension and thus bring the body into balance.

– Contemporary ballet for beginners and slightly advanced dancers

– Rosalia Chladek Dance System – a contemporary perspective

>> Request Workshop