From Inside to Outside – Contemporary class with Marion Sparber
I teach Contemporary dance training with emphasis on spirals and floor work. We start the class by opening our channels of awareness and feel the inside and the outside, everyone and everything that surrounds us. The warm-up is focused on passing through the whole body and expanding our flexibility and strength - never abandoning a flow of natural and organic movement and feeling our feet as our base and connection to the ground. We use the playfulness to get inspired, let go and surprise ourselves. With the help of exercises and games in different constellations - in a group, with a partner and by ourselves - we listen to the weight of our body and direct it through the space, putting awareness into proximity and distance as well as our orientation and relationship to the room and the other dancers inside the room. We play with off-balance and shift of the axis. Another important aspect of the training is the attention to the momentum in movement, the grounding of our center, the natural flow of breath and the expansion of our extremities. By integrating changes of dynamic and musicality into our movement phrases we constantly recycle our energy and avoid muscle-fatigue. We move as a continuous spiral into the floor and out of the floor, using the attack and release as our guidelines and try to work from the bones and the spiral connections in our body, letting go of unnecessary tensions and holding of the muscles. The skeleton as a motor for movement and the center as the inside of a flower that grows into all directions. The clearer and stronger our connection to the ground, more freely we can move. We learn which parts of the body are pushing and receiving the floor and which can relax and react to the impulses. I like to dance with a strong and physical movement quality using the eyes scanning the space constantly, sharing our energy and cultivating a high spatial awareness. As techniques of inspiration for I use the Flying Low and Passing Through techniques by David Zambrano and Release technique mixed with my personal investigation. I like to establish a collective mind and body inside the class to enhance the group power giving an energetic push to the individual source of creativity. I wish to encourage curiosity and interest in detail, connection and risk-taking to grow as a person and member of a group, and explore new terrain as a performer, using everything we have as a tool for expression and performance: our body, voice, imagination, experiences, feelings, senses, our background, knowledge, dreams, visions, as well as getting inspired by working with objects and the space that surrounds us.

MARION SPARBER – Originally from South Tyrol, Italy, Marion received her dance training at Varium and Iwanson School. Since 2014, Marion has received funding as a choreographer from South Tyrol and Germany to create and develop her own work. Many of Marion's choreographies are a playful connection of highly physical dance, dance theatre, live music, video installations by Projeto Solo and photo projections by Elli Stelzer. Her new piece “Stilles Ich”, choreographed for the dance company Volkstheater Rostock (Germany), premiered in December 2022 and is her first work for a state theater. Her work in the freelance scene has been performed at several international theatres and festivals in Europe, South- and North America, as well as in Asia. Marion has collaborated as a dancer with choreographers and companies such as Francisco Córdova, Stella Zannou, Sonia Rodriguez and Adn- Dialect. As a teacher, she has been working internationally in several schools, dance companies and festivals, such as b12, Deltebre dansa, Tanzcompagnie Rostock, Tanz Bielefeld, Tanzcompagnie Braunschweig, Of curious nature, Circuit-est, Atlas festival, Pera GAU, Riga on, Tierras en danza, Iwanson, Camp In, EPDM, La Cantera, Vim Vigor, The Playground NY, Diavolo Company LA, Performact, Marameo, Sozo, Tanzfaktur Köln, Tanzhaus Zürich, Profitraining in following cities: Basel, Leipzig, Freiburg, Munich, Hamburg and Luzern, OCDP, Goa Contact Festival, Play Practice Artist Residency, Cyrculacje, Sfera Ruchu, Academy Dancer Russia, La Macchine, Nómada and Descalzinha danza. Her pieces "The Ripe and ruin", “Die Vergänglichkeit der Gänseblümchen”, “Stilles Ich”, “No, woman, no cry… but when they do?”, "Big Boys don´t cry, but when they do?", “Equinox”, “Seelengrund”, “Radix”, "Shell Shock", "Nefelibata", "Acacia confusA", "Ohne Zwei", "Porzellan-Haus", "Eight" and "Impromptu" have been performed at several international theaters and festivals. Together with Alan Fuentes Guerra she co- created the Platform “Shared Levitation” in 2017. In the frame of the platform several pieces for several dance schools and companies were created: “casa de porcelana”, “más aire qué palabras”, “Kopfkino” and “Aftermath”. In 2014 Marion was part of “EX-IN” with David Zambrano learning Flying Low and Passing Through Technique which she includes in her teaching.