Tess Eckert has been dancing since she was in her mom's tummy. Tess' journey with movement began with ballet, contemporary and hip-hop training, but after sustaining a near-death traumatic brain injury at age 17, Tess felt frustrated with choreography and was yearning to find more spiritual meaning, healing, and connection through dance. Tess' prayers were answered when she was guided to a respected pioneer and mentor in the conscious movement world, living in her very own hometown of Boulder Colorado. The fateful meeting with Dr. Melissa Michaels and the Golden Bridge community/organization Melissa founded, introduced Tess to contemporary rite of passage/embodied leadership camps called "Surfing the Creative" for young adults from across the globe, which draws on the research, principles and practices from the 5 Rhythms movement practice founded by Gabrielle Roth, trauma studies, human development, somatic therapy, social justice, cross-cultural peacebuilding, and Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Her studies led her to the Bundjalung Nation, where she has made a home over the last 10 years. After 15 years of apprenticing with the Golden Bridge community, Tess recently graduated as a SomaSource Life Cycles practitioner, which recognizes her integrated understanding to creatively work in developmentally attuned ways with diverse people throughout life’s cycles and thresholds. Alongside this, Tess fell in love with Contact Improvisation 9 years ago when she moved to the Northern Rivers and has been dancing and teaching this form whenever she gets the chance. Tess is excited to offer classes at Flow Collective, a new community movement arts studio on Widjabul Wiabul land in Lismore, NSW that she co-founded with her friends Mitch King & Sam Wise

Andrea Falletta: is an explorer, curious dancer, movement nerd, photographer, and rule breaker.

Andrea got into contact improvisation while he was living in Rome, Italy, he was just about to enter his first contemporary class at the age of 24, as many friends suggested, at the moment of approaching the doorstep of the class he decided to leave after seeing the teacher counting steps to create a choreography. As he was about to leave the building he overheard, in the next-door studio, someone talking about dancing in a way that he never heard of before so he went in and looked at what they were doing and he saw something very different from what he remembers dancing could look like. That was the beginning of his journey in Contact Improvisation, learning a practicing in several countries including Italy, Israel, the UK, and Australia.

He has been practicing Contact Improvisation with a sense of curiosity and inner knowing that this form of dance was something very curative, and supportive and a way to look at it as a great mirror into his life.

Alongside dancing CI Andrea has been practicing movement in different ways and forms: he has been actively involved in movement practices such as Ancestral Movement, Animal Movement, Parkour, Brazilian jujitsu, Surfing, and Capoeira. An important aspect of Andrea's development, that has also influenced his dance, has been his deep and meaningful involvement in supporting, local and Australia-wide, rites of passage for boys and men.

Andrea says: "The way I listen to my "dancing body" and the quality of my “listening state” is directly related to the level of attunement that I can offer to my dance partner, and therefore the quality-and-beauty of that dance that naturally gets created.

Copy of The Unspoken of Contact Improvisation

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