Vesuvius Contact Festival

Vesuvius Contact Fest, 6 days of Contact Improvisation on the slopes of Vesuvius to celebrate the end of summer by dancing!

They will be days of study, sharing, research and fun just a stone's throw from the archaeological park of Pompeii and the sea. And this year with the After Festival it will be possible to stay an extra night in the space to go to the beach or visit the beauties of the Coast and Vesuvius.

In this fourth edition, the intensive will be held by Sergey Semichev; in the afternoons will take place the classes of Marcella Carrara, Thomas Mettler and Elia Patrizi and the proposals of the participants that we will collect together. In the program there is als an Underscore practice and a Talk. And every night... JAM!

The event will be hosted by the Sharing Art association in a new space surrounded by nature, equipped with two dancefloors, a bar, space for tents and this year also a swimming pool; the cuisine will be vegan with vegetarian options.

The event is organized by CI.NA - Contact Improvisation Napoli in collaboration with Klimax Dance and Sharing Art Pompei.

Practical Infos

• DATES: From 9th to 14th September 2025 (5 nights / 6 days), arriving on the 9th afternoon and leaving on the 14th afterlunch; for those who wish, it will be possible to stay in the space for free on the night of the 14th
• WHERE: Pompeii (Naples, Italy) - reachable from the A3 motorway, or by trains leaving from Naples directed to Sorrento (Circumvesuviana line) or Salerno (Trenitalia) - closest airport: Naples (NAP)
• PROGRAM: Intensive Courses in the mornings and some afternoons - Single classes and participants' proposals in the afternoons - Jam every evening and some mornings - plus an Underscore practice, a Talk about Contact Improvisation and a Party!
• SLEEPING: in your own tent, or in a sleeping bag and mat in a pre-assembled tent (limited places, at the time of registration we will notify you if your choice is confirmed)
• FOOD: Vegan with Vegetarian options - Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Snacks - meals included are from dinner on the 9th to lunch on the 14th September. For those who stay on the night of the 14th it is possible to dine in the space at an additional cost of €15 per person
• COST: Early Bird Sliding Price (available until June 30th): from 340 to 380€ | after June 30th: 380€
  Sliding Price: those who can pay more support the event and people who are in more difficult situations; pay as much as you can, knowing that your generosity makes the event possible!
  We are willing to support Ukrainians dancers, if you are one of them write to us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for more infos.
• REGISTRATION: registration page
• CONTACT: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

THE TEACHERS:

SERGEY SEMICHEV (Ukraine / Germany) - 9hrs Intensive
"The illusion of stability"

In nature, nothing is truly constant - everything changes, and nothing is stable. Our bodies are no exception. Every second, countless forces act upon us, and numerous internal processes take place. To organize movement and maintain position, our bodies continuously adapt to ever-changing conditions.
Rather than being a fixed state, stability is a dynamic process - a delicate dance of adaptation and balance. We are in a perpetual state of reorganizing ourselves in response to internal and external forces. Our perception, attention, and decisions are constantly shifting. The body-mind system continuously adjusts, searching for balance in movement, in interaction, and in the unpredictability of the present moment.

This workshop explores balance as an ever-evolving phenomenon: losing, finding, and playing with it.
We will explore:
• How to find balance in any position with minimal muscular effort.
• How changes in different body parts affect the center of gravity and lead to the loss and regaining of balance.
• How the body naturally organizes itself when the center of gravity shifts in space.
• How a partner’s influence alters the center of gravity and challenges our sense of stability.
• How two bodies interact in contact when losing and rediscovering balance.
• How joint loss of balance, rather than being an obstacle, can become a resource for movement and improvisation.

This workshop is an invitation to approach balance not as a fixed point but as a playful, shared process - a dance where stability is never still but constantly emerging.

BIO SERGEY SEMICHEV

Sergey Semichev is a teacher, performer, dancer and activist in the Contact Improvisation community in Ukraine since 2013. He has been an organizer, co-organizer, and teacher at numerous CI festivals, including Dancefullness, KarpatSki, DancePavilion, International CI Conference ECITE 2019, and ContactCIWinter. From 2017 to 2022, he led the CI Kyiv Project Laboratory.
He has taught at international festivals and intensives across Europe and beyond, including in Italy, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Slovenia Luxembourg Moldova, and China.
Since 2022, he has been based in Rome, Italy, where he organized and taught regular classes and jams. In 2025, he relocated to Freiburg, Germany, where he continues to teach.
His movement background includes gymnastics and acrobatics, and he is also a massage therapist and physiotherapist. Additionally, he has worked before as a photographer and videograph

ELIA PATRIZI - two classes
"Brazilian jiu jitsu into Contact" and "The flying body"

"Brazilian jiu jitsu into Contact"

This class aims to find new strategies to improvise within physical touch and the sharing of weight. We will study principles of BJJ (Brazilian jiu jitsu) and merge them within our own contact improvisation dance.
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu techniques own a very deep understanding of touch. From playfully exploring physical principles such as lifting, climbing, pulling, pushing, knotting, rolling and hooking we move to studying states related to enduring, risking and listening. The martial art creates a realm where movement is addressed out of necessity.
This necessity of movement doesn't leave room for consciously defining any form of physical aesthetic but instead creates a defined and particular technique with a movement vocabulary bound to the given necessity itself.
While merging BJJ into contemporary dance, cutting the initial competitive aim of “winning and loosing” the understanding and responsibility towards one's own body becomes the foundation for sharing physical responsibilities with others.

"The flying body"

This is a movement research class based on physical principles studied and developed from Brazilian jiu jitsu.
Within the hole group of people, one person is invited to not touch the floor for a yet undefined period of time. How could this happening create the necessity to work, relate,
and coexist in a sustainable and direct democratic way?
While we might still fail, fall, start again, discuss physically on what to do, where to go, make it sustainable, compromise, question power structures within, question the distribution of responsibility and ultimately the transparency of the hole groups dance itself.

BIO ELIA PATRIZI

Elia Patrizi is a choreographer and dance artist, currently living between Brussels and Berlin.
Dance was the culture in which he grew up thanks to his mother and father who work in this artistic field. He started teaching and working with children at the age of 16 in Berlin with TanzZeit, An Boekman and the Goethe Institute in different countries in Europe, Asia and Africa.
Elia Patrizi graduated from SEAD in 2023 and continued to develop his choreographic interest in the SEAD International Choreographic Exchange program in 2024.
For several years he has been teaching improvisation, contemporary dance technique, contact improvisation and partnering for young people, young performers and professional dancers.
His practice in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, parcour and acrobatics has greatly influenced his practice in contemporary dance and its transmission.
The lessons are based on the understanding of physical principles to apply them individually on one's own body, knowledge and ability, inviting and supporting the difference of each body and the interest in movement.

MARCELLA CARRARA
"Losing the Head to Find the Body: CI and Feldenkrais Awareness"

In this two-hour intensive class, we will explore the relationship between the head and the spine through the transformative lens of the Feldenkrais Method®.
Our starting point will be the seventh cervical vertebra, a subtle but powerful key to unlocking tension patterns that often stiffen the head and limit the fluidity of movement along the spine. Through Awareness Through Movement® sequences, we will invite the head to “get lost” in the sense of releasing excessive control, thus allowing the chest and pelvis to free their expressive potential.
We will notice how this newfound organization in the neck is not only physical, but is reflected in a sense of greater dynamic balance and a growing confidence in surrendering to the flow of movement and the support of the other.

BIO MARCELLA CARRARA

Born in Bergamo in 1988 and expatriated to Belgium during her university years to obtain a degree in Arts du spectacle vivant. She works in Brussels at the Theatre National and as a Pilates and Feldenkrais® Method teacher. She returned to live in Italy in 2019 and founded Poesia Somatica, a research method on the body and mind to unlock one's creativity through the prism of somatic education. Since 2020 she has organized workshops and study meetings of contact improvisation and composition in Rome, she currently collaborates with spazio·sono as an artistic curator and social media manager.

THOMAS METTLER

BIO THOMAS METTLER

He has been working in Theater and Dance with uninterrupted continuous research for over 42 years: 38 years of teaching, of which 4 years full time at professional theater and dance schools in London and Paris, and over 150 intensive workshops, and his numerous creations have taken him to Colombia, France, England, Italy, Germany, the United States, India, Greece, Portugal, Finland, Spain, Israel, Palestine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Switzerland. He meets artists of different cultural backgrounds all over the world for joint projects or invites them for creations in Switzerland, his country of origin: in this way, he constantly tries to realize his dream of a world without borders.

"Contact Improvisation is for me - even at this moment in my life and for my dance - always more: LESS is MORE!
More with less (less strength / less effort / less obstinacy = more lightness, more fluidity, more together) - or, in other words, listening instead of doing doing doing..."

www.keep-searching.ch - To see him dance / improvise, take a look at his Vimeo page: https://vimeo.com/user47646252

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