Contemporary Dance

Cologne choreographer, dancer and teacher Erika Winkler works with principles devoted to physical perception. Through a multitude of tasks, she sends the body on a quest for new and unusual paths. She has been intensively occupied with, among other things, “thinking” physical work that sharpens self-perception in improvisation, thus schooling the skill for the repetition of learned movement patterns. Apart from this, Erika also imparts William Forsythe’s “improvisation technologies” in her classes. In this context, Rudolf von Lábán’s spatial context and nine-point-improvisation also come up. The training consists of a warm-up and longer movement sequences. Erika then deals with the materials flexibly and hands out short research tasks in order to explore movement processes. This concentrates mainly on a differentiated perception of the body (along with a perception of the body centre), forms of isolating the body parts and positioning in relation to the inner and outer spaces. Apart from this, floorwork and off-balance exercises as well as coordination and flexibility are also in focus. Erika is an esteemed and popular artist whose classes for professional dancers and dance students, alongside her other activities, are complete successes.