Comp Dance Camp
COMP Dance CAMP
Contemporary and contact dance camp
Gran Canaria, Spain
Camino Art House
When: 22-26 March 2026
Welcome to our yearly contact improvisation and contemporary dance camp at Camino Art House. On these days you will be focusing on your movements and the connection between your body, mind and soul, in a conversation with others and your instructors. This year we gave the name “comp” which is a playfulness with words: it includes COMPosition, COntemporary, Contact and iMProvisation, COMPilation. You will experience a fusion of different types of dance styles and deepen your knowledge and practice in a colourful variety of methods. The main goal is to get to know your body, build confidence in your movement and learn to use the space while playing and cooperating with others. In addition to the playfulness and cooperation, you can practice the ancient rhythm chanting, the kannakol singing.
During the camp, you will have the chance to see some parts of the island as we are taking trips to different natural environments to practice dancing in nature (dunes, beach, rocks, mountain). There will be also one city day, when we rent a room with a proper dance floor to see the difference between dancing on the ground or on the floor and to experience how the environment can change our perspective and sensation. (for more detailed information read the program below).
Level and experience needed
The camp is suitable for total beginners to advanced-level movement lovers. You don’t need to be a dancer or have any experience in dancing to attend the program. We aim to help you to learn the wonderful connection between your feelings, mind and movements. In this way this is not only a dance camp, but a complex self-discovery camp.
What you will experience
Daily theme classes in contact improvisation and contemporary dance style
Exciting trips and dancing in nature, mountains, forest, beach, but also in room on proper floor
Liberation of your energies, movements
Connection to yourself and others around you
Inspiring environment of Camino Art House
Experiencing real room dance class
Opening up for dancing with others in one open workshop in Las Palmas
Healthy nourishing vegan food
What you will learn
Self-confidence, freedom, balance, to play, to stand up when you fall, connect with others, the nature of your body, how to motivate yourself, how to find inspiration, how to let go, how to make space for new experiences
What you will unlearn
Self-doubt, fear of unknow, sense of confinement, stiffness, feeling stuck, insensibility
What is Contact Dance and Contemporary dance?
Contact Improvisation (CI) is a dance form, originated by American choreographer Steve Paxton in 1972, based on the communication between two or more moving bodies that are in physical contact and their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern their motion—gravity, momentum, inertia.
The body, in order to open to these sensations, must learn to release excess muscular tension and abandon a certain quality of willfulness to experience the natural flow of movement. Practice includes rolling, falling, being upside down, following a physical point of contact, supporting and giving weight to a partner.
Contact improvisations are spontaneous physical dialogues that range from stillness to highly energetic exchanges. Alertness is developed in order to work in an energetic state of physical disorientation, trusting in one’s basic survival instincts. It is a free play with balance, self-correcting the wrong moves and reinforcing the right ones, bringing forth a physical/emotional truth about a shared moment of movement that leaves the participants informed, centered, and enlivened. — Nancy Stark Smith
Contemporary dance is a style of interpretive dance that embraces innovation, blending techniques from various genres, including classical ballet, jazz, modern dance, and lyrical dance. It focuses more on floor work over leg work, and isn’t restricted by the rules that govern traditional dance forms. Instead, it relies on improvisation and versatility and is characterized by freedom of movement and fluidity, letting dancers explore the mind-body connection and ideally evoking emotion in the audience. Contemporary dance may communicate abstract ideas, such as ethical values, acceptance of self, and timely social issues. Performers may perform this type of dance to various musical styles, spoken word poems and songs, or silence.
Our facilitators and mentors
TÍMEA GYÖRKE (Timi) – dancer, teacher, movement- and dance therapist
She earned her degree in gymnastics training, physical education and physical therapy at the Hungarian University of Physical Education in 1994. During this time, she met modern and contemporary dances and Contact Improvisation. Since 2004 she has been teaching these dance forms for kids-parents (Family Contact – www.kontakttanchaz.wordpress.com), for teens in secondary school and for adults in university.
She was a member of the organizers and teachers’ team of the Hungarian CI Festivals, ECITE and CI events. She travels a lot to teach and to study as well. She collected her experiences as a teacher from Freiburg (CI Fest.), Gottingen (Contact meet Contemporary), Cluj-Napoca (Transcontact Fest.), Budapest (Contact Budapest Fest.), Marburg, Copenhagen…
As the member of Workshop Company and Group Tetra Ether she investigates improvisation and the connection between movement – music- visual arts, organizing Impro Jams, site specific and crossroads performances. www.tetraeter.wordpress.com
With the land artist, Sabine Fazekas she led several workshops in the nature.
From 2021 she became the member of L1 Independent Artists in Public Utility. It is mission to secure professional support for independent Hungarian artists in performing and creative arts.
She is interested in – not just the physical motion, but the soul – the „psyche” of the movement. This was the reason she started her studies in Psychodynamic movement- and dance therapy.
Dance classes:
– will based on modern and contemporary dance techniques
– we use easy acrobatics, CI skills and improvisation as well
– at the end we create small combinations and compositions
Outdoor work:
– we use “land art”, free motion, CI, the nature and each other
– we create bridge between nature and interactive body interventions
– we develop our listening, the awareness; create special connection with ourselves and with the nature around
– reading the landscape and opening our perceptions help us to reconnect to the state of the early age’s global perception (synaesthesia)
The aim is to find the cohesion of the group by creating strong interactions in the nature. Therefore, improvisation and freedom in motion will be encouraged and lead to install a particular communication between us.
This combination is due to reinforce our connection to the nature and integrate deeply the inner and outer experience of being a part of Nature.
Dorka Farkas – teacher, director, and movement artist
Dorka started her teaching journey with Contact Improvisation and composition (since 2007), before dedicating herself deeply to the world of inclusive art. Her work now brings her full circle, blending her rich experience to teach all movers. Dorka is a dedicated dance artist, director, and teacher whose practice is rooted in CI, Butoh, and composition. She holds a creative dance instruction certificate from ISLO, Finland (2007).
Key Artistic Work & Leadership
Dorka is a co-leader of the Tánceánia Ensemble (with Eszter Gál and Ferenc Kálmán), Hungary’s first mixed-ability contemporary dance ensemble. Her artistic highlights include directing and choreographing inclusive works such as „Mayday” (2022) and “Bridge – as we play it”. She is also the organiser and director of Community Art Projects, like the „Free Gerilla Dances in a Confined Space” (2018), and serves as the President of the ArtMan
Association for Art and Dance and Movement Therapy.
Teaching camp: Inclusive Practice
As a teacher, Dorka focuses on accessible dance, notably as an instructor and director at the Baltazár Theatre and Art Centre, working with actors and students with mental disabilities. She is an initiator of the Inclusive Jams (since 2017) and developed the inclusive school programme 'NemÁrt'. She brings two decades of expertise in improvisation and composition to her classes, creating spaces where all bodies can explore connection and creative challenge.
She particularly enjoys collaborating with others in her work as a director and teacher. She shapes her classes through dialogue with participants, believing in liberation and the transformative power of dance.
Collaboration with Timi
Dorka has been working together with Timi for more than a decade. Their collaboration spans several areas, including:
● Family contact
● Tetraether performances
● Community dance workshop for children living in poverty
www.tetraeter.wordpress.com
www.kreativtanc.wordpress.com
www.kontakttanchaz.wordpress.com
www.identitásműhely.hu
Máté Fábián – Musician (drummer), music teacher
Máté has finished his studies as a teacher of drum and percussion in 2023.
At the moment he is studying music management in ELTE (The Hungarian Eötvös Loránd University). This year he is going to write his thesis about Konnakol – the Indian rhythm counting system. (The theme is: How to integrate Konnakol to the music studies in school. The aim is to compare Konnakol with other rhythm counting system – such as the Hungarian
Kodály system or the drummer counting. He works with musicians, dancers and non-musicians as well to research the efficiency of this method in music teaching.)
As a musician he had 5 bands till now and worked as a session drummer in many other bands. The Moszkvatér and the Red Bug is the music bands he is participating in todays. His main style is blues and rock, but he is familiar in jazz, funk, Latin music, word music as well. He often joins jam sessions in music clubs, where he improvises in several genres with
other musicians.
In Kőbányai Music Institute he has a main roll in facilitating new comers. He was a leader of beginners in summer camp, where he created a band from them and prepared them for their gig. He gives private drum and math lessons for children as well, and work as an assistant teacher in BMZ (Private Music School of Buda) and teaches kids with ADHD.
He has experience in music and dance classes. In contact jams he often plays music background for dancers and improvisers. Together with Dorka and Timi they had several performances, dance events, jams.
In COMP CAMP he will be responsible of the music and rhythm for all the dance activites and the performance. He will be available as a mentor of the Talent program during the Let me Bloom Festival, right after the Dance Camp. He will play hand pan and percussions; as well as he will lead course about Konnakol for dancers and musicians too – focusing on several folk dances with odd time signature.
Program
March 22 Sunday
16.00 – gathering, getting to know each other
18.00 – 19.00 movement, warming up
20.00 dinner
20.30 campfire
March 23 Monday – day in Camino
8.30 breakfast
10.00-13.00 dance class
13.00 – 15.30 lunch and break
15.30 – 19.00 dance class and Kannakol class
20.00 dinner
20.30 evening program
March 24 Tuesday – Nature day
8.30 breakfast – lunch piknik
Desert: body work
Sea: fluidity
Rock and mountains: movement transformation, space study
Sunset
20.00 dinner in Camino
March 25 Wednesday – day in Las Palmas
8.30 breakfast
10.00 dance in room
Break
Dance and Kannakol class
Free time in Las Palmas
March 26 Thursday – day in Camino and performance
8.30 breakfast
Dance class
Break
16.00 – preparing and warming up
18.30 – PERFORMANCE – zero day of Let me Bloom 26 festival
20.00 Dinner, goodbyes and end of camp
21.00 closing campfire
IMPORTANT THINGS TO NOTE
What is included in the camp fees?
4 days of dance classes, vegan food for 4 days (3 times a day, dinner on the first evening), accommodation in tents, shared room or shared cave room (no electricity in caves) for 4 nights.
The course fee is 440€/person/camp.
Special discount for Hungarians 10%: 396€/person/camp.
Special discount for the talent program participants 25% (application is needed): 330€/person/camp
Upgrades:
Accommodation for the last night (26th March): 18€/person
Private room (for any nights of the camp): extra 18€/person/night
25% discount with Camino Membership!
Payment: Half of the fee needs to be paid when booking (booking fee), the second half needs to be paid upon arrival.
Cancellation: We can refund your payment up to 10 days before the first day of the camp. After this, we cannot refund.
If you want to participate, or you need more information, you have questions, or you just want to talk to us about this event, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.
Bea (Camino Art): +34633339903 (whatsapp, no calls, only message please), caminoart@caminoart.org (write in subject: dance camp)
Let me Bloom festival
Right after the Comp Dance Camp you are welcome to take part in our yearly art and self-development festival called Let me Bloom (27-29 March, 2026). As a participant of the dance camp, we offer 25% discount on accommodation and entrance tickets.
How to participate?
Talent program
We are happy to let you know that you can participate in our talent program, called Your Path. If you apply and we accept your application, you can participate in the Comp Camp dance camp with 25% discount and enjoy a mentorship during the event.
You can also apply as a performer/facilitator/teacher to the Let me Bloom 26 festival.
For details please visit: caminoart.org/yourpath
