HUGH STANIER (UK) is a dance artist and movement educator from the UK. Specialising in Contact Improvisation and floor-work. He has over 16 years of teaching & performance experience. He began dancing when he was 15, training in Break dance and Contemporary. He went on to train at Northern School of Contemporary Dance, graduating in 2008. Since then he has worked with companies such as 2Faced Dance, Tom Dale, STAN Won’t Dance, and Wim Vandekeybus/ Ultima Vez.  He has taught internationally at the Goa Contact Festival, Goa Dance residency, Thailand Contact and ecstatic arts festival, Berlin contact festival and Portugal Contact festival and for National Dance company Wales (NDCW) as well as organising his own workshops and retreats in Portugal, Germany and Israel.  Within his teaching practice he combines his experience in Breakdance, Contemporary and Contact Improvisation to create a highly physical, technical and intuitive  approach to movement exploration.  He is also a qualified TMW (Tai Chi Movements for Wellbeing) facilitator. The principles of Tai Chi and Qi Kung underpin his approach to teaching and sharing movement. Hugh’s approach to movement practice is both technical and experiential - concentrating on building up a functional understanding of underlying physical principles and structures of Contact Improvisation, whilst also widening the trust to one's instincts, impulses and intuition. 

The principal themes behind the work are organic, efficient and functional movement, tuning and sensitivity to listening through & with the body deepening the awareness of the body in movement and in connection to other bodies. The sessions develop slowly from inside to out. Often starting with individual floor-work, offering particular principles and tasks, and then gradually building up through the layers using the natural spirals of the body.  Material alternates between contact and solo tasks, and exercises that connect the group as a whole, creating an open, safe and exciting environment to explore. 
Within specific exercises we will  explore tools that are helpful to work in contact: sharing weight, center-to-center, leaning and supporting, rolling point of contact. Also using ideas around momentum, suspension, inertia & falling. To find effortless ways into weight transfers and lifting, leading and following, falling and spiraling… 
Time will also be given to work with dance-scores, which allows participants to get into the flow of their own movement, giving time and space to integrate the learnt technique into their dance.