ContactCampBeirut is the yearly Contact improvisation gathering in Lebanon since 2016, allowing access to intensive and varied training in Contact Improvisation(CI) and other Dance improvisation techniques non-restrictively to dance professionals. It is the first in the Arab region and therefore acts as a culturally militant platform that makes accessible the practice of CI and Dance improvisation research to local, regional and international practitioners.

ContactCampBeirut aims at creating a development opportunity with a convivial local touch, that evolves with and at the level of the Lebanese CI community.

A home base and a springboard for the Lebanese Community, the festival is open to individuals from all social, cultural and professional backgrounds who wish to access the form through a multitude of entry points (Professional development and research, Social and Leisure, Personal development or psycho-somatic health among others…).

The aim of the festival is not only to make accessible quality training and exposure to international CI and somatic approaches but it is also an invitation to question how we, as practitioners from this region, can constantly and communally reinvent the form via our socio-cultural and political contexts and identity in an embodied way. It is an invitation to ask our questions and look for answers with and through our physical and cultural Body.

Les Soirées de la Danse are convivial evenings for the circle to get together and exchange around Dance: Communal Pot-Luck Gatherings, Dance Screenings, Talks & Discussions, Studio Presentations & Fundraisers parties to support the learning and inclusion of community members that are financially challenged.

SOMA ( School of Movement Arts) is a yearly, 3-months-summer intensive taking place at La Maison des Arts (MaFk), in Fraykeh (Mount Lebanon), the home village of famous writer Amin al Rihani and theater maker Mounir Abou Debs. A silk factory at first, it was then used as a cowshed until renovated by Mounir Abou Debs to become a cultural space and home of the School of Modern theatre and the Fraykeh Festival.

An architectural bliss for the Art of Dance...

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This intensive training offers the community a space-time to delve deeper into movement practice and thinking. Collaborating with local teachers and international guest teachers to propose access to different workshops, regular classes and gatherings, as well as a playground of exchange and sharing of ideas, practices, and disciplines.

SOMA aims at bringing together practitioners, dance and movement professionals, and amateurs, as well as artists and thinkers from other disciplines.

SOMA also sets the Moving Library Project, a temporary collective Library where participants will have access to a collection of themed resources (articles, books & DVDs)  related to topics of CI, Dance Improvisation, Somatics, Anatomy, Dance History, and Performance.

Participants are also invited to share their own resources with others, either by providing a hard copy for the time of the festival or by sending a scanned version that stays in the growing archive of THE MOVING LIBRARY.