5.-10.8.2025 International Festival of Contact Improvisation & Tango Barnin
Save you place at the amazing farmhouse beside the lake in Barnin
… just for a bunch of crazylovely ContacTango Aficonados!
Registration possible now: info@gabrielekoch.net
ContactTango in the summerly magical atmosphere of the beautiful Barnin. After the indescribably amazing festival in the winterly Wuppertal, we enjoy for the second time a complete feeling in the midst of nature just for ourselves, diving deep and with ease into Tango, Contact, and ContactTango!
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ContactTango in the summerly magical atmosphere of the beautiful Barnin. After the indescribably amazing festival in the winterly Wuppertal, we enjoy for the second time a complete feeling in the midst of nature just for ourselves, diving deep and with ease into Tango, Contact, and ContactTango.
Barnin is surrounded by meadows and forests- There is a private lake space, a fire place and sauna. We can dance the warm summer nights outside, on the open-air dance floor under the starry sky. Nature and dance can connect with the lightness of summer.
TIMETABLE
Changes possible
DJs in the Evening by the best of our Teachers, who are all provided already music for Milongas/Neolongas
Extra Events: Outside Dancing/Dancing in Nature/Live-Musik
- Cacu Lucero/AR
- Alon Ritter/IL/PT
- Gabriele Koch/DE
- Pipaluk/DK
- Valentina Vitolo/IT
Cacu Lucero was born by the sea in Mar del Plata, Argentina.
Since 2016 organice with other friends tangocontact and contact impro festivals in different cities of Argentina. He has been teaching dance for 23 years. Exploring, fusing, playing.
He has participated in different educational events, because he loves that aspect. He is fascinated by the possibilities of transmitting a feeling, an idea, a process… and how the person who receives it interprets it, dances it. So he also teaches pedagogy classes for dance teachers.
Since 2005 he tours mainly in Europe sharing workshops and seminars of tangocontact, milonga, tango and musicality in tango. Tango queer and dance laboratories as well. He also toured in Different countries of Latin America and many cities inside Argentina.
He has studied clown for many years and practiced contemporary dance, salsa and capoeira. He played for 4 years violin and cello in his childhood, which gave him the focus on musicality while teaching and dancing.
In the tangocontact classes, he seeks that each person can express his or her own dance, connecting with the technique and possibilities of tango along with the somatic exploration that facilitates contact improvisation. The music plays a fundamental role in the interpretation and improvisation. Technique fused with chaos. Poetry fused with structure
Some more at Instagram @cacu.lucero
Alon Ritter has been teaching worldwide for the past 15 years, sharing his passion for Tango, Contact Improvisation, Contango, Somatic Dance, and embodiment practices. He is also a certified Feldenkrais practitioner and somatic trauma therapist. Alon’s life’s work is a deep exploration of movement and touch-based communication, inviting people to connect with themselves and others through presence and flow.
Gabriele Koch, Wuppertal, Germany
Gabriele Koch lives in Wuppertal. She has been dancing and teaching dance for more than 25 years, with 20 years dedicated to Tango and approximately the same amount of time researching ContacTango. For the past 13 years, she has been the founder and organizer of the international Festival of Contact and Tango, now added by a yearly summer festival in nature. The festivals are dedicated to lively exchange and research in the realm of Contactango.
Gaby is a Somatic Movement Educator for Body-Mind Centering® and has long incorporated the connection with our body into her work. She is interested in constantly discovering new paths, breaking patterns, and finding subtlety, connecztion and freedom in dance.
Pipaluk (she/her), dancer and choreographer. Pipaluk works with contact improvisation, contemporary dance improvisation and dance in nature, she creates site specific performance projects and artistic meeting-spaces, encouraging dancers and artists to explore on their own terms.
Her research and teaching take her around the world, she is based in Copenhagen.
Dance, inside and outside
Contact Improvisation offers us amazing tools to connect with our surroundings, and to each other.
Our workshop is a playful exploration, let’s tango with trees and landscapes, get physical, get dirty, dance with leaves and branches, with soil, sand and water.
We give space for personal exploration, along with fundamental and creative tools for contact improvisation and communicating with dance partners.
Dancing from calm presence into climbing, playing, floating, our bodies being nature too.
We begin in the studio, and according to weather and mood, dance our way into the surroundings
! Bring shoes for outdoor dancing along with cloth protecting your skin.
Valentina Vitolo (IT) is a teacher, dancer and creative performer with strong movement and communication skills able to create stimulating and personalized learning environments through motivation, confidence and enthusiasm and to convey emotions and inspirations with her performances.
Valentina has more than 20 years of pedagogical and movement experience in teaching mathematics and science in middle schools with the Montessori Method and in teaching Argentine Tango dance in Milan (Italy), Melbourne (Australia) and ContacTango in Rome (Italy). This also led her to perform and research the connections between Contact Improvisation and Argentin Tango exploring liquid lead and Queer Tango.
In 2020 Valentina becoming a Feldenkrais practitioner. The encounter with the Feldenkrais® method profoundly changed her life, bringing her deeper awareness and bodily well-being. Inspired by her husband Raffaele Rufo (Phd, Eco-Somatic researcher and practitioner) Valentina’s current research, practice and performance focus on discovering the connections between the human body and nature through somatic movement, Tango and Contact skills with the aim of awake deeper her inner animal in spiritual harmony with her body and therefore with nature.
THE PLACE:
Amseltango
Lindenstraße 10C 19089 Barnin
Amseltangomaps
Flights to Hamburg or Berlin Train to Schwerin or Crivits
Pick up from Schwerin/Crivitz Shared rides orga
Pictures: Boat at lake; dance studio; area; outside danceplace
SUPPORTER PRICE: If you have sufficient means, we warmly invite you to add an amount of 20 – 50,-€ to the festival price. This way, we will support young people or individuals with fewer resources from challenging regions by 100%, enabling them to participate in the festival. If you fall into this category, please apply informally via email.
Stay overnight
We can offer double rooms, three bed rooms, 4 + 6 people appartments are available
Camping 20-25,-€/night
Please register soon! Limited Places!
The details:
27.1.-1.2.2026 International Festival of Contact Improvisation & Tango Wuppertal
After the amazing restart, we do it again! We fill the Insel, place of art, culture, dance theatre and Tango Argentino!
The Festival focusses to support on a vivid exchange about Contact Improvisation, Tango und ContacTango.
I´m very proud of that amazing professional and experienced teachers team, which couldn´t be better this year:
Registration possible in September: info@gabrielekoch.net
We have a lot of space to exchange intensiv within a group of wonderful people, built connection, experiment, cuddle, play, dive deep into embodiment and float together.
The Festival offers capacity for dancers of any level to experience the fusion of Tango Argentino und Contact Improvisation and catch playfulness, intensity and freedom in this symbiosis.
FULL PACKAGE
6 days of classes, research, jamilongas, exchange etc plus 4 meals on the full days Tuesday evening -Sunday afternoon
Early Bird till 30.11.2025:
For a specific amount of participants we can provide housing in apartments nearby for 25,-€/night – double rooms, three bed rooms, 4 + 6 people appartments are available.
WEEKEND SPECIAL
Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon including 1 meal on saturday
Early Bird till 30.11
Registration: info@gabrielekoch.net www.gabrielekoch.net
SUPPORTER PRICE: If you have sufficient means, we warmly invite you to add an amount of 20 – 50,-€ to the festival price. This way, we will support young people or individuals with fewer resources from challenging regions by 100%, enabling them to participate in the festival. If you fall into this category, please apply informally via email.
Stay overnight
We can offer mainly double rooms in 2-4 room appartments with fully equipped kitchen and bathroom