The QI DANCE PROJECT

Qi Dance is a contemporary practice based on dance improvisation techniques and qigong exercises. It is an exploration of body expression that emphasises inner presence and the capacity to co-create with others. This practice helps improve body structure and strength, tune into spontaneous movement, and increase emotional awareness, thus becoming a means to experience self-healing, and to improve the ability to connect and to create within a group.


Genesis

In 2005, courses of Contemporary Dance with Qigong techniques have been experimented at the University of Orleans, with Christophe Julien (dancer and teacher) and Marceau Chenault (Anthropologist, Choreographer and Qigong Teacher).

Movement Exploration workshop have started after 2007 in various dance Festival in France, with Marceau Chenault and Boris Trouplin (musician mixing traditional instruments and contemporary compositions). They have designed a specific training where people can explore the relations between inner breathing rhythms, group dynamics and the connection with musicians.

The Qi Dance Project have started in Shanghai, in 2010, with the collaboration of Ke Wen (leader of the center Les Temps du Corps) and Marceau Chenault. They have joined their respective research to design foundational materials for teaching-learning : 
Fluid Body (meridian circulation), Yin-Yang Duo (synchronization with a partner), Fundamental movements (based on spirales forces).

Between 2013 and 2019, Qi Dance trainings have been lead at the Shanghai Qigong Research Institute with Marceau Chenault and Estel Vilar, translator and multi-disciplinary artist from Barcelona. As musician and dancer she contributes to the Qi Dance experience in blurring the limits between movement and sound, and with her emphasis on spontaneous creativity.They collaborate in developing their joint teaching-learning methodology and co-create performances involving dance, music and other media, with various artists based in Shanghai, Barcelona and Paris.

Since 2020, Qi Dance training are open in various cities in France,
through various associatons and netwroks of dancers, martial artists and practioners of energetic arts.

Today Qi Dance Project is still an open field of research on 'creativity' and 'human connexions'
working with spontaneous movement, collective improvisation, instant composition and fundamental techniques in energetic field.

Qi Dance is not an intellectual concept. It is the natural evolution of people who have experienced dance and traditional asian practices.  
The Qi Dance training is structured with specific techniques of body movement and individual or collective situations of teaching-learning.

The Qi Dance approach is based on 5 qualities of movements : 
Slow Movements, Fast Movements, Explosive Movements, Creative Movements and Static postures.

Slow Movements - Qi Gong
Chinese Qi Gong, as Indian Yoga, is the art of synchronising and unifying the breathe, mind and movement.  Regular exercising develops the perception of "Qi". More than a physiological Breathing, the practitioner develops awareness of his body, in accordance to the place and the situation where he practices. In this understanding of the taoist tradition, Qi Gong is a way to transform our internal perception of body and, therefore, of the world.

Fast and Explosive Movements - Martials Art
Most of the Martial Arts come from the art of war and fighting.  Today, most come to Martial Arts to find a balance in their external body training with strong values (respect, courage, honesty, solidarity, etc.). In Judo or Tuishou, Breath and Mind are totally focused on the efficiency of the technics to find the "right moment" to push out of balance the attack of a partner. Martial Art is a school of respect, solidarity and courage between practionners. Fighting against each other, as practicing "pushing hand", is just a way to help the other to improve in his own development.

Creative expression - Contemporary Dance
Contemporary Dance is a culture of body movement born into the mid-20th century. The dancer and choregrapher have destructed the social structure of the body to explore the individual embodiement in our sociéety. This bespoke research of liberty in expression, where everything becomes possible on stage, is developed in order to show a certain reality of life. Contemporary Dancing bring poetical imagee to the spectator who learns from his personnal emotion connection to the show. Contemporary Dancers are some of the first to have trained themself with oriental practices as Buto, Meditation, Yoga, Qigong, Taijiquan and Martial Arts. 

Statics Posture - Meditation
Meditation is a way of quietness which brings us closer to a special state of being, to a deep internal way. Everything begins when one starts to become aware, at a certain moment of life, of the necessity to come back inside one's body, to listen to one's soul and heart. This attitude develops a real perception of internal life and a mindful opening to the world and life.