Claire Cunningham and guests: Cripping / Queering Contact

Claire Cunningham: Crip Techniques - Cripping / Queering Contact

with guests Anya Cloud, Makisig Akin and Peter Pleyer

This artistic research week continued Prof. Cunningham’s focus into the subject of Crip Technique, researching the dance/movement vocabularies and techniques of disabled and Crip dance artists. This phase of the research is rooted in Cunningham’s own movement history in particular engagement with Contact Improvisation, and specifically aspects of touch, trust, risk and connection/relationship.

In collaboration with invited artists Anya Cloud & Makisig Akin and Peter Pleyer and Cunningham looked specifically at practices that engage with physical contact:

To consider transference of contact (improvisation) work in relationship to Crip bodies and mobility tech and acts of cripping/queering, and consider the vocabulary and techniques Cunningham uses, and to engage with new vocabulary from other experiences.
To consider and talk about what we might consider aspects of technique & vocabulary in relation to physical practices/trust/touch/risk etc.
To consider and talk about aspects of Cripping and/or Queering practices and of what it means to share those practices with people outside of those lived experiences.
To explore and consider the implications of physical contact work following grief and the loss of a dance partner

The research week ended with the sharing event "Round ~~Table~~ Floor Conversation" which took place June 6, 2026 at HZT Berlin. The conversation and performed contactimprovisation drew on themes and experiences that have arisen during the research week, considering movement vocabularies and techniques of disabled and Crip dance artists. It focused particularly on questions of sharing Cripping and Queering practices within teaching environments and with those outside of these lived experiences.Topics included touch, trust, risk, physical connection, relationship, embodied knowledge and artistic practice, and the ways these may function as forms of technique or vocabulary.

We are currently working on making video and audio recordings of the event available and will gradually be sharing further insights here.

Artist Biographies

Claire Cunningham is a performer and creator of multi-disciplinary performance based in Glasgow, Scotland. One of the UK’s most acclaimed and internationally renowned disabled artists, Cunningham’s work is often rooted in the study of Crip & disabled experience, practices of care and questioning societal ideas of knowledge and value. Most recently, in 2021, Claire was honoured for her Outstanding Artistic Development in Dance at the German Dance Awards. In October 2023, Claire joined the Inter-University Centre for Dance (HZT) in Berlin as the Einstein Professor of “Choreography, Dance and Disability Arts”. Claire premiered her new solo work, "Songs of the Wayfarer" in November ’24. It was nominated for its Achievement in Dance at the 2025 UK Theatre Awards and continues to tour internationally.

Anya Cloud (she/they) is an experimental contemporary dance artist originally from Alaska and currently based between Colorado and Berlin. As a queer white person, she orients her work to cultivate radical aliveness as an artist-activist practice. Collaboration, questioning, and deep physicality are central to all of her work. Makisig Akin and Anya co-direct the project-based dance company The Love Makers. Their work has recently been produced by DOCK 11, Tanzfabrik Berlin Bühne, Tanztage Berlin, Movement Research at the Judson, OUTsider Fest, and What You See Festival. Important collaborators include Makisig Akin, Sara Shelton Mann, Karen Schaffman, Eric Geiger, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Nhu Nguyen among others. Anya has taught/facilitated contact improvisation, improvisation, contemporary dance, and somatics internationally at festivals and institutions including at Guatemala Contact Improvisation Festival, Tanzfabrik Berlin Schule, ImPulsTanz, Tanzquartier, wcciJAM, Ukraine Contact Improvisation Festival, Metamorphosis Improvisation Research Festival, The Field Center, BeingTouch, and Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation among others. She currently teaches at the University of Colorado Boulder, earned an MFA from University of California San Diego, and is trained in the Feldenkrais Method® under Elizabeth Beringer.

Makisig Akin (they/them) is a queer, transgender Filipino born choreographer, dance artist, facilitator, and activist. They were raised in the Philippines and is currently based in Berlin, Germany. Their work focuses on the recognition of intersectional identities, reconnecting with ancestry, and decentralizing Western ideologies in dance making. Makisig examines how survival strategies can be translated into a communal physical practice, which they then use as a catalyst to a creative healing process. They have taught dance workshops and Contact Improvisation classes in many different communities including HZT, UCLA, Tanzfabrik Schule, Bennington College, The Field Center, Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation among others. Their orientation to CI is deeply interconnected with their training in Filipino Traditional Dance, Kung Fu, Jiu Jitsu, Improvisation, walking meditation, Authentic Movement, Bouldering/Climbing, and Contemporary Dance. In 2019 they received an MFA from UCLA. Makisig co-founded The Love Makers, a project-based dance company, with Anya Cloud and is also the co-creator and co-director of Emerging Change Tanzfestival in Berlin, Germany. In the last three years their choreographic work has been presented in Tanzfabrik Bühne, Uferstudios, DOCK 11, Movement Research at the Judson, What You See Festival, OUTsider Fest, Tanztage Berlin, among others. Their works have been supported by NEUSTART KULTUR Fonds Darstellende Künste, Distanzen in 2022/2023, Hauptstadtkulturfonds, and Fonds Darstellende Künste Flausen.

Peter Pleyer studied at the European Dance Development Centre (EDDC) in Arnhem before working with Yoshiko Chuma and Mark Tompkins as a dancer and choreographic assistant. He has lived in Berlin since 2000. From 2007 to 2014, he was Artistic Director of the Tanztage Berlin and from 2012 to 2014, a member of the Sophiensæle team. His interest as a choreographer and performer, dramaturge and coach, lies in finding new methods of integrating dance training, composition and improvisation into choreographic processes, such as, e.g., in the lecture-performance “Choreographing Books“ or in “Visible Undercurrent“ (2014). He teaches at various colleges and festivals in Europe and contributed to establishing a university course in Contemporary Dance in Berlin.