Jacqui Otago
Jacqui Otago is a dance artist and Somatic Movement Educator. She has a BA Dance, and holds an international qualification through the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association (ISMETA) as a Registered Somatic Movement Educator, graduating through the Somatic Wisdom Program with Alice Cummins Body Mind Centering® practitioner. Jacqui’s teaching and performance experience spans a 20-year history working at local primary schools, choreographing high school musical theatre productions and collaborations with independent artists. She has produced works for Artrage Fringe Festival, Chrissie Parrott Arts 12 x 12, performed in a site-specific work, ‘Square of Earth’ alongside Marnie Orr, three works of Phillippa Clarke’s, ‘Gnome’, ‘GM Free’ and ‘While We Wait’. Jacqui is a member of the Momentum Dance Company, facilities the Perth Improvisation Practice (PiP) and Contact Improvisation Perth.
Image credit: Johannes Reinhart
A contact improvisation class can feel liberating, playful, confronting, challenging, frustrating, surprising, slippery. It calls for the ability to yield to the present moment, focus one’s attention on physical sensation and listen deeply to the flow of weight and momentum at the rolling point of contact.