JO-AN WESTERVELD

Jo-An Westerveld is a young and vivid teacher, creator and performer in a broad field of creative movement.  After years of classical, contemporary and theater dancing she discovered the world of improvisation which opened her dancing heart more than ever. She graduated as a teacher of Dance expression in 2014 in Amsterdam and spent the last 9 years in workshops, intensives & trainings in Contact Impro, Instant Composition, Movement Research, Contemporary Dance & Contakids. She began dancing CI around 9 years ago and started teaching it 5 years later. This emerged from the necessity to share one of her biggest loves in dance improvisation in a town where there were few teachers or communities keeping it alive. The process of discovering, experimenting, emerging, engaging, trying out, combining it with dance expression / improvisation and then finally teaching it was so fruitful and taught her so much about the CI principles, her personal fascination in it and about teaching itself that it made her realize how teaching improvised & creative dances might be the biggest passion in dance!