Sharing Ground – Contact Improvisation Community Project Koh Phangan

Koh Phangan has become an inspiring meeting place for Contact Improvisation (CI) dancers from all over the world.

But how can this international community connect more meaningfully with the country of Thailand that supports it?

Sharing Ground is our way of putting this question into practice.

This project proposes a series of concrete actions where art becomes a bridge between communities and cultures. We aim to cultivate integration between Thai creative practitioners, locals from the island, and the international Contact Improvisation community.

We offer this GoFundMe as an opportunity to be part of building a more grounded and interconnected space of dance.

We are raising €2,000 from the community, which will be matched euro-for-euro by a sponsor, bringing the project to €4,000 in total support.

That means:

• Every €20 donated becomes €40 of support.

• Every €50 becomes €100.

We have already received €235 in early support from friends and community. This has been doubled to €470 by our sponsor. With this online campaign we aim to raise the remaining funds together.

Your support helps cover essential project costs — including artist accommodation, coordination of the program, and the production of the new collective art book.

You support not only the creation of artwork, but also of meaningful moments of learning, connection, and exchange.

The project unfolds through:

Scholarship Program

We invite Thai artists and creatives to join dance intensives throughout the season with internationally respected teachers on a pay-what-you-can basis, in some cases offering support with accommodation and other costs. Visiting artists are invited to share their current work through performances and creative exchange.

Collaborative Performance Nights

Performances where artists from different disciplines—dance, music, poetry and visual art—create and share work together. Both Thai and international dancers are invited to co-create performances, sharing and developing their work with the broader community.

Collective Art Publication

A printed artistic book that collects photographs, texts, interviews, and creative reflections from different members of the community. The publication explores how we enter into a relationship with Koh Phangan’s people, landscape, sensations and cultural context.

We plan to publish contributions from the whole CI community including Thai artists and scholarship participants.

Formats include collecting interviews with locals on the island, as well as gathering and crafting new artistic works. We have already gathered some photographs of site specific dance, and beautiful new poems. At the moment we are actively collecting interviews on the island.

SHARING GROUND – Humans Involved

Daniel Rojasanta (Colombia)

Daniel Rojasanta is a multidisciplinary performer whose practice combines contact improvisation, somatics, physical theatre, and visual art. He has taught contact improvisation and presented work internationally for nine years, collaborating with artists and companies across multiple continents. For Sharing Ground, he coordinates and curates the performance evenings while contributing to the project’s conceptual and visual design.

IG danielrojasanta

Alexandra Wuzyk (South Africa)

Alexandra Wuzyk is a multidisciplinary artist and organizer working across contact improvisation, performance, and visual art. Her work explores human connection, improvisation, and encounters between

people, cultures, and environments. She is the creative initiator of Sharing Ground, developing the project’s structure and artistic approach while coordinating sponsorship, communication, and organization. She has been steadily working on the research and development of the project since June 2025.

IG alexandrawuzyk | Alexandra’s previous work related to art & community

DDFlection (Thailand)

A Bangkok-based dance duo founded by Krid Prarom and Ing Rinyapas. Known for blending contemporary dance, floor work, and contact improvisation, they gained international recognition after winning World of Dance Thailand and representing Thailand internationally. Their work also extends into contemporary art contexts, including an upcoming performance in Deer of Nine Faces at the Thailand

Biennale.

Sharing Ground welcomes DDFlection as featured artists, joining two major contact improvisation intensives while developing and presenting their own performances to the community.

IG ddflection

MOTION Space of Contact Improvisation

MOTION is a new dance studio on Koh Phangan. Sharing Ground has

evolved as an exploration of how this space might foster collaborative and reciprocal relationships with the Thai community, while also growing into a space of artistic production and collective creative processes. MOTION is a community space brought into being by Zuzanna Bukowski, with the support of Santiago Ortiz Heredia, Christina Dohr, and more.

Events: contactimprovkohphangan

Steven LeBlanc supports the project as the initial sponsor, supporter and advisor, committed to matching the donations raised through crowdfunding.

Values

Sharing Ground is guided by the values of co-creation, curiosity, responsibility and innovation. Rather than simply passing through the island, we want to cultivate a deeper relationship through artistic practices and exchange.

Project Time Frame

15 January – 30 April 2026

How Can You Support?

We are launching this crowdfunding campaign to support the development of the project.

We aim to raise €2,000, which will be matched by a sponsor, bringing the total to €4,000.

These funds go towards essential project costs, allowing us to:

• Support artists participating in the performances

• Organize and coordinate the project

• Produce the art publication

If you would consider a larger-scale investment or donation to this program, we are happy to share more details on request and can provide detailed budgets and information about exactly what your contribution brings into action.

If you are:

• A dancer who loves, or has loved, coming to Koh Phangan to study and dance

• A supporter of the arts interested in creativity and quality artistic production

• Someone curious about how art can support communication, interconnection and community building

• A friend who wants to see this happen

We offer this GoFundMe as an opportunity. This opportunity is not just for us as individuals — it is a chance for our whole community, as well as outside supporters, to be part of something deeply worth doing.

Supporters who contribute €50 or more are warmly invited to receive a "thank you" copy of the final publication if they wish.

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Future Research Path: Improvisation in Youth Education

The project initially also proposed exploring how CI dancers could support youth education on Koh Phangan.

We had planned to offer free classes at a local temple learning center serving the children of Burmese migrants. Koh Phangan is home to a large Burmese migrant community, many of whom have fled the ongoing conflict in Myanmar and work in precarious conditions in the island’s tourism and construction industries.

Unfortunately, the school is currently still closed due to regulatory issues with the Thai government. For now, we are reframing this as an open research path rather than a fixed program. We remain interested in sharing creative approaches to education with young people. This branch may not develop within the set time frame of the project, but remains an open curiosity.

We are interested in exploring:

• Whether there are ways to support the learning center to re-open and stabilize.

• Ways to engage with the youth the school usually serves.

• Contact with other schools or educational centers that may be open to receiving free arts, movement and English activities for their students.

We are open to receiving support and collaboration in these areas.

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Thank you to photographers Amanda Roth & Daria Lukina for their wonderful support. Images of performance : Amanda Roth