My name is Bart van Rosmalen. I am also like Jo Hensel part of the group of creative directors that worked on the preparation of this seminar (two days in September and arriving yesterday a day early). Difficult for me to improvise in English so I wrote it down to be precise. During my short introduction I would like to say as many names of you as I can. Raise your hand or shout ‘here I am’ when you here your name passing….

Now I go through preparation and form of the programme

- The first preparatory question was about sources of inspiration. That is where it all begins. Tonight we will start with that. In an integrated form with dinner and music that we’d like to call salon. The salon will be in core-groups hosted by the group of creative directors. Gerda van Zelm, Falk Hubner, Aaron Shorr, Helena Gaunt, Gerda van Zelm, Tine Stolte, JO and me. Remember them as core-group leaders! (a new list is made!!)

- Monday morning. It is a bit of a tradition that we here do halfway body-work, halfway warming up the improvisation. We are delighted to be able to work wit Kerry Nichols in the body work. And with Anto Pett, Anne llies Poll from Estland, Karst de Jong from the Hague and Aaron Shorr from Glasgow on improvisation.

- Second thing to prepare was an intriguing question. The idea behind this is: When you have a question this helps to navigate through the seminar. A question stays always yours. So whatever happens or unfolds in the sessions you can always relate it back to your question. Foster it. Maybe rephrase it during the seminar. In several sessions in the end we will ask ’what do you get out of it’. And in the session on Monday afternoon we will really be working or even better be ‘jamming’ with questions.

- Than later that afternoon tomorrow starts a format that we called Exploring Improvisation. It goes on for three time slots! One on Monday, two on Tuesday. It opens the whole broad spectre of improvisation and playfulness. The most difficult thing will be choice making!! Will it be exploring harmony with Bert Mooiman? Or improvisation exercises to wake up the musical persona with Gerda van Zelm? interdisciplinary improvisation with Falk Hubner? or freeing the actor’s creative imagination (now for musicians) with Ken Rea (still in the plane) or exploring harmonic awareness with Liesbeth Ackermans or what happens when we start to balance between improvisation and composition with Ian Clarke (still in the plane). Also in these choices the Monday morning presentors come back. And the beauty of this seminar? it is all about exploring by doing instead of talking!

- the third thing addressed in the preparation was what might be a next step in your own practice? Tuesday afternoon in the same small core- groups as tonight we follow up on that. We bundle todays work on sources and tomorrows work on questions and start from there ‘working on the floor’. We call that session ‘design an experiment’. Its meant to open a workplace, a laboratory to innovate your own practice by doing.

- Last but not least we asked for books- yes words, letters, sentences. Pages : finally. This is for the library next door. Bring them in! We happen to have an excellent librarian with the name Helena Gaunt. She will be around quite often and will introduce tomorrow morning how to spend some library-time and how to leave a trace. This fits the larger concept of the ‘reflective house’. Both on Monday and Tuesday we will offer possibilities to reflect before dinner in this beautiful house: silent an quiet moments to digest, to find words or images that fit.

- Last one to introduce is Louise Bakker. You have been emailing with her. She did an incredible lot of work planning and organising this whole event. She knows everything is really, really fast as the wind. Louise immediately here a big thank you for that!

- Now we are doing the ritual with the new- comers. Maybe you could very brief say your name and in a sentence what brings you here. What do you hope to find, to share…who does want to start?