The story behind Impro Supreme

How years of training revealed one simple truth: everything begins in the body.

Why everything starts in the body

Impro Supreme did not appear all at once. It grew slowly — through years of searching, training, performing, and being shaped by a few exceptional teachers. Underneath it all was a simple need: to understand why some moments on stage felt unmistakably alive while others did not.

Everything pointed back to the body: to movement, sensation, attention.

That is where clarity began — and where improvisation began to make sense.

What follows is the path that led there: the moments that shifted my direction, and the ideas that still guide my work today.

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Where it really began

Discovering improvisation in Paris

I discovered improvisation in Paris almost by accident. It felt like a breath of fresh air — a room of strangers becoming a group within minutes, a sense of generosity and play that surprised me every time. I realised I could make people laugh with almost nothing: a gesture, a sound, a hint of intention.

It was liberating.

The early dissatisfaction

But after a few years, something felt incomplete. I was performing, teaching, going to festivals — doing everything an improviser does — yet a deeper form of improvisation never appeared. The verbal games, clever lines and recurring patterns didn’t reach what I was looking for.

I wanted down-to-earth simplicity and truth. Something as clear and undeniable as raising one’s arm.

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Meeting the teacher I didn’t know I was looking for

First contact with Ira

I met Ira Seidenstein in a café in Paris in 2008. Within minutes it was clear he saw things I didn’t yet know how to see. A few days later, in a three-hour workshop, he gave me his “secret” to improvisation: a pause, a gap, and a simple binary choice.

It was almost annoyingly simple — and exactly what I had been missing.

The yearly trips to Australia

Two years later, I travelled to Brisbane for Ira’s Quantum Clown Residency. The work was confronting, personal, and completely honest. I returned four years in a row. It stripped away habits and assumptions I hadn’t realised I was carrying.

More than anything, Ira taught me to see — to notice what is actually happening: in myself, in others, in the space. That shift became the foundation of my work. Our connection has continued ever since, both as mentorship and friendship.

Long-term impact

That training reshaped everything: how I improvise, how I perform, how I teach. Over the years I organised numerous workshops for Ira in Paris — partly to keep the work alive around me, and partly because I knew others needed to encounter it too.

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Three important dance teachers

Mary Overlie

Two weeks with Mary Overlie in London in 2019 changed the way I perceive physical reality on stage. Her combination of clarity, humour and radical perception opened a door that has stayed open ever since.

Julyen Hamilton

With Julyen Hamilton, composition became musical and poetic. Ten days at a time — twice — were enough to show me what group improvisation can become when everyone listens at a deeper level.

My ballet teacher

For nearly fifteen years I trained with the exceptional ballet teacher Michèle Bonneau. Classical technique, strict discipline, relentless detail — and a lot of laughter. That training grounded me and gave me a physical stability that still supports everything I do.

Finding my own way on stage

The turning point: performing solo

The major shift came when I began performing solo. I took the exercises I practised alone and placed them directly in front of an audience — nothing to hide behind, nothing to protect me. Just my body and the imagination in the moment.

That became Plan C, a project that stayed with me for more than a decade. Performing across Europe, Australasia and North America confirmed what I had already sensed: physical improvisation was the place where everything came together.

The ongoing solo practice

Over time, the solo work developed its own tone — part mime, part clown, part improvised theatre. Someone once called it “romantic clowning.” What mattered to me was its honesty: one body, one moment, one audience.

The work revealed what I actually wanted to do on stage.

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Teaching across the world

Paris beginnings

Teaching began as a complement to performing, then quickly became central. Early on, I realised I wasn’t interested in passing on tricks. I wanted to offer clarity — something people could actually use, something that made their work more grounded and alive.

Europe and beyond

Invitations followed from festivals, schools and small companies. Wherever I went, the same pattern appeared: people wanted to work with their whole being — body, attention, imagination — not just storylines and verbal improvisation.

What teaching revealed

Teaching became its own research. I learned that clarity is a form of generosity: when principles are simple, people find their own way. That understanding shaped the workshops and trainings that would eventually become Impro Supreme.

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Putting it all together

The central insight

At the centre of everything — performance, creation, presence — is the link between the body and the imagination. Not story. Not ideas. Not cleverness. When the body is engaged, the imagination responds. And when the imagination responds, meaning appears.

What makes this approach different

Improvisation is not mysticism, talent or personality. It is physical, perceptive, practical — something you train. Something you build. Ira’s work gave me that understanding, and over time I refined it until it became my own approach.

A practicable philosophy

Improvisation begins long before ideas. It begins in sensation, attention, and the willingness to act honestly. When attention is simple, things appear. When the body is alive, the imagination follows.

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Why I created Impro Supreme

What was missing

By 2010, it was clear that most improvisation training left out the essential: the body, presence, clarity, individuation. There was plenty of fun — but little depth. People could “do scenes,” yet many lacked a personal foundation as performers.

I wanted a place where individual training mattered. Where the real work could happen.

What Impro Supreme offers today

Impro Supreme began as a personal project — a name, a place to gather what I was learning. Over time it became a method: physical, imaginative, attentive. A way of training that performers can return to again and again.

Group work is valuable, but individual work is indispensable. You cannot hide from yourself there — and that is where the real progress happens.

The throughline

Looking back, the throughline is simple: presence, clarity, honesty, embodied imagination. Every important teacher and every breakthrough pointed in the same direction — toward reality, toward sensation, toward meaning.

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Where it leads

If there is one thing I trust, it is this: expression begins in the body. In sensation, attention, and the willingness to act with clarity.

That is where Impro Supreme comes from — and where it continues to go.