Contact Improvisation is a dance practice with 2 or more people staying connected through at least one point of physical contact. As a form of Dance improvisation, it involves sharing weight and following the flow and momentum of the movement without a prescribed vocabulary. Finding ground through contact is at once a physical experience and a mental/emotional state of being. CI can both push our social boundaries and also create a safe, playful and neutral ground to explore what is true in the moment.  People often feel more integrated as a whole through the experience of contact as a form that invites creativity, connection, physical risk, playfulness, and expanded awareness through the language of touch.

Class begins with self-connecting warm-up and exploration and develops into partner or group explorations that increase weight sharing vocabulary, and creating a moving jungle gym. For more info see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_improvisation

I teach CI at festivals and pre-jam classes and I also use it as a resource for developing choreography… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeEfDc0Y4mM

7 Senses of Contact Improvisation

Sight, sound, taste, smell, TOUCH, INTUITION, & EQUILIBRIUM (or “proprioception”) . We’ll focus mainly on the last 3 senses through *Contact Improv, *Somatic Movement Pathways and *Contemporary dance scores.

Moving into the Spring Equinox, we’ll gain our equilibrium from a fear-inducing government and focus on developing a heightened awareness of the spidey senses during Women’s history month.
***All genders welcome-(feminists only of course)
***All Levels- (Beginners are welcome).

If Jane Austin had contact improvisation, it would have all made sense!
(Sense and Sensibility= Body and Mind).
Find freedom of movement through the idiomatics of the senses, exploratory technique, and the curiosity within creative process.

INTUITION: Ability to predict and support movement, as well as, opening doors to the unconscious stories of the body/mind. Using aesthetic feedback scores, somatic transference, creative restrictions, blindfolded exercises, RE-membering natural origins and body part mapping.

EQUILIBRIUM: Finding balance and proprioceptive awareness in solo and in contact with others. Learning anatomically sound pathways of movement, head/tail connection, spiraling in and out of the floor, falling off your axis, turning upside down, working with your range of motion, traveling and changing direction/orientation.

TOUCH: Where sensitivity and skill are wedded. The language of contact is 3-fold… Functional Vocabulary (rolling, pivoting, sliding, pushing, pulling etc…), Sensing systems (auric field/proximal, nervous system, limbic system, muscular, skeletal, cardio vascular…etc) and Relational Contact (giving/receiving, leading/following, supporting, witnessing, sharing, saving ourselves and eachother etc…)

Water, Earth, Air, Fire! Exploring Eco-Somatic Integration
with Liz Boubion, MFA, RSMT

This class takes an Eco-Somatic approach to Contact Improvisation, offering technical skills as well accessing the natural resources that exist within our bodies.  Beginning with water, as it belongs to 70% of our body, we will learn to follow momentum, flow into the unknown, and feel supported by a partner and the buoyancy of our body mass.  Earth offers stable skeletal structures for which to give and receive weight in alignment with gravity. Air offers a lightness of being for lifts and utilizes the breath as essential jet fuel.  Fire warms the room in the spirit of play exploring boundaries, surprise and the power of intention. This class is suitable for the experienced contacter and those who are new to the form.