Contact Improvisation is an evolving system of movement initiated in 1972 by American choreographer Steve Paxton. The improvised dance form is based on the communication between two moving bodies that are in physical contact and their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern their motion—gravity, momentum, inertia. The body, in order to open to these sensations, learns to release excess muscular tension and abandon a certain quality of willfulness to experience the natural flow of movement. Practice includes rolling, falling, being upside down, following a physical point of contact, supporting and giving weight to a partner.
Contact improvisations are spontaneous physical dialogues that range from stillness to highly energetic exchanges. Alertness is developed in order to work in an energetic state of physical disorientation, trusting in one's basic survival instincts. It is a free play with balance, self-correcting the wrong moves and reinforcing the right ones, bringing forth a physical/emotional truth about a shared moment of movement that leaves the participants informed, centered, and enlivened.
—early definition by Steve Paxton and others, 1970s, from CQ Vol. 5:1, Fall 1979
Additional resources, articles and information on Contact Improvisation:
Sign up for the next Work in Progress Showing April 21st
The feedback and discussion will be facilitated by trained Fieldwork facilitators.
The Fieldwork process establishes a space for artists to learn about their work, develop their ability to give feedback, and build a community of artistic peers.
(ongoing through spring 2024 see HMD’s mindbody site for specific dates or contact office@metdance.org)
$20 pre-registered/ $22 Walk up
This weekly class is open to all bodies that want to move, remember, and listen.
Intention is to share an interdisciplinary practice rooted in traditions, practices, and methodologies of improvisation, dance, somatics, performance, preservation, sound composition, garment design, and cooking.
Every Tuesday, we will warm up and attune our bodies – connecting our sensorial experience to memory and imagination. We identify and learn from our individual experiences to source embodiment material that is unique to each of our personal stories.
We will dance together – following where our bodies want to go.
together by talking and practicing using the languages
This will be followed by time and space held for play, practice, and craft. As we build creative relationships with one another, there will be space reserved for collaboration to make multi-dimensional compositions together.
As the facilitator, I am asking
…how can we source familiar rhythms to move caught memory through our bodies with care and attention?
…how can my / your body use memory, sensation, and imagination as ways to enter embodied practices to articulate story, ancestry, and personal truth?
…how can each of us reference our own spectrum of learning? How can we reference any way we have learned to dance?