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Main location, First Street Studio
Class?? NO! LAB
“I started to see how the practice blurs the line between dancing and living, between the studio/theater and wherever one might be. Composition is everywhere, improvisation inevitable, the body a lucky ground, the senses a miraculous natural composer.” -Nancy Stark Smith, CQ Issue Summer/Fall 2006
We’re dancing. We’re living. What keeps bringing you back to contact improvisation?
Friday jam is a lab this week! Let’s practice the form and explore what keeps bringing us back. Together.
Bring your creative connection, expression, curiosities, sensations, uncertainties, and any specific practices, techniques, scores, and patterns you want to play with or let go of.
Listening and grounding will guide us. And Bri and Sam too! Lab starts at 7pm.
Our usual 8pm opening circle and warmup will be fluid and improvised and certainly not at 8! Join for the whole thing to minimize uncertainty.
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This is a weekly Contact Improvisation jam, held in a 1,300 sq ft dance studio in Central Austin every Friday. Sometimes we have lessons, sometimes we have music, and we always have these things:
---Opening Circle to meet each other and go over norms for consent, communication, and taking care of the space. (~10 minutes)
---Open Jam, where you’re invited to witness the dances of others, ask questions, initiate dances with other people, and generally direct your own exploration of whatever it is that Contact Improv has for you. (~75 minutes)
---And a Closing Circle to reflect on what caught our interest about the dance and share dance-related community announcements. (~10 minutes)
We start the jam with a Warm-up to the space, with your body, and with contact with others. (~15 minutes).
Simultaneously with the Warm-up, we have a separate beginner orientation that covers safety basics, basic principles/explorations, and consent/communication. (~15 minutes)
The cost for entry is on a sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds.
Class OR jam -- $10-$20
Class AND jam -- $20-$30
Cash or venmo accepted @scottgregoryarts
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Our full jam guidelines can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/cijamguidelines and we encourage you to check them out before the dance. A few that bear mentioning here:
---All identities, experiences, questions, and perspectives are welcome.
---Please strive to arrive on time. This creates group continuity and a strong container.
---Sexuality in the space has a big impact and we agree not to escalate or build sexual energy when it arises. One of our missions is to reweave touch back into society and we agree to be mindful of the intentions we bring into the dance.
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Something that is easy to move around in without getting tangled up is a basis for safety. Pants are strongly recommended for ease of movement and sliding across the floor.
Don’t wear jeans or other clothes with features like metal rivets, big buttons, etc. If it could snag on someone else or seems liable to hurt another person/the floor given the right circumstances, then go for something simpler (and probably elastic-based.)
No shoes allowed while dancing.
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Contact Improvisation is an evolving movement form, originated in 1972 by Steve Paxton at Oberlin University and since expanded upon by countless others, 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, must learn to release excess muscular tone, hone attention and cultivate presence, and maintain an aware and prepared state towards the flow of movement. Practice includes falling, being upside down, supporting and giving weight to a partner.
Alertness is developed in order to work in an energetic state that hones our innate ability to reflexively respond to physical disorientation.
Here are a couple of videos to show you what it might look like.
Fall After Newton (1987): Official Trailer
Paul Singh/Singh & Dance - Movement Research at the Judson Church - April 15, 2019
Contact quarterly, an ongoing dance and improvisation journal begun by Nancy Stark Smith, offers many resources and writing about CI. https://contactquarterly.com/
But ultimately the practice is found in how it feels to do it.
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Every jam includes invitations and prompting for sharing weight and finding balance with other people, which inherently entails some risk of having to catch yourself from falling.
Participants, especially those of us that dance more vigorously, occasionally experience bumps and bruises. This form is an exploration of momentum and the unknown, and some amount of collision is inevitable. Plan to remain aware of and responsive to your surroundings to create a safer jam for everyone.
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Katherine Lain (she/they) is a queer movement artist, teacher, activist, jam facilitator, and massage therapist. She practices improvisation to expand choices in the moment, cultivate curiosity over perfectionism, and find ways to queerly negotiate ever-changing and unstable terrain with greater love and capacity. Passionate about exploring the subtle body through movement, Katherine weaves somatics, consent, and practices of risk alongside care into her teaching. They are also interested in ensemble work and group composition as a way to hone collaboration and be in service to the whole. She is indebted to her teachers in contact improvisation, as well as contemporary and postmodern forms, including Ray Chung, Margaret Paek, Deborah Hay, Mark Young, Anya Cloud, and EG Gionfriddo, as well as her years of practice of massage therapy. They are based in Austin, TX (for now) while finishing a degree in Humanities at the University of Texas, and have presented choreographic work at Austin Dance Festival, American College Dance Association, and art galleries in Austin, San Antonio and Chicago. However, her dance works are not always confined to the studio or stage; they are also performed for friends or for the witness of the universe.
Scott Gregory (he/they) is a massage therapist, video artist, activist, mindfulness and communication teacher, and avid Ecstatic Dancer in Austin. He is especially grateful to Liz Ganz for her teaching (that she would have just called “being with”) in a variety of mindful connection practices such as Authentic Relating and Circling, and her own movement explorations Deep Play and beingLoved. He also thanks Brandon Gonzalez, Drea Marz, and Kan Yan for the CI jams and lessons they’ve held. Since 2012, he has been tending spaces for community via Authentic Relating, Circling, and Ecstatic Dance containers in Houston, Austin, and Vietnam. His favorite part is being able to witness people surprise themselves, play, get confused, and grow.
We’re excited to jam with you!
Event Venue
First Street Studio, Dewey Lawns, Austin, TX 78702, United States,Austin, Texas
Tickets
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