The Opposite of Isolation: Contact Improv Workshop

If you have been curious about Contact Improv (CI), this is the perfect time to learn about all the fun and connection it has to offer. Contact Improv is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and all over the world, people are slowly emerging from quarantining to embrace this form of closeness, community, play and physical touch: the OPPOSITE of isolation.

Plus, we are dancing in Exit Space’s gorgeous new Capitol Hill location. Natural light, wood floors, tons of space.

Session Content

Our morning session from 10am-12:30pm will focus on fundamentals of CI. Beginners are welcome. Skeptics are wanted! Closeness with others after so much separation can be confronting. We will slowly work into connection from a place of deep listening, connecting with our boundaries and desires. Questions will be asked like: how do we increase ease, feel more fluid and create less strain/avoid injuries while moving the point of contact and sharing weight?

Our afternoon session from 1:30-4pm will go a bit deeper. We will explore catching and offering rides from lying to standing, falling to the ground alone and with partners, and maybe we'll get to put it all into practice with some acrobatic play. We'll close with an integrating jam.

Also, some of us will go to Folk Life (free outdoor music festival at Seattle Center) after this and keep jamming into the night! Join us if you aren't too pooped!

COVID info

We will follow any WA state masking guidelines. Masks may be required and if so, this will be communicated in advance of the workshop. Also, you can opt to work with one partner the whole time if you two mutually agree to do so. Please wash your hands thoroughly before starting and after using the bathroom. Do not attend if you are feeling sick or are testing positive for COVID.

Cancellation Info

• Full refunds (minus $10 admin fee) granted if cancellation is made by May 23
• Fee is non-refundable beginning May 24

About the Facilitator: JP Frank

I am a queer, wildly intense and generously tender human who has been dancing contact improvisation since 2014. There are many ways to dance CI and I favor staying varied. Weird, sensual, acrobatic, dramatic. My teachers are a diverse group of CI dancers including: Martin Keogh, Paul Singh, Sole Medina, Andrea Scheel, Rosalind Holgate-Smith, Karen Nelson, Cyrus Khambatta, Sergio Palomares, Stu Phillips, Sasha Bezrodnova, and Alicia Grayson.

I've trained over five-hundred community members to offer trauma-informed, resiliency-based embodied tools in my prior work as program director at Yoga Behind Bars. I'm obsessed with pursuing inclusivity in healing and movement spaces and notice who is in the room, who is not in the room, and who came and then never returned. I am always learning and your feedback is a gift.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

NOD Theater of Exit Space, 1621 12th Avenue, Seattle, United States