Nevada City Contact Improv
…dancing with gravity
Practiced within groups of curious individuals, Contact Improvisation (CI) is a unique partner dance form in which shared points of physical contact provide the starting place for interactive movement improvisation. This dance practice explores the skills of falling, rolling, counterbalance, sharing weight, tuning into subtle sensation, and being responsive to partners and surroundings. Typically practiced without music, CI provides a unique space for connection to self and others.
… an unstructured, focused space for people of all skill levels to practice CI. It is an open playground for creating improvised art with our bodies. Dances can include any number of people, each person being sovereign to initiate or exit a dance at any time.
What is a Contact Improv Jam?
Radical Softness: a playful investigation in Contact Improvisation w/ Carmen Serber
April 25-27, 2025
The intention of this workshop is to clear the path toward the bones by softening our bodies all the way into our deepest tissue - the psoas. Psoas is located deep within the center axis, and grows out from the spine. It is a source of power, integrity, safety, and agency. It plays a vital role in the understanding of fluid versus bound core. A fluid core opens a portal to our felt senses and allows for a more direct experience with gravity and velocity that move our bones with ease and delight. There is no separation between muscles, ligaments or joints. We will be looking at our body as a living system, employing biomorphic and embryonic paradigms. When the concept of a mechanical body changes into an experience of a moving river, the questions of how we learn and develop our dance changes dramatically. We will be experiencing the body as a vessel of experimental inquiry and somatic communicator - oscillating between cerebral musings, body poetry and wild physicality in solo, duet, trio and ensemble practice. Expanding our availability in a dance.
We will work on:
Proprioceptively sensing the limitations and pathways of our joints in order to find freedom in motion.
Respecting our skeletal structure and using it to move instead of using muscles unnecessarily.
Toning versatility.
Allowing body (parts) to fall all the time in order to hone in and use momentum.
Rediscovering the fluid nature of the human body. Belonging here.
Tending to the whole, entering the environment of choice, focus, ease and clarity.
*Some previous CI experience is assumed.
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