Contact improv

Contact Improvisation Contact Improvisation is a contemporary form of dance in which the dance is created spontaneously by people making physical contact. Like Acroyoga, it can involve creative use of weight sharing and balance, where two or more bodies form a sculptural whole. Like Aikido, a martial art which inspired Contact Improv, the dance emerges...

This picture of a young Merce Cunningham came from a stunning series of photos of Black Mountain College Dance on Mondoblogo. Man, could that guy FLY! We're going to try flying in our heads, with Merce-like imagination and grace, and see what happens.Related posts: practice flying (via the uganda skateboard union)danny macaskill’s bike lesson (setbacks + difficulties + perseverance = mastery)photo of the day: ‘leap into the void’guerrilla dance goes viral in a spanish bankrole model: fast…

Playing with gravity, exploring physics using bodies, finding the limits of attention and expanding them. Contact Improvisation may be a dance of improvising and partnering based on the physics of …

http://youtu.be/9FeSDsmIeHA The first ever performed piece considered contact improvisation was danced by Oberlin College students in 1972. The piece was called Magnesium and was choreographed by Steve Paxton, who started this form of dance.

Experienced practitioners of contact improvisation appear to float through the air and move through the most daring positions with ease. Those new to the form, on the other hand, often feel awkward and impatient. Some dancers hesitate, worried they will hurt their partner by giving them too much weight. Others move too quickly, trying for impressive lifts without laying the proper groundwork. Having spent so much of their training focused on aesthetics, many dancers struggle to stop fixating…

Contact improv history, practice, resources, documentation, community.

Contact dance improvisation session SESC Santos October 2012

(Please note: although these pictures are not from my classes, they very well could be. The practice plays out so similarly!) I recently taught a workshop on Dramatic Improvisation for a Comedy Festival focused on Improvisation and Stand-Up comedy for adults. Mine was the first workshop of the day (a Saturday), and I had anticipated […]