CONTACT, IMPROVISATION, and the UNDERSCORE
A class for experienced contact improvisers designed to open things back up: to refresh, deepen, and refine our dancing in Contact while expanding compositional awareness and integrating CI into the broad, contemporary field of improvised dance and music. Our practice will focus on physical training in CI, detailed listening practice, discussion, and various improvisation structures—all in relation to Nancy’s “Underscore,” a long score for composition/contact/jamming. We will study physical and energetic changes of state, accidental (and deliberate) composition, presence, and relationship. We will do this in groups, solo, in contact, with and without live music. Nancy’s longtime collaborator, composer/improviser Mike Vargas, will contribute his music and his current research.
Documented prior study in intermediate to advanced level Contact Improvisation required—e.g., fluency with falling, rolling, weight taking and giving, being upside down, dancing with disorientation, following a point of contact, working with subtlety (and exertion), and improvising in physical contact.
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