Hi all, Update: this series has been cancelled until further notice. The new Wednesday night lab format is starting tonight, at 100 Grand Dance (Bill Young’s Studio), 100 Grand St., Buzzer B. The lab is moving from a drop-in lab…
Author: richard
I've been dancing contact improvisation since 2003, starting in Los Angeles, California (USA). I love a strict point of contact with weight-sharing, and can spend all day doing nothing.
Square Feet
A few weeks ago, an e-mail from Charlie Halpern-Hamu came my way, wondering what square footage per dancer was allocated for SHIFT: The 2012 New York City Fall Equinox Jam. Charlie was planning for the Ontario Regional Jam coming up…
Earthdance Spring Equinox Jam & Special Deal
Hi all, Chisa who’s on the Earthdance Board and Contact Improvisation Committee asked me to post something on my blog about the upcoming Catherine Lessard workshop and Spring Equinox Jam there. For those of you who don’t know, Earthdance is…
Things to look forward to
A small preview of upcoming posts and articles. There’s a backlog right now, but I hope to get through them soon, or at least start getting some out on a more regular basis. Class notes from two classes taught in…
class recap: 2-hour Musicking to Contact, Contacting to Music, Sun., 2012/12/30, Earthdance (rough)
This was a two-hour class I taught as an offering at the Earthdance New Year’s Jam 2012-2013. The title was “Musicking to Contact, Contacting to Music.” The aim was both to teach contact dancers new ways of relating to music…
What they’re talking about in Europe
There’s all kinds of discussion going on in Europe right now. In the last few months, I’ve hosted two contact dancers visiting from Europe. Both had been to a number of European contact festivals in the last year, and both…
You don’t have to stop moving in table top — be an underdancer
At some point in the way distant past, perhaps in the 1980s, the story goes that Nancy Stark Smith was teaching a workshop in the Bay Area. Maybe it was in San Francisco. I forget all the other details of…
How to land on your feet
One of my favorite contact improvisation tips came from a class taught by Gretchen Spiro. She just slipped it in, and didn’t emphasize it a lot, but I wrote it down and remembered it. It was simply this, although she…
The Circuit
Okay, as far as I know, I’m the only one who calls it “The Circuit.” But every year in the northeastern part of North America, many contact dancers from New England and Quebec follow a well-worn, well-established path through about…
Questions to ask yourself when planning music for a weekend jam
As some of you know, the NYC contact improvisation community recently put on Shift: The Fall 2012 Equinox Jam, the first weekend jam in New York — ever? In planning Shift, we were trying to decide what role music would…