It was a fruitful, encouraging, and yet painful weekend at this past Falling Leaves Jam when it comes to diversity. A conversation about diversity revealed many difficult truths about where we’re at as a community in our thinking and actions…
Category: opinion
Martin Keogh & Ray Chung, with commentary
Martin Keogh has posted a old performance of his with Ray Chung on his blog, from the Freiburg Festival about 14 years ago. You may have seen this one before (I have). But now he’s added a DVD commentary track,…
Ten Days in Contact with Buenos Aires, or “The Last Time I Saw Richard…”
This is Richard here. This next post is written by a guest author, Kiera. Kiera is a beginning-ish-but-not-so-beginning contact improvisation dancer who traveled with me to Buenos Aires in mid-August. Together we checked out that city’s CI scene. Without having…
Can you give me some guidelines/suggestions for playing music at jams?
Music can be an incredibly powerful force in a contact improvisation jam. When played poorly it can be distracting, or even dangerous. It can affect your relationship to your partner and detract from physical awarenesses that keep you alert and…
Unicorns, or why this picture moves me
I find this picture, recently posted to the Contact Quarterly Newsletter, surprisingly moving. The reason, I think, is that it’s like seeing a unicorn. It is rare, and beautiful, and mythical. It is something that you never thought you would actually…
In and Out
The Earthdance New Year’s Jam starts today, one of the largest and longest contact jams in North America. It reminds me of the challenges of in and out in the contact improvisation community, particularly at multi-day jams.
What you can do to promote diversity in CI
This is likely the first of many posts about diversity and contact improvisation. It is hopefully no secret to you that contact improvisation dancers are not a particularly diverse group. CI dancers tend to be white, quite educated, coming from…
What is “research”?
What do contact improvisers mean when they talk about doing “research”? Background I think Jess Curtis started my thinking on this. At the teachers’ meeting at the 2010 contactfestival freiburg, Jess suggested that perhaps we use the word “research” too loosely…
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…
Sounding at jams
I often play live music at jams. I’ve done a lot of it, actually; I’ve been improvising on my instrument for contact dancers for over 9 years, and have been an official musician at several large festivals. Something that I’ve…