CI events, Fall 2014 (part 1)

It’s an exciting time to be a contact improvisation dancer in Northeastern North America. Lots and lots of workshops, classes, jams, and new initiatives are going on. Here’s a tour of some (but I’m sure not all) of them. As always, I’m focused on New York City, but those of you in other places nearby may find this helpful as well.

1. Monday mornings, New York City: Tim O’Donnell continues teaching his Monday morning drop-in classes at 100 Grand Dance, starting September 8. In my opinion, Tim is one of the best of the younger generation of CI teachers, and we’re lucky to have him in New York. See my Contact Improvisation in New York City page for more details.
2. Monday evenings, New York City: Jesse Johnson is teaching two multi-week CI workshop series at 25 First Avenue, 2nd floor. I think Jesse is a particularly good teacher for those new to contact improvisation — she’s tremendously patient, supportive, charismatic, and thoughtful. Her first workshop series titled, “Let It Roll” runs September 15, 22, and 27; her second workshop series titled “Falling to Fly” runs five Mondays, October 20 to November 17. More info on Jesse’s blog.
3. Wednesdays in September, New York City: I’m assisting Elise Knudson in facilitating a four-week lab titled “soloing in duets and trios::a lab in maintaining multiple awarenesses.” It goes from 7pm to 10pm starting September 3 at 100 Grand Dance (2nd floor, buzzer B), and is $20 for the four weeks. It should be a good group, I think, and worth exploring.
4. Thursday, September 18 to Sunday, September 21, Earthdance: Kirstie Simson workshop.
5. Friday, October 10 to Sunday, October 12, Boston: Fall Jam in Boston, with Chris Aiken teaching.
6. Wednesday, October 15 to Sunday, October 19, West Virginia: East Coast Jam.
7. Thursday, October 23 to Sunday, October 26, Earthdance: The Earthdance Falling Leaves Jam, hosted by Alicia Grayson and Jeff Bliss. New this year, Earthdance is offering a Diversity Scholarship to the jam.
8. Monday, November 3 to Friday, November 7, Montreal: Montreal’s annual CI festival, which offers five days of classes immediately preceding…
9. Saturday, November 8 to Sunday, November 9, Montreal: The Montreal annual jam. Happily, this year it’s been moved up from the end of November/beginning of December, removing conflicts with U.S. Thanksgiving and hopefully making things a little warmer as well. One of my favorite jams — good space, fun, physically active dancers, in a city that seems very wondrously exotic to us Americans. Yes, it’s a little shorter than many jams at only two days. Is it worth it to come just for some 16 hours of dancing? Yes it is.

And that takes us through early November. Whew, not bad! There are some additional rumors on workshops in November that haven’t been confirmed, but I’ll post when I know more.