This workshop is a dive into the fabric of touch that is key to our relational practices in the movement of Contact Improvisation – and for many of us, in the living of life itself. The material will be steeped in somatic communication. This adventure into our movement life begins within ourselves, but moves outwardly, to where selfhood refuses to be stable, set and limiting. Instead, its instability is key to its creativity, the play that appears when our relational communication is fluid, movement scores throughout our time will make this connection. We will form and reform what we know as touch, exploring how this touch translates into the flow of movement. We increase the strength of our moving together with the human and the more than human worlds we also are.

Creative, thoughtful, heart based, skill based, our learning will be anchored in the core principles of Contact Improvisation, such as: how to move weight like water – actions of cascading. The details of touching within weight exchange. The rising and hanging of the body – each mode significant to communication. How attention lives in the very small. Extending to form surfaces that arc. Learning to trust the physicality of our extended intelligence that underlies reflexive action. The availability of many forms of temporal engagement. Our movement practices will include lots of dancing both as skills building and exploration, although, in many cases these will be the same thing.

Nita Little is one of the earliest instigators of the Contact Improvisation dance form, investigating alongside her then professor at Bennington College, Steve Paxton.

Questions? Reach out to contact@wildheartcenter.art