“Your level of sensitivity has to match your level of risk.”

--Nancy Stark Smith

Listening to the Physics

A five-week Contact Improvisation series in Puna

Five Mondays · 3 hours each week · Puna, Big Island

Contact Improvisation asks us to develop a physical intelligence that is responsive, relaxed, and ready.

In this five-week series, we’ll slow down enough to listen.

Not just to our partner, but to the continual conversation between weight, gravity, momentum, structure, sensation and choice. We’ll explore the subtle information that is available in every moment of the dance, and develop our capacity to respond to what is actually happening rather than rushing toward what we think should happen next.

For those with experience, this is an opportunity to deepen familiar skills and discover new possibilities within them. For those newer to Contact, it offers a grounded introduction to the principles that make the form both exhilarating and sustainable.

We’ll work with floor work, rolling, falling, weight sharing, tone and structural support, pathways through space, listening through touch, and the constantly changing relationship between stability and instability.

And we’ll practice something that can be surprisingly difficult for experienced dancers:

slowing down.

When we slow down, sensation becomes more articulate. We can notice the tiny shifts that precede a larger movement. We can feel when our body is available for more weight, when it needs less, when a pathway is opening, and when a familiar pattern is taking over.

From that increased sensitivity, we can take greater risks with greater choice.

The goal isn’t to become more virtuosic for its own sake. It’s to become more available to the dance.

Each session will include guided explorations, technical and perceptual studies, dancing with partners, and plenty of time to integrate the material through jam.

This is a committed five-week series. Coming each week allows the work to accumulate, relationships to develop, and the questions that emerge in one class to become the starting point for the next.

Come ready to listen, experiment, play, and discover what becomes possible when you give your attention to the physics of the present moment.

5 week commited series. Monday's in November 4-7pm

Carpooling is Essential!

Investment:

Access Rate: $225

Sustainer Rate: $250

Pay-it-forward Rate: $275