You went to your first Contact Improvisation (C.I.) class, or a friend invited you to the weekly jam, and you’re captivated. Or perhaps, you’ve been dancing and investigating for years. What’s next? What discoveries await you in your dance? In 1972, Steve Paxton convened a group of athletes and dancers to research the principles of Contact Improvisation. Since then the form has matured into a worldwide, collaborative experiment with no central control. Everyone who enters adds their findings and permutations to this inherently unfinished dance form. Dancing Deeper Still is a sourcebook of essays on Contact Improvisation, a philosophical treatise, and a handbook. This compilation of 30 years of writings is meant to accompany and support your investigation as you discover new pathways and dynamics in your dancing. It includes chapters on: Contact Improvisation in performance Boundaries and sexuality Political activism Dancing while aging Expanded teaching research notes Advanced skills Whether you are the improviser who savors the slow rivers of sensation...or who delights in spontaneous acrobatics...or any of the bountiful realms in between, this book was written for you. Your discoveries enrich the community-held body of knowledge in our ever-evolving form. I invite you to dance deeper still. Martin Keogh dances, teaches, and researches Contact Improvisation. His love for the dance has taken him to 31 countries across six continents. Keogh was named a Fulbright Senior Specialist for his contribution to the development of the form. Martin spent time in monasteries in Japan and Korea and was the director of the Empty Gate Zen Center in Berkeley, CA before he discovered the world of dance. He is the author of: As Much Time as it Takes and the anthology: Hope Beneath Our Feet: Restoring Our Place in the Natural World. He lives with his family by the Salish Sea in British Columbia. martinkeogh.com

In most forms of dancing, performers carry out their steps with a distance that keeps them from colliding with each other. Dancer Steve Paxton in the 1970s considered this distance a territory for investigation. His study of intentional contact resulted in a public performance in 1972 in a Soho gallery, and the name "contact improvisation" was coined for the form of unrehearsed dance he introduced. Rather than copyrighting it, Paxton allowed it to evolve and spread. In this book the author draws upon her own experience and research to explain the art of contact improvisation, in which dance partners propel movement by physical contact. They roll, fall, spiral, leap, and slip along the contours and momentum of moving bodies. The text begins with a history, then describes the elements that define this form of dance. Subsequent chapters explore how contact improvisation relates to self and identity; how class, race, gender, culture and physiology influence dance; how dance promotes connection in a culture of isolation; and how it relates to the concept of community. The final chapter is a collection of exercises explained in the words of teachers from across the United States and abroad. Appendix A describes how to set up and maintain a weekly jam; Appendix B details recommended reading, videos and Web sites. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

A conceptual framework for understanding the development of improvised dance in late 20th-century America

"Caught falling is the inside-out of Nancy Stark Smith's life through the kaleidoscope of the dance form contact improvisation. The books itself is a multifaceted crystal-fourteen years in the making." -- blurb.

Memoir & teaching handbook of dance movement practices

In Sharing the Dance, Cynthia Novack considers the development of contact improvisation within its web of historical, social, and cultural contexts. This book examines the ways contact improvisers (and their surrounding communities) encode sexuality, spontaneity, and gender roles, as well as concepts of the self and society in their dancing. While focusing on the changing practice of contact improvisation through two decades of social transformation, Novack’s work incorporates the history of rock dancing and disco, the modern and experimental dance movements of Merce Cunningham, Anna Halprin, and Judson Church, among others, and a variety of other physical activities, such as martial arts, aerobics, and wrestling.

The popularity and profile of African dance have exploded across the African diaspora in the last fifty years. Hot Feet and Social Change presents traditionalists, neo-traditionalists, and contemporary artists, teachers, and scholars telling some of the thousands of stories lived and learned by people in the field. Concentrating on eight major cities in the United States, the essays challenges myths about African dance while demonstrating its power to awaken identity, self-worth, and community respect. These voices of experience share personal accounts of living African traditions, their first encounters with and ultimate embrace of dance, and what teaching African-based dance has meant to them and their communities. Throughout, the editors alert readers to established and ongoing research, and provide links to critical contributions by African and Caribbean dance experts. Contributors: Ausettua Amor Amenkum, Abby Carlozzo, Steven Cornelius, Yvonne Daniel, Charles “Chuck” Davis, Esailama G. A. Diouf, Indira Etwaroo, Habib Iddrisu, Julie B. Johnson, C. Kemal Nance, Halifu Osumare, Amaniyea Payne, William Serrano-Franklin, and Kariamu Welsh

"A Choreographic Mind began to take shape as I wrote out my thoughts in an attempt to make sense of the wall of difference I encountered on a move to Europe when I was in my forties. My efforts to untangle the assumptions I saw around me necessitated a backward look into the origins of my own assumptions and influences, interior and exterior, nature and nurture. The book begins as I search my childscape for memories that shed light on the first inklings of my choreographic mind, and broadens out to life in the studio and then to the larger world of dance and its potentialities. These essays draw on my own life and experience to create a context for the reader and further the emphasis on what many of my students have termed a zpractical philosophy3 of choreographic thought. It is a subjective account of how dance making brings the maker, and ideally the viewer, to understandings of self and the body?s mind"--Back cover.

“Captivating…equal parts memoir and cultural history, Henry Alford seamlessly interweaves heartwarming and hilarious anecdotes about his deep dive into all things dance” (Misty Copeland, The New York Times Book Review). When Henry Alford wrote about his experience with a Zumba class for The New York Times, little did he realize that it was the start of something much bigger. Dance would grow and take on many roles for Henry: exercise, stress reliever, confidence builder, an excuse to travel, a source of ongoing wonder, and—when he dances with Alzheimer’s patients—even a kind of community service. Tackling a wide range of forms (including ballet, hip-hop, jazz, ballroom, tap, contact improvisation, Zumba, swing), Alford’s grand tour takes us through the works and careers of luminaries ranging from Bob Fosse to George Balanchine, Twyla Tharp to Arthur Murray. Rich in insight and humor, Alford mines both personal experience and fascinating cultural history to offer a witty and ultimately moving portrait of how dance can express all things human. And Then We Danced “is in one sense a celebration of hoofer in all its wonder and variety, from abandon to refinement. But it is also history, investigation, memoir, and even, in its smart, sly way, self-help…very funny, but more, it is joyful—a dance all its own” (Vanity Fair).

"Kids love to move. But how do we harness all that kinetic energy effectively for math learning? In Math on the Move, Malke Rosenfeld shows how pairing math concepts and whole body movement creates opportunities for students to make sense of math in entirely new ways. Malke shares her experience creating dynamic learning environments by: exploring the use of the body as a thinking tool, highlighting mathematical ideas that are usefully explored with a moving body, providing a range of entry points for learning to facilitate a moving math classroom. ..."--Publisher description.