Intro to Contact Improvisation

Explore the fundamentals of Contact Improvisation, an open-ended form of dance that embraces the kinesthetic possibilities of bodies moving through contact. In this collaboration between two expert movement practitioners, build skills through exploring principles of weight sharing, embodied listening, and collaborative movement. Each class focuses on a particular skill or principle and moves into a guided practice. While each class in the series builds as a cumulative experience, classes can also be registered for as individual sessions. All levels of experience are welcome.

Where: Creativity Center, 3137 Eastern Ave. Baltimore MD 21224
When: JAN 19, 26 & FEB 2, 9 | 7:00-8:30 PM
Age Range: 16+
Cost: All four classes: $70 standard, $60 members | Single class registration: $20
Materials: None

Instructor Bio

Isa Leal (they/them) is a Latinx performance researcher and scholar who makes participatory performance events that are accessible and occultic. Their work engages with pre-colonized ways of knowing, considering their body as a transmedia activist tool for co-ontological agency. As a movement artist, they feel honored to have had the privilege of performing, studying, and co-inventing with living legends in somatic research led by Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson and regularly train in international residencies. They investigate connection and co-education between communities and write about subjugated epistemologies and BIPOC art-activism as a PhD Candidate in Performance Studies, UC Davis, where they regularly teach Contact Improvisation, Modern Dance, and Acting.

Matthew Williams (they/them) is a Baltimore-based dancer, somatic facilitator, and lifelong student of the body. Their performance practice is inspired by the human body as a site for choice, liberation, and a means to be in relationship with place and community across differences. Matthew is engaged with Western Somatics, choreographic and improvisational movement arts, voice work, and the study of functional anatomy. They are currently a student of Somatic Experiencing and the Axis Syllabus. They are a longtime member and organizer of Move Move Collaborative, an annual movement intensive where artists gather in Baltimore to make a performance by consensus.