Biography

PATRICK CROWLEY has been researching the body and movement since 1983 as a dancer, yogi, and bodyworker, and performer. He has taught nationally and internationally at dance centers, yoga centers, organizations, universities, and retreat centers. 

Patrick offers classes and sessions in Contact Improvisation, Underscore, Playback Theatre, contemplative dance, somatics, bodywork, yoga, dance improvisation, chakra healing, anatomy, and ontological coaching.

Patrick Crowley worked closely with Nancy Stark Smith, who was central to the development of Contact Improvisation dance. He started studying with Nancy in 1984 at the Acapella Workshop, Northampton MA. He was studying with Nancy at Naropa Institute during the summer the Underscore formed in 1990. Starting in 2008, he worked closely with Nancy as an assistant to her on several projects, including: January Workshop, Seasonal Underscores, Underscore +/- Group, various Contact Quarterly projects, and Global Underscore, an annual event in which the Underscore is danced simultaneously at 90+ sites around the world;  and Underscore +/- Group, a dance workgroup that Nancy started in 2010. He started Global Underscore site facilitation in 2007 and being a coordinator of Global Underscore in 2017. Patrick have been carrying on the tradition of Nancy's four Seasonal Underscores in Northampton, Massachusetts USA since 2020. 

For 14 years he co-led the Longdance, an outdoor seasonal ritual, including hot sweats, personal process, movement, Playback Theatre, Psychodrama, sacred space, and connecting to nature.

Patrick was certified in bodywork by Sensei Toshiko Phipps, was Nationally Certified in Bodywork in 1993, and is a member of Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals.

Patrick has a background in contemporary dance, Body-Mind Centering®, somatics, vipassana meditation, Playback Theatre, New Dance Technique, Action Theater, mixed-ability dance, martial arts, shamanic studies, Ontological Design/Coaching and leadership development.

He has taught at Yale University, Boston University, Cambridge School of Weston, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Cape Cod Community College, Harvard University, Boston Community Center for the Arts, Dance Complex, Freiburg International Contact Improvisation Festival, Buenos Aires Contact Improvisation Festival, Boston Contact Improvisation Festival, Montreal's ACI Contact Improvisation Festival, Earthdance, Nancy Stark Smith's January Workshop, Dance New England, Wild Life Sanctuary, Blue Guitar Studio, Green Planet, and Yoga Sanctuary. In addition to most of the venues above, he has performed at the Boulder Fringe Festival, A.P.E., Radcliffe College, Helix, and many others. Patrick performed with various companies including: Cirque de Mamdingo Polka, 6 1/2 Project, Zany Angels Dance Theatre Company, and Underscore +/- Group.

Patrick also produced many workshops by wonderful teachers, including Nancy Stark Smith's annual 3-week January Workshop and Joel Gluck's Psolodrama workshops. He has been a consultant on several of Artemis Joukowsky's documentary films, including Defying the Nazis.