CONTACT @ the DOJO
Contact Improvisation (CI) class & jam
Mixed level, open to beginners and advanced
Gabrielle Revlock and Kristin EttingerAikido Dojo, Florence MA 2024
2025
1st & 3rd Sundays
Nov 16 Frieda Kipar Bay
12/7 Patrick Crowley
12/21 Lilianna Kane
3:00–6:00 pm
3:00 Class, 4:30 Jam
Nov 16, 2025: COUNTERBALANCE & CENTRIPETAL FORCES w/ Frieda Kipar Bay
In this class, we will find that moving away from your partner in counterbalance can be as fruitful as moving towards them in a CI dance. Adding dynamism, centripetal forces can carry us to unknown places in the dance, and serve as a metaphor for what happens when we just hang on and enjoy the ride.
Frieda Kipar Bay is a weaver of embodied knowledge. Movement is the primary lens that she uses to experience life, and she works in depth with plant medicine to navigate health and disentangle from oppressive overcultures. She has been a professional performer, teacher and choregrapher since 2001, working with Sara Shelton Mann, Body Cartography, Melecio Estrella, and Scott Wells, among others. In 2008 she began training as an herbalist, botanist, and animal tracker and is a registered clinical herbalist with the AHG. Her practice draws on Daoist Medicine diagnostic practices, Qigong in the Wudang and medical traditions, wild tending and native plant restoration, and somatic experiencing and trauma resolution. The interface between reading the body and reading the landscape deeply informs her work as a traditional medicine practitioner, activist, and artist. Find out more:
www.friedakiparbay.net www.friedakiparbay.substack.com www.elementalvessel.org
CONTACT @ THE DOJO
Once a month, Patrick Crowley teaches the contact improvisation class, and once a month, he curates other teachers, who hold and convey Contact Improvisation with a comprehensive depth. Contact @ the Dojo began in Oct 2021, meeting twice a month on Sundays.
Dojo comes from “Do-”, a variation of Tao/Dao (the way) and “jo” (immersive learning space).
3-4:30 pm CLASS (general description)
A broad range of Contact Improvisation will be explored — states, skills, scores/Underscore, artistic practice, life learnings.
In Contact @ the Dojo, dancers play with movement pathways in contact with a partner — in relationship with weight, gravity, momentum, inertia, and friction. We work with ease and natural tone in our tissues and neurology. We explore rolling, falling, and flying in CI with the safety of the mats as our floor.
The slow and subtle brings us to the big and enthusiastic, and vice versa. Center, perception, integrated body, solo/follow/lead/3rd entity, reflexes, experimentation, readiness, rigor, heart, awareness, and enlivening will all be in the mix.
Please arrive a little early. Most people who come for class stay for the jam.
January Workshop 2012 © Emily Bowman4:30-6 pm JAM
The jam will be open space to play and practice — with some music and possible structure/warm-up.
For those experienced and new to CI, honoring different abilities. ~10–25 people. BIPOC & LGBTQIA+ welcoming. Please come w/ no symptoms: Health safety agreements.
What is Contact Improvisation?
WHERE: Aikido of Northampton
30 N Maple St, #14, Florence, MA 01062
(Park in parking lot to right of building. Come in entrance in parking lot. Go in and upstairs to right.)
Dojo Etiquette:
- Take shoes off outside the door
- Bow to space when entering & exiting.
- Hygiene & what to wear: Bathe that day. Clean feet, cut & filed toenails. Wash or sanitize hands upon entering. Wear pants that are free to move in — no belts. Little/no jewelry, no belt buckles.
Other Info:
- Please come early (5-15 min) to leave enough time (for finding the Dojo, parking, settling in the space, and making payment if you haven’t).
- The Dojo is in the center of Florence: 30 N Maple St, #14, Florence, MA 01062. Upstairs.
- Health safety: come with no symptoms; no exposure to someone with illness in the last 3 days. Health safety agreements
- Here is my approach to CI.
- Be ready. The class can be quite physical and there is a lot input in a number of ways. You may not be able to do everything so you can always modify and/or witness/take breaks.
- Bathrooms are downstairs to right.
Aikido of Northampton Dojo © Emily Bowman