CONTACT @ the DOJO
Contact Improvisation (CI) class & jam
Mixed level, open to beginners and advanced
2025
1st & 3rd Sundays
3:00–6:00 pm
3:00 Class, 4:30 Jam
June 1 Yielding as a Choice
We will begin by mobilizing the joints, both solo and with the assistance of a partner. We will practice unrooting the feet and freeing the legs. We will conceptualize yielding as a choice, and as a gift to our partner so that we might become more suggestible, thus allowing our dances to unfurl in spontaneous and unpredictable ways. We will play with the connection between the hips of one body and the shoulders of another which offers the support to take us into flight.
Gabrielle Revlock is an internationally touring postmodern choreographer with over twenty years of experience in Contact Improvisation. She is a recipient of a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award and holds an MFA in Choreography & Performance from Smith College. While living in New York, she was on faculty at Movement Research, one of the world’s leading laboratories for the investigation of movement-based forms and continues to teach regularly in NYC as well as through the School for Contemporary Dance & Though in Northampton, MA. Additional teaching engagements include CI@50, Philadelphia Dance Projects, DNE Dance Camp, Earthdance, Association Contact Improvisation, and Salt Spring Island Contact Improvisation Festival. As the creator of Restorative Contact, a mindful touch practice, she has been an invited speaker at the Embodiment Conference, Dance & Somatics Conference and Future of CI conference. "Therapeutic Applications of Contact Improvisation," an essay co-authored with Aaron Brandes, will be published in Resistance and Support: Contact Improvisation at 50 edited by Ann Cooper Albright with a release date of December 12, 2024. More at GabrielleRevlock.com
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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 2 Sundays a month.
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 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 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.
January Workshop 2012 © Emily Bowman4:30-6 pm JAM
The jam will be open space to play and practice — with 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