East Side Performing Arts
979 Springdale Road
Suite 815
Austin, Texas
Thursdays 6:45 - 10:00 PM
Class and Jam
$10-20 Sliding Scale for class or jam
$20-30 Sliding Scale for both
Venmo: @scottgregoryarts
IG @austincontact
Contact Improv
-isation Jam
Dressing for a CI class/jam:
1. Coverage
Generally, more coverage is better for dancing CI. Wear long pants and a full shirt covering shoulders, midriff, and your entire back. One reason is because sliding along the floor is one of the most common movements in CI. Any part of the body might need to slide, and bare skin could stick (stopping the motion) or slide painfully, damaging the skin. Another reason is to make it easier to focus on the gravitational relationship between bodies by reducing the sensual activation of touch. It also mitigates the impact of sweat on our dances.
2. Material/Cut
Our clothes should allow a full range of movement and stay properly on our bodies through sliding along the floor, along other people, being inverted, and other surprising demands. There shouldn't be excess fabric hanging where it could tangle in our own limbs or those of other dancers. A little loose is better than skintight, and a little rough is better than slick or slippery clothing. This little bit of extra fabric and friction is helpful when we are engaging in lifts, sloughing, and other movement patterns where we want to create an extended relationship rather than falling off/away immediately.
images courtesy of Institute of the Arts Barcelona (iabarcelona.com)
3. Jewelry/Accessories
Safety requires that we remove any jewelry that is large or loose enough to tangle, catch, or scratch other people/the floor. Small, low-profile earrings and rings are fine, but anything else should be left off the dance floor. Hats, bag, belts, and other accessories should not be worn.
4. Scent
We should arrive at a CI jam clean and unscented. We will be close enough to smell body odors and breath, so it's important to take care before the event to keep it mild. Cologne, perfume, and some body washes and shampoos are designed to compete with a cacophony of odors in the world. These scents quickly rub off onto other dancers and permeate the air of the space, distracting some, irritating others, and even causing painful headaches for some dancers. Please refrain entirely from having these scents on your body.
Find the studio!
Our studio is on the back (Airport Blvd side) of the building.
Enter the parking lot from Springdale just south of Airport, then drive (slight left) to go back around the building, passing Blackfeather Vintage on your right. As you round the building, there will be trees and an overpass to your left. Keep driving until the parking lot widens out big, and park anywhere.
Look for Ground Floor Theatre and come up the ramp/stairs, then turn right immediately at the top of the ramp. Pass Pilates on your left, and then on the left you'll find Suite 815 on the corner.
Facilitators
Contact Improvisation is an evolving movement form, originated in 1972 through work by Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark-Smith and their collaborators, and since expanded upon by many others. It centers around the communication between two moving bodies that are in physical contact and their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern their motion – gravity, momentum, inertia.
The body, in order to open to these communications, must learn to relax. We cultivate presence to maintain an aware and prepared state towards the flow of movement. Practice includes falling, being upside down, supporting and giving weight to a partner, being very still, rolling around the floor and each other. As we do so, we engage our innate ability to reflexively respond to physical disorientation.
Contact quarterly, an ongoing dance and improvisation journal begun by Nancy Stark Smith, offers many resources and writing about CI. https://contactquarterly.com/
But ultimately the practice is found in how it feels to do it.
As the jam begins, we hold an optional separate tutorial for beginners to cover some safety basics, fundamental concepts, and practical approaches (~20 minutes)
Our full jam guidelines can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/cijamguidelines
We have a guest teacher about once a month. Follow @austincontact for up to date info on lessons.
Scott Gregory (@harmonic_bodies) is a massage therapist, mindfulness teacher, and video artist. He is especially grateful to Liz Ganz for her teaching in a variety of relational mindfulness practices and her own movement explorations Deep Play and beingLoved. He also thanks Brandon Gonzalez, Drea Marz, and Kan Yan for the CI jams and lessons they’ve held in Austin.
Since 2012, he has been tending spaces for community via Authentic Relating, Circling, and Ecstatic Dance containers in Houston, Austin, and Hanoi, Vietnam. He is committed to holding spaces where people can play, surprise themselves, get confused, and grow.
Katherine Lain (@katherine__lain) lives wide between Austin, TX and Athens, GR, and draws inspiration from observing nature and animals, caring for small humans, and swimming in wild places. She has organized and taught at Austin’s weekly CI jam since 2022, and studied/ taught/ performed dance improvisation in the US and internationally.
Nora Gross (@thatss.gross) is a mover, visual artist, chef, and educator who has co-facilitated the Austin Contact Jam since 2024. She has studied CI locally and internationally and weaves a sensitivity with looking at things from a birds eye view: asking the continually renewing question: why are we dancing?