Sources and Resources about CI

Videos & Online Learning

• REAson d’etre dance’s online academy — Toronto-based teacher Kathleen Rea offers access to an ever-expanding set of teaching videos for a very low subscription price ($5/month or $45/year). I joined, and I think it’s an excellent resource, particularly for novice and intermediate dancers.
  • Video of an entire 50-minute workshop by Rea is available on Vimeo for free courtesy of Jaberi Dance Theater
• Two CI breakdown videos from Matan Levkowich
  • Video 1
  • Video 2
  • In these videos, Levkowich describes what is happening during his dances with a partner. He periodically pauses and slows down the dance videos and marks them up with a drawing tool to provide a deeper understanding of what is happening between the dancers. Very rich.
  • Other useful videos on his YouTube channel include:
    • How to do the perfect pelvis lift in Contact Improv
    • Handstand spiral roll
  • Levkowich offers online courses through his website, the Movement Lab, but they are quite expensive (from around €300 to over €400 ).
• Other videos
  • Contact Improv Foundations, from David Rhein – a playlist of 17 videos, some short and others quite long, demonstrating CI skills and principles
  • Lifting, with Xandy Liberato — a short, clear tutorial on various lifts
  • Point of Contact, with Xandy Liberato — another short, clear tutorial about the point of contact
  • Contact Improv – Introductory Tutorial — a short tutorial by Larry Stephenson (who apparently is from Boulder)
  • Contact Impro – Exercises & Techniques — a playlist created by Rai Cabiró; some videos on the list are more useful than others
  • TedX talks — you won’t learn to dance from them, but they are fun.
    • Life Lessons Learned Through Contact Improvisation, with Gregory Catellier & Kristin O’Neal
    • We Rise and Fall Together, with Nathan Dryden
    • Contact Improvisation: An Intuitive, Non-Verbal and Intimate Dialogue, with Itay Yatuv

Blogs

• The Contact Improvisation Blog — from New York-based teacher Richard Kim. Lots of great information, including up-to-date information about CI happenings in New York City.
• Contact Improv Consent Culture — a blog founded by Kathleen Rea that focuses on issues of consent and boundaries in the CI community. Excellent and important.

Directories

• CI Global Calendar – this aspires to be a central hub that includes listings of CI events and a directory of teachers. Coverage is a bit spotty as of this writing.

Jam Guidelines & Related Material

• Kathleen Rea’s Tip Sheet for Newcomers to CI
• Kathleen Rea’s guidelines for her jam in Toronto — These thoughtful guidelines apparently caused a stir in the CI community in 2017, as Rea explains on her blog.
• Guidelines for Contact Improvisation Study Hall, a workshop & jam series in Chicago led by Kellyn Jackson in collaboration with other Chicago-based teachers.

Writings

• The surprisingly good Wikipedia entry on CI
• Books that I’ve read
  • Caught Falling: The Confluence of Contact Improvisation, Nancy Stark Smith, and Other Moving Ideas, by David Koteen and Nancy Stark Smith
  • Contact Improvisation: An Introduction to a Vitalizing Dance Form, by Cheryl Pallant
  • Contact Improvisation: Moving, Dancing, Interaction, by
    Thomas Kaltenbrunner — hard to find
  • Dancing Deeper Still: The Practice of Contact Improvisation, by Martin Keogh
  • Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture, by Cynthia J. Novack
  • Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance, by Sally Banes — not exclusively about CI
• Books that I have not read
  • Happy Dance: An Experimental Journey to Greater Health and Stability Through Mindful Movement and Contact Improvisation, by Laura Kline – a memoir
  • Resistance and Support: Contact Improvisation @ 50, edited by Ann Cooper Albright
  • …so…Improvisation: a Memoir of Contact Improvisation, a transcription by Thomas Giebink of a talk given by Steve Paxton in 2012