Join Susanna Thaler Drogsvold of Boulder, Colorado for a Friday-Saturday Contact Improv Workshop!
A Snapshot…
When: Introductory Session on Friday, September 15 from 7:00 to 9:00 PM
Deeper Immersion on Saturday, September 16 from 1:00 to 4:00 PM, and 7:00 to 9:00 PM
Where: Lotus Center
Instructor: Susanna Drogsvold See Bio Below
Cost: Friday Session: Sliding scale off $10 to $20
The two Saturday Sessions: Sliding scale of $40 to $60
No prior registration required; Drop-ins are welcome!
For more information write info@LotusCenterSC.org
What is Contact Improv and Why You Should Be Excited!
“Contact Improvisation is a dance form based on the communication between two or more moving bodies that are in physical contact and their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern their motion—gravity, momentum, inertia.”
Nancy Stark Smith
Contact improvisation is a form of dancing that has been developing internationally since 1972. It involves the exploration of one’s body in relationship to others by using the fundamentals of sharing weight, touch, sensation, and movement awareness.
Through touch, we perceive each other, give support, lead and get led, take the weight of another, or transfer our weight to them, we fall and we mitigate the fall, we give the energy to take off and fly. Sometimes Contact Improvisation is like children or puppies playing! It’s fun. It’s a healing dance form practiced all over the world. It’s made up as we go along. All bodies are welcome!
Here’s a bit to know about what we’ll do: Wear comfortable pants and shirt, and bring knee-pads if you can. Martial arts types of cotton knee pads are great. We’ll utilize all surfaces of the body to slide across the floor so you’ll want to stay covered. CI is about responding to impulse and sensation, not replicating what you see. We practice allowing ourselves to fall, release weight, and go with momentum, which might challenge some of the well-practiced ways we interact with others. Even as you learn specific mechanics, like how to give and support weight, come to class with a sense of curiosity and imagination so you’re improvising from the beginning. Nancy Stark Smith, one of the originators of the form and my main teacher of many years, often said “Replace ambition with curiosity “. You can’t force it to happen. The dance is created moment by moment, with your partner, the ground, and gravity. It is NOT about how it looks. As we gain familiarity with these concepts, the addition of music adds a complexity and a wonderful addition to the dance.
Please join me!
About Susanna…
Susanna has been dancing, teaching and performing since she was a child. Growing up in a small isolated rural community, she learned to dance on her own, and was introduced to formal training in college, receiving degrees from the University of South Florida and Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. As a faculty member at Naropa (now Naropa University) from 1979 –1992, she taught contact improvisation, modern dance, ritual theater, contemplative dance, and ran the study-abroad programs in dance/music to both Bali Indonesia, and Nepal. She worked for many years at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, and maintains an appointment with the CU Contemplative Resource Center. Susanna’s approach to dance/movement is as a healing art, and is a big piece of the management of crohn’s disease which she has had since childhood. She has danced her way through raising two children into marvelous adults.
These days, in addition to contact improv jams and ecstatic dance events, Susanna has been singing, songwriting, jamming with musicians, teaching yoga, hiking in the mountain west with her husband, travelling and enjoying the beauty of the world