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Foundations of Contact Improvisation plus mini-jam
with
joanna Stone
December 7 2015, 6:30-8:30pm
SUGGESTED DONATION $8 OR PAY WHAT YOU CAN
Brooklyn Arts Exchange

Class Description
The class will cover the basic ideas and movements associated with CI. It begins with a warm up that explores and expands individual movement skills and opens new possibilities for physical coordination, awareness and energetic responses. It then focuses on exercises that teach the release of weight, contact points between two partners, safe lifting and falling techniques, the relation of the pelvis and body center to contact dance, and the equal give and take between dancers.  The class ends with the commencement of a Contact Improvisation Jam in which the individual skills, physical characteristics, and personality of each dancer are brought to the encounter, and the jam is in the discovery of a dynamic that is not controlled by either individual nor by me, the facilitator/teacher. The jam will then continue for the remainder of the allotted time.


Experience required of participants
This class is open to people of all levels of movement and dance experience. 

Goals for participants
Participants need to come ready to dance with each other, share weight. Bring knee pads if you have them. 

Goals for the teacher
As a teacher I am working on making Contact Improvisation accessible to all dancers and movers. I am working on teaching without being didactic so that students find their own voice and empowerment in my class. I am working on listening to the student and class and allowing for modifications. With that said I am also working on being prepared with knowledge and confidence that I can teach a good class. 

About Joanna
Known for her quirky sense of humor, athleticism, bursts of random energy, and famous one-liners, Joanna Stone has been entertaining audiences since she began dancing and acting in her middle school performance club.  She is a Brooklyn based performer and teaching artist and currently works with Dance to the People as a dancer and writer.  Recently Joanna published a paper with the World Dance Alliance and from that research presented work titled, Evolution is not Anthropocentric with Dance to the People. In Brooklyn she also teaches at Dancewave and has performed with LEIMAY.

​Joanna graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BA in theater and dance.  She holds an MA in dance and a graduate certificate in women’s studies from Texas Woman’s University.  Before settling in Brooklyn Joanna lived in Mexico City and performed and toured the US, Mexico, Cuba, and Ecuador with Contradanza, a dance theater company. She’s a contact improviser and advocates for the integration of non-hierarchal ideas into society. Joanna was the editorial assistant for CONTACT QUARTERLY and has trained with Nancy Stark Smith, Sarah Gamblin, Jordan Fuchs, Chris Aiken, and many more CI teachers. 

about this series
We've asked teachers to bring something that they're working on, something they're intrigued about, to present it to the community and see how can we make it work together. At the end of every class there will be a time to debrief and discuss the material and strategies used to present it.

​This series is a part of the CREATING SPACE Program. Funded in large part by the Lambert Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, the CREATING SPACE Program provides opportunities to support and develop artists of all races, backgrounds, cultures, sexual orientations, gender identities and aesthetic traditions.