7:00pm-9:00pm Contact Improvisation with Sarah Konner 

$5

Contact Improvisation is an improvised dance form based on the communication between two moving bodies in physical contact and their combined relationship to gravity and momentum. The practice includes learning to release excess muscular tension and abandon willfulness, in order to experience the natural flow of movement. We will play with rolling, falling, being upside down, following a physical point of contact, supporting and giving weight to a partner. In each class we will dive into a particular physical or somatic concept, learn technical skills to increase our comfort level and safety, and explore how shifting our attention impacts the dances.

This class is designed for beginners and those with experience as there is ample space to determine your own level of challenge. Wear clothes you are comfortable moving in. Sweat pants and tee shirts are recommended over shorts and tank tops as we will be sliding on the floor and each other.

Sarah Konner is a dance artist, improviser, educator, and menstrual cycle activist—interested in the interplay between ecology and somatic arts. Sarah makes and presents her own work (improvisation, set composition, and dance for the camera) and also dances and performs with others including ChavasseDance&Performance, Shura Baryshnikov, Megan Kendzior, Alex| Xan: The Median Movement, Headlong Dance Theater, Olive Prince Dance, and a continuing, hopefully lifelong, collaboration with Austin Selden. Her original choreography has been presented by various venues including Judson Church, Dance New Amsterdam, Triskelion Arts, Berkshire Fringe Festival, A.W.A.R.D. Show! Philadelphia, Urban Research Theater Symposium on Masculinity, and the American College Dance Festival National Gala. Sarah spent most of the past year living, working, and dancing at Earthdance Creative Living. Sarah got wrapped up in the practice, beauty, and community of contact improvisation and it continues to feed her (to seemingly-no-end) as a dancer, an artist, and a human being. She is currently working with a contact improvisation performance group, Improv InSight, with Shura Baryshnikov and others, supported by the RISD Museum of Art and Brown University’s initiative, “Thinking the Earth.” Sarah received a BFA in Dance and a BS in Environmental Science from the University of Michigan; has training in Yoga, Pilates, and Body-Mind Centering®; and co-founded the menstrual cycle public education non-profit, Sustainable Cycles (www.SustainableCycles.org).