Intensive Workshop & Underscore by
Nancy Stark Smith
Tokyo, Japan
December 5th (Wed.)-December 8th (Sun.)
Venue : Morishita Studio http://www.saison.or.jp/studio/english/index.html
CONTACT AND THE UNDERSCORE:
Embodiment and Collaboration
with Nancy Stark Smith
A workshop for experienced contact improvisers designed to refresh, deepen, and refine their dancing in Contact while expanding compositional awareness and integrating CI into a broader field of improvised dance. Our practice will focus on physical training in CI, listening practice, discussion, and various improvisation structures. Solo, in groups, in and out of contact—we’ll study and enjoy physical and energetic changes in state, natural composition, presence, and relationship. The workshop will culminate in a detailed talk-through and practice of the Underscore—a long score for jamming/contact/improvisation/composition that Nancy has been developing since 1990. (See full Underscore description below.)
Previous experience in the dance form Contact Improvisation is required.
THE UNDERSCORE
a talk and a practice
with Nancy Stark Smith
(Included in the workshop. There may be some places open for other contact improvisers to join just for the Underscore talk and practice, space permitting. IS THIS TRUE? OR IS IT ONLY FOR WKSHOP PEOPLE? LET’S TALK ABOUT THIS.)
The Underscore is a long jamming/contact/improvisation/composition score that Nancy has been developing since the early 1990s as a framework for dance improvisation research and practice. It guides dancers through a series of “changing states”—from solo relaxation and sensitizing to gravity and support, through group circulation and interaction, contact improvisation (CI) engagements, opening out to full group improvisation, and back to rest and reflection.
The Underscore is a vehicle for integrating CI into a broader arena of improvisational practice, for developing greater freedom dancing in spherical space, and for integrating kinesthetic and compositional concerns while improvising.
The 3.5-hour improvisation will include periods of small, quiet internal activity and other times of higher energy and interactive dancing. The 20+ phases of the score—each with a name and a graphic symbol—create a general map for the dancers. Within that frame, they are free to create their own movements, dynamics, and relationships—with themselves, each other, the group, and the environment.
The Underscore talk (required for participation in the practice) will give some background and outline the structure in detail, to be followed the next day by the physical practice itself.
Previous experience with Contact Improvisation and attendance at the talk are required for participation in the Underscore practice.
Schedule
Artist / Teacher
Nancy Stark Smith first trained as an athlete and gymnast, leading her to study and perform modern and postmodern dance in the early 1970s, greatly influenced by the Judson Dance Theater breakthroughs of the 1960s in New York City. Nancy danced in the first performances of Contact Improvisation in 1972 with Steve Paxton and others, and since then has been central to its development as dancer, teacher, performer, writer/publisher, and organizer. She travels extensively throughout the world teaching and performing Contact and other improvised dance work with many favorite dance partners and performance makers including Ray Chung, Julyen Hamilton, Andrew Harwood, Karen Nelson, and musician Mike Vargas. She cofounded Contact Quarterly, an international dance journal, in 1975, which she continues to edit, produce, and publish along with other dance literature.
Nancy’s work and writings are featured in the books Taken By Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader and Composing While Dancing: An Improviser’s Companion. Her first book, Caught Falling: The Confluence of Contact Improvisation, Nancy Stark Smith, and Other Moving Ideas, with David Koteen, was released in 2008. She lives in western Massachusetts.
www.nancystarksmith.com
Venue
MORISHITA STUDIO
3-5-6 Morishita, Koto-ku, Tokyo,
135-0004, Japan
< NEAREST SUBWAY STATION >
*MORISHITA on the Toei Shinjuku or Oedo Line
(Five minutes' walk from Exit A6) 
