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Chris Aiken has spent the past twenty years investigating the art of dance and improvisation as a performance form. He tours internationally and has collaborated with many noted performers including Kirstie Simson, Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, Andrew Harwood, Philip Hamilton, Peter Jones and Patrick Scully. His work centers around an ongoing investigation into the nature of perception, imagination and soulful expression.
Ray Chung is a performer, teacher, researcher, engineer, and artist who has worked with Contact Improvisation since 1979. He usese Contact Improvisation as part of improvisational performance practice. He integrates other movement forms into his work, including martial arts, body work, and Authentic Movement. He regularly collaborates with dancers, musicians, and other artists, and has worked with Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, Chris Aiken, and Lisa Nelson among others. Ray's work has been featured at numerous national and interntional dance venues and festivals. He resides in Berkeley, CA, when he is not travelling.
Karl Frost has been practicing and performing contact improvisation and interdisciplinary, dance-based performance since the mid 80âs. His physical work is influenced on the one hand by modern release technique and Alexander work, and on the other by his study of martial arts. He is known internationally for his dynamic movement style and for the edge-pushing, experimental nature of his work, both in process and performance. His performance takes the body and the emotionally and physically felt experience as its reference point. His work has been showcased across N and S America, Europe, Australia, and, more recently, in Israel. He is the director of the Dancing Wilderness Project, an ongoing investigation into the interrelationships amongst wilderness experience, body-based creative process, and how we live our lives. [17 Feb 2003]
Alicia Grayson has had a love affair with contact improvisation since 1989. She has taught and performed with a number of partners in various venues in the U.S. and Canada. In addition to the inspiration of many beloved contact teachers and dance partners, her practice and teaching is influenced by her 17 years of yoga practice and her study of authentic movement, body mind centering and pilates. She holds teacher certifications in Kripalu yoga, Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy, Todd Norian's Anusara Style Yoga, Danskinetics and Pilates. She teaches yoga and contact at George Washington and Shenandoah Universities and in Virginia where she lives. [10 Jun 2003]
Andrew de L. Harwood is the artistic director of A Lot Ha Dance. He began practicing Contact in 1975. He travels extensively teaching improvisation, composition and creative process/performance workshops and performing his own work. He danced with the Marie Chouinard and Jean-Pierre Perreault companies and has performed with Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, Chris Aiken, Kirstie Simson John Jasperse, Randy Warshaw & Peter Bingham. He was the winner of the Canada Council's Jacqueline Lemieux award for the year 2000. [17 Feb 2003]
K.J. Holmes is a dancer, singer and poet based in Brooklyn, New York. Her studies in ideokinesis with Andre Bernard in NYV 1980-83 led her to improvisation and new dance techniques. She has performed in the work of Cathy Weis, Margarita Guergue, Ann Carlson, Anne Bogart, Andrew Hardwood, among others. She has taught Contact Improvisation throughout the world at festivals and universities including the Bates Dance Festival, Festival Internacional de Danza in Mexico and Guangdom Modern Dance Academy in China.
Martin Keogh has been teaching and performing Contact Improvisation for over twenty years. He has travelled extensively to monasteries in Japan and Korea, and is the former Director of the Empty Gate Zen Center in Berkeley. He is one of the original members of the Motivity Dance Company, which specializes in aerial dancing on low level trapeze. Martin is cofounder of Spring/Fall Dance Studio and The Dancing Ground, an organization that produces conferences on gender and mythology in Northern California. He has worked with Touchdown Dance USA, an organization that teaches C.I. to the blind and been dance faculty at the National School of Fine Arts in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. When not on tour, Martin dances with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.
Cyrus Khambatta is the Artistic Director of Phffft!, a performance group with whom he has toured both choreographed and improvised work internationally at venues such as The Spoleto Festival (USA), World Expo (Lisbon), Young Choreographers Festival (Caracas), Washington D.C. Improvisation Festival (also a co-curator) and many others. He has given workshops/lectures on improvisation for over ten years at universities and institutions internationally. He has taught/performed with many in the field of improvisation.
Karen Nelson practices dance, performance, and meditation. Her work is dependent on 25 years of study and collaboration with the respective brilliance of Steve Paxton (Contact Improvisation, Material for the Spine, etc.) and Lisa Nelson (perceptual dancing, the Tuning Score, etc.) and numerous other collaborators of research including Daniel Lepkoff, Scott Smith, K.J. Holmes, Nancy Stark Smith, Alito Alessi, and Margit Galanter. Travelling widely for both work and study, as well as dancing with persons of diverse ages and abilitities have also influenced her approach to dance. [18 Mar 2002]
Susan Schell has taught and performed dance throughout the US and abroad. Her work is deeply influenced by her extensive study of Contact Improvisation, Action Theater, Authentic Movement, and child's play which has included collaborative projects with many innovators in the field of improvisational dance. She has been on the faculty of several programs for the study of Authentic Movement, and most recently served on the dance faculty at the University of Maine. She lives with her husband and two sons in Chesterville, Maine. [18 Mar 2002]
Nancy Stark Smith first trained as an athlete and a gymnast, leading her to study and perform modern and post-modern dance in the early 1970s. She danced in the first performance of Contact Improvisation in 1972, and has been centrally involved in its development as dancer, teacher, performer, writer/publisher, and organizer, working with Steve Paxton and other favorite dance partners and performance makers. She has travelled throughout the world teaching and performing Contact and related dance work. In 1975 she co-founded Contact Quarterly, an international dance and improvisation journal that she continues to co-edit and produce. [18 Mar 2002]
Shakti Andrea Smith is a dancer, teacher, and bodyworker inspired by over 15 years of investigations of dance and stillness. She teaches Contact Improvisation, Authentic Movement, Yoga, and Movement for Bodyworkers in the Boston area, at Earthdance, throughout New England and beyond. Other movement influences include Action Theatre, Butoh, being in nature and other pathways to being more fully alive in this moment. She resides at Earthdance. [22 May 2002]
Carolyn Stuart, a devotee of Contact Improvisation since 1983, divides the year between developing C.I. in Mexico, establishing programs for kids with disabilities, creating events in the U.S., teaching internationally, working on a book and the dream of a year-round Contact Improvisation Research Center. For more on the omygod!Exploratorium go to http://contact-improv.com/omygod [18 Apr 2002]
Mark Zemelman just finished teaching a series with props and Contact, at Green Street Studios in Cambridge. He has performed and taught for twelve years across the United States. He holds an M.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University, is a dancer in Wire Monkey Dance Company, and has extensive training in movement, including Contact Improvisation, Body-Mind-Centering, yoga, Action Theater, and modern dance. Mark also teaches at Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, NY, Kripalu yoga Center, Lenox, MA, Karuna Yoga, Northampton, MA, and Simon's Rock College, Great Barrington, MA.
Curator's note: Teacher biographies are listed for internationally, nationally, and regionally known teachers. Normally, a biography may be listed if you have lead a workshop listed on this site at least 200km (120 miles) from your home. In your biography, please list the year something happened ("started in 1983") instead of how long ago ("for 20 years"). This way, you biography does not become out of date a year from now.
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