Contact Improvisation, The Underscore and Being Ready to Dance

Saturday April 27 and Sunday April 28, 2024

10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Willow Dance Studio

St Werburghs Primary School

Bristol BS2 9US, England

Taught by Juliet Shelley

Organized by Bristol Contact Improvisation Dance

In this workshop, Juliet teaches contact improvisation techniques and skills that will introduce participants to the physical material and vocabulary of Nancy Stark Smith's improvisational score titled “The Underscore.” 

Juliet will also teach ways of how to be fully available in the dancing of Contact Improvisation by actively incorporating seeing and hearing as part of and alongside the physical and sensory information and vocabulary within this form. This practice opens up a wide range of compositional choices and options for the dancer by drawing on an integrated and rich level of resources and responses available in each moment while dancing Contact with a partner.

In the second part of the workshop, Juliet leads participants through the Underscore. Participants can apply the vocabularies from the morning class to practicing and dancing the Underscore. They can learn and experience a specific ensemble framework within which they can dance contact improvisation and they can expand their dancing into deeper practice both through the framework of the Underscore and by accessing and incorporating a wide range choices, flavors and colors into their dancing.

 Early booking before March 1st - £70

Reduced rate - £80

Full rate - £90

Reservation and tickets
Contact: Simon Leach

Juliet Shelley is a dancer, choreographer and performer currently residing in Paris, France. She is also an Alexander technique and Pilates teacher. She has taught contact improvisation since 1987. Her teachers include Nancy Stark Smith, Steve Paxton, Kirstie Simson, Chris Aiken and Martin Keogh. She has delivered courses and workshops in the UK, France, Netherlands, Italy, USA, Malaysia and New Zealand and Australia.

She began contact dancing improvisation in London after graduating from the Laban Center for Movement and Dance in 1983 and continued at the Center for New Dance Development in Amsterdam. She attended the first two European teachers of contact improvisation exchanges in Angers, France and Berlin, Germany and participated in the 25th anniversary of Contact Improvisation in Oberlin, Ohio in 1997.

In 2000 she completed a three-week intensive training with Nancy Stark Smith at Earthdance in the USA and in 2012 she was invited to the Extended Underscore working group with Nancy Stark Smith and Mike Vargas in London, an in-depth practice and study of seven days with around thirty participants.

Juliet Shelley - Motion Being

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