Kinetic sculpture: Waterfall at Co-Creative Practices in Contact Improvisation

I attended a movement and dance workshop with Nita Little teaching at Wainsgate Chapel, Yorkshire on Friday 3 June – Sunday 5 June. We practiced falling and catching a partner in continuos contact. I named this kinetic sculpture: Waterfall.

Continue reading Kinetic sculpture: Waterfall at Co-Creative Practices in Contact Improvisation

Manifesto for Embodiment: a riposte to machine capture

Digital devices – ‘smart phones’, etc – and their infrastructure are machines for capture. Our jewelled-like devices capture us physically, psychologically and socially. The history of digitisation and machine capture is separation of being and body: disembodiment. A response – or riposte – are practices and human relations through embodiment including dance, movement and physical presence.

Continue reading Manifesto for Embodiment: a riposte to machine capture

Jam! Dance session for contact Improvisation, February 2023

In February 2023, Oxford Contact Dance held a dance session for contact improvisation in the dance studio at the Old Fire Station, Oxford. One of the dancers – Marta Wasielewska – who is also photographer, took some wonderful photos – presented here. Thank-you Marta.

Continue reading Jam! Dance session for contact Improvisation, February 2023

Beginning Contact Improvisation, January 2023

I taught a day workshop on 22 January for people beginning contact improvisation. My good friend and dancer Aundre Goddard attended. During the Covid pandemic we’d created dances outside in the park but now ‘post covid’, I could finally introduce Aundre to my favourite dance practice: contact improvisation.

Continue reading Beginning Contact Improvisation, January 2023

Captioning Contact Improvisation 1972

This year 2022, is regarded as the 50th anniversary of contact improvisation. In 1972 there was a performance – recorded on film – at the John Walker gallery in New York City showing contact improvisation. To aid understanding by everyone, I created a set of captions for the film which you can see online and download. The captions are a transcription of the film’s narration by dancer Steve Paxton.

Continue reading Captioning Contact Improvisation 1972

Dancing with Georgica Pettus

Dancer Georgica Pettus and I created movement sequences at the end of June which she set to music with ‘nonsense’ captioning. The result is ambiguous, comic and arresting. The strong graphic elements of the dance space – a dojo (martial arts hall for Aikido), combine with improvised dance practice, and leave us wondering and questioning.

Continue reading Dancing with Georgica Pettus

Corona chaos 2022!

In the winter of 2021, I started to plan for a return to dancing in physical contact (no social distancing) at Oxford Contact Dance. However, a new variant of Covid – the Omicron variant – stopped that. Eventually, I restarted the class and dance sessions for contact improvistion on 29 May 2022 – almost two and half years since the start of the pandemic.

Continue reading Corona chaos 2022!

Remembering Hugo Demartini, artist

On 10 February 2022, I stood in University Parks, Oxford with 100 small sticks and paper slips between my cupped hands. Raising my hands upward, the sticks and paper were lofted into the air. As they were rising they slowed until, for a moment, they were suspended, neither rising nor falling – a cloud of sticks before me, about to scatter and return earthward in a shower.

Continue reading Remembering Hugo Demartini, artist