What is Contact Improvisation?
Contact Improvisation (often abbreviated CI) is an evolving system of movement initiated in 1972 by American choreographer Steve Paxton that explores movement through shared weight, touch, and physical awareness. The improvised dance form is based on the communication between two moving bodies that are in physical contact and their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern their motion—gravity, momentum, inertia. Unlike traditional partnering in ballet or modern dance, Contact Improvisation has no fixed choreography, steps, or prescribed roles. Instead, dancers engage in spontaneous physical dialogues guided by sensory awareness and reflexes.
The body, in order to open to these sensations, learns to release excess muscular tension and abandon a certain quality of willfulness to experience the natural flow of movement. Practice includes rolling, falling, being upside down, following a physical point of contact, supporting and giving weight to a partner. What distinguishes Contact Improv from other movement forms is its emphasis on interior perception—the dancer’s attention to skeletal alignment, breath, subtle weight shifts, and the kinesthetic conversation happening at the point of contact with another body.
Origins & Lineage
During a Grand Union residency at Oberlin College in January 1972, Steve Paxton made a work for 11 men in which they threw, caught, flung, collided and fell among one another continuously for 10 minutes, called “Magnesium.” Originating in the United States in 1972, contact improvisation was developed by dancer and choreographer Steve Paxton, drawing on influences from modern dance, aikido, and somatic practices. Paxton had trained with Merce Cunningham, José Limón, and in gymnastics, aikido, and tai chi before becoming a founding member of the Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s, an experimental collective that radically questioned what dance could be.
In the Spring of 1972, Steve Paxton received a grant from Change, Inc which allowed him to invite dancers to work on the form he was evolving, inviting some colleagues from the Judson Dance Theater years like Barbara Dilley and Nancy Topf, release technique pioneer Mary Fulkerson, as well as students met during his teaching tours, including Nancy Stark Smith and Curt Siddall (from Oberlin College), Danny Lepkoff and David Woodberry (from the University of Rochester) and Nita Little (from Bennington College). At the end of this residency, the group presented a performance that Paxton named Contact Improvisations, which took the form of a continuous afternoon practice over five days at the John Weber Gallery in Manhattan.
Nancy Stark Smith died on May 1st, 2020, after an extraordinary life as an internationally known dancer, editor, writer, organizer and a collaborating founder of Contact Improvisation; she was in the initial group working with Steve Paxton, along with Nita Little, Daniel Lepkoff, Barbara Dilley, Mary Fulkerson, and Nancy Topf, among others. Although Paxton is credited with inventing, or initiating CI, it was Stark Smith who became the chief educator and organizer. In 1975, Stark Smith founded Contact Newsletter (later Contact Quarterly), an international journal of dance and improvisation, which she continued to co-edit and produce with Lisa Nelson until her death.
In 1975, the dancers working with Steve Paxton considered trademarking the term contact improvisation in order to control the teaching and practice of the dance form for reasons of safety; this idea was rejected in favor of establishing a forum for communication: this became the Contact Newsletter founded by Nancy Stark Smith, which evolved into the bi-annual journal Contact Quarterly.
How Contact Improvisation is Practiced
Contact improvisations are spontaneous physical dialogues that range from stillness to highly energetic exchanges. The practice typically begins with a “small dance”—a solo awareness exercise observing the body’s micro-movements while standing still. Dancers then progress to duets and occasionally larger group configurations, maintaining continuous physical contact as they explore weight-sharing, rolling, spiraling, lifting, and falling.
Key principles of Contact Improvisation include weight sharing—dancers share their weight and balance with each other, allowing for a sense of connection and support—listening and responding—dancers listen to their bodies and their partners, responding to each other’s movements and energy—and trust and communication—dancers build trust through physical contact and communication, allowing for a sense of safety and collaboration.
The root of contact is a study of physics of bodies moving through contact; practitioners create precarious situations and unusual tasks relative to another body and then see how they solve the problems and how their bodies self-organize to survive. The central characteristic of contact improvisation remains a focus on bodily awareness and physical reflexes rather than consciously controlled movements; the “precedence of body experience first, and mindful cognition second, is an essential distinction between Contact Improvisation and other approaches to dance.”
Sessions are called “jams”—informal gatherings where dancers of varying skill levels improvise together, often for several hours. Since the mid-1970s, regular jams are present in most major cities in North America (New York City, Boston, San Francisco, and Montreal), and multi-day residential spaces (such as the Breitenbush Jam, which has existed since 1981) have been in existence since the late 1970s.
Contact Improvisation Today
Contact Improvisation has become a global movement practice. Since its inception, Contact Improvisation has grown in popularity and has influenced the development of contemporary dance practices around the world; the practice has evolved to include a wide range of techniques and approaches, but the core principles of physical connection and improvisation remain central to Contact Improvisation.
Contemporary seekers encounter Contact Improv through weekly jams in urban centers, weekend intensives, multi-week festivals, and training programs at universities and dance conservatories. In 1990, Nancy created the Underscore, a long-form dance improvisation structure that incorporated Contact Improvisation into a broader arena of improvisational dance practice; the Underscore is practiced around the world, including at the Global Underscore in June every year since 2000.
Key texts include Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture by Cynthia J. Novack, Contact Improvisation: An Introduction to a Vitalizing Dance Form by Cheryl Pallant, and Caught Falling: The Confluence of Contact Improvisation, Nancy Stark Smith, and Other Moving Ideas by David Koteen and Nancy Stark Smith. Contact Quarterly remains the primary publication documenting the evolving discourse around the form.
Common Misconceptions
Contact Improvisation is not couples dancing, therapeutic bodywork, or a codified technique with certification requirements. There is no teacher training or certification in contact improvisation; anyone can teach contact improvisation and create their own curriculum and core elements that they feel are important technical skills—this was a conscious choice that Steve Paxton made early on.
While intimate touch is central to the practice, keeping physics as the root of exploration gives practitioners a container that has allowed amazing explorations to evolve that otherwise would likely have never evolved if the relational emotions of touch and proximity had been invested in as the primary explorations. The practice is not fundamentally about emotional expression, performance virtuosity, or spiritual transcendence—though any of these may arise.
Contact Improv does not ignore gender, size, or experience differences but rather provides a structure in which those differences become part of the improvisational investigation. In reflecting on early performances of contact improvisation, Stark Smith recalled people were excited and surprised by its disregard for traditional gender roles employed in dance: women lifting men was radical in the early 1970s.
How to Begin
The most direct entry point is attending a local Contact Improvisation jam. Nancy Stark Smith stated, “Once you get a clear feel for the basic premise, develop a few safety skills, and get your reflexes primed and ready, then you’re off. You learn by doing.” Most jams welcome beginners and include a brief warm-up or introduction.
For those seeking more structured learning, weekend workshops or multi-week courses offer systematic skill development. The Contact Quarterly website (contactquarterly.com) maintains a directory of teachers, jams, and festivals worldwide. Beginners benefit from learning foundational skills like how to fall safely, how to follow a point of contact, and how to give and receive weight without muscular holding.
Reading can support practice: Cynthia Novack’s Sharing the Dance provides cultural and historical context, while the Contact Quarterly archives offer first-person accounts from practitioners across five decades. Video documentation from the early 1970s performances, produced by Videoda and available through various dance archives, shows the form in its nascent stages.