Jumping Into
Real Dancing with Real People
Sensation + Design Workshop with Karen Nelson
Using post modern dance improvisation inventions including Contact Improvisation, Tuning Scores, Material for the Spine*
Bring your multi-centered self to de-centering and recentering in the off- and on-balance with others. In this intensive, we investigate touch as a multi-layered organ of listening. We will dive into a physical laboratory where the skin, fascia, and bones track real-time forces, training our survival reflexes to become our most reliable safety patterns.
This is an invitation to inhabit a touch-consent-aware, choose-full, empowered space that celebrates the natural virtuosity of a listening body, powered entirely by the goodness of pleasure and passing it on.
All levels welcome
“Tuning Scores” originated by Lisa Nelson, bring awareness of the space in which we are dancing. Our observer selves grow to include consciously communicating image and meaning into our reflex-based CI dancing, so that we can make communal and collaborative choices within our group of dance makers.
Material for the Spine is a somatic movement study and practice created by modern dance pioneer Steve Paxton to explore the physical potential, internal muscles, and skeletal connections of the human back.
Logistics
12.10.2026 11:30 – 17:30
13.10.2026 10:30 – 17:30
14.10.2026 11:30 – 17:00
BIOGRAPHY
Karen Nelson (she/her/chuki) has been a “mutator” of Contact Improvisation (CI) since 1977, collaborating within the lineages of Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson, Nancy Stark Smith, and others. Her lifelong practices center on making performance using Tuning Scores, Contact Improvisation, and Material for the Spine. She co-founded the pioneering mixed-ability experiments DanceAbility (1988) and the Diverse Dance Research Retreat (1991-99), and continues to co-create research in Tuning Score Observatories with Image Lab (since 1991) and Tunezoom (since 2020).
Her ongoing work is fueled by close collaborations with wonderful companions in performance, co-facilitating, and research around the world, including the projects Smaller, Tuning Refresh, One Grey Hair, and Faking it with Gravity. Her teaching and performance work remain deeply rooted in investigating and “re-vers(ion)ing” dominant cultural narratives. *Visit explo.mov.weebly.com for more.info on the work
