Join us for an afternoon of fun outdoor movement and touch connection in the South Shore, facilitated by Margaret M. Morris! People of all experience levels and various physical abilities are welcome. Please get in touch with the organizers if you have any accessibility needs or concerns. Masking will be encouraged for those who would like to mask, but is not mandatory.
Contact Improvisation is a fun, healing, and transformative touch based way of moving that is accessible to everyone, whether or not you have a background in dance. Lessons in Contact Improv have not often been offered in historically Black and brown neighborhoods. By offering this event for people who are Black and Indigenous and other people of color, we are changing that!
Ms. Morris has over sixteen years of experience teaching and facilitating dance, somatic practices, and body mechanics. She will be leading the session, and all proceeds will go towards compensation for her facilitation. Participants can pay on a sliding scale from $5-25. Learn more about her work here: https://quantumnegress.love/about
12:00-12:30 Intros, Warm up, Community Agreements
12:30-1:30 Lesson by Margaret M. Morris
BREAK
1:45- Check in, Community Agreements
2:00-3:00 Open jam and closing
To participate in the class or the jam, you need to be present for at least one check-in session, to learn the community agreements. This is for everyone's safety. For now, please refer to the guidelines developed by the Chicago Contact Improv Jam: https://docs.google.com/.../1iYTmQ6w_lvJ7i.../edit...
We look forward to seeing you!
One early definition of contact improvisation reads: "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. 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. ... It is a free play with balance... bringing forth a physical/emotional truth about a shared moment of movement that leaves the participants informed, centered, and enlivened." Read more at https://contactquarterly.com/contact-improvisation/about/
Our gratitude to Andrew Suseno of Parcon Resilience for offering us the resources to start our first two facilitated events! To read more about Andrew's work and one history of BIPOC organizing in contact improv spaces in the US