Long Beach Contact Improvisation Festival
Join us for a 5-day celebration of Contact Improvisation in sunny Long Beach!
Enjoy classes & jams with world class teachers from California and across the country.
January 16-20, 2025 on the beautiful California State University Long Beach campus.
Registration will open in fall 2024. Descriptions below are for the previous festival.
Shira Yaziv (Oakland)
Trios and More!
Will focus on refining techniques and principles that enhance your ability to work with complex scores, allowing for better tracking, weight sharing, and lifts beyond the traditional duet format.
Mihyun Lee (San Francisco)
Therapeutic Use of Contact Improvisation
Do you experience patterns of discomfort in interpersonal relationships and/or setting boundaries? Let's explore how a therapeutic approach to contact improvisation can offer something supporting interpersonal relationships.
Rebecca Bryant (Long Beach)
Prioritizing Consent
We’ll define and discuss the nature of consent, then enact approaches that increase both agency in giving consent and comfort receiving (or NOT receiving) consent, so we can open up our dancing to freedom on equal footing.
Hallie Dalsimer (Santa Fe, NM)
Reality Surfing: Changing States in CI
If the physics and the relational are the meat and potatoes of contact improv, how are we seasoning the meal? Perhaps with a dash of the imaginal and the theatrical…
Liz Duran Boubion (Oakland)
Leading is Following
Develop the active-passive continuum with an emphasis on sensory awareness with eyes closed or open, researching response time with a partner and incremental weight sharing.
Marie Osterman (Los Angeles)
it's my party, i'll CI if i want to
Explore scores through partnering exercises and ensemble gameplay, drawing on inspiration from the Nancy Stark Smith quote: "being relaxed and alert with a sense of concentration and humor, is generally a useful stance."
Alicia Grayson (Nederland, CO)
Fluid Architecture
In this class we first explore how we can fluidly move our skeletal architecture, and then focus on the moment to moment organizing of our skeletal relationship with our partner to support dancing ease and clarity.
Rashaida Hill (Los Angeles)
Partnering: An Act of Intimacy
Contact Improv is in itself an intimate act of trust, safety, and care. In this class, we will expand upon deepening the connection between improv partners to increase the ease in anticipation, listening, and responding.
Miriam Wolodarski (Berkeley)
Improvisation as/is Contemplation
The core of improvisational dance practice is making use of what we have: dealing with reality as it is. Even as patterns emerge, even as we hone “moves”, we continue to cultivate and prioritize states of wonder and surprise.
Nhu Nguyen (San Diego)
Leaning into Loving Relationship with Rasa
With "rasa" being the Indonesian word for "taste" or "discerning," this practice aims to clarify our boundaries and intentions as well as connecting to our integrity and balance (in all senses of the words).
Land Acknowledgement
CSULB is located on the sacred site of Puvungna. We acknowledge that we are on the land of the Tongva/Gabrieleño and the Acjachemen/Juaneño Nations who have lived and continue to live here. We recognize the Tongva and Acjachemen Nations and their spiritual connection as the first stewards and the traditional caretakers of this land. We thank them for their strength, perseverance and resistance.