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CQ Article Gallery

CQ Article Gallery offers samples from the last 9 years of our print journal on a wide variety of movement ideas and subjects.

special archival collection
Listening Back to Black Dance Artists in CQ 2016 -Jan 2020

In support of the Black Lives Matter movement and protest against systemic police brutality toward Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), we offer this archival collection featuring voices of Black dance artists, teachers, scholars, and activists that have appeared in our print journal in recent years. These articles provide a range of perspectives, particular to the moment of their writing, on the dynamics of Black artistry within white supremacist cultural landscapes and institutions. They offer critical thinking on embodied practice rooted in aesthetics, cultures, and histories of the African diaspora. During this time of deep cultural un-learning, these voices offer models of action against entrenched anti-Black racism through art-making. We urge our readers to translate your reading into action, now, in your community and the world at large.

This collection of 11 articles is available as a single PDF for purchase on our store. All proceeds will be donated to the following organizations: The International Association of Blacks in Dance, New Dance Alliance’s “Black Artists Space to Create,” Black Trans Femmes in the Arts, and Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD). Please note that when viewing the individual articles below, you can also compensate authors for their work directly through the links following their bios.

Move When the Spirit Says Move Contemplative Dance, Witness, and Embodied Testimony by Christopher-Rasheem McMillan What has interested me about religious studies is the way that religion functions as a system that has organized (disciplined, controlled, and marked) the body; dance (modern) has also interested me as yet another system of controlling, punishing, and marking continue...

RELATIONS A Performance Reunion with Tara Aisha Willis, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Ralph Lemon, and Bebe Miller Part family reunion and part-first time encounter, they [Ishmael Houston-Jones, Ralph Lemon, and Bebe Miller] pay homage to their past selves, gesture to the futures of dance that they have inspired, and testify to their present-tense artistry. continue...

Marronage Elaborations on Performance, the Stage, and Staying Alive by Jonathan González Artist Statement: My practice is based in black study and a desire to occupy performance. i use performing as a vehicle to undo, reorient, and blur conceptions of subjectivity, whether as a black subject, or continue...

RIFF TALKing on Identity and Performance with Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Joy Mariama Smith, Sara Smith and Tara Aisha Willis; moderated by Cassie Peterson Cassie Peterson: Why is this conversation around identity and performance important to you? Jaamil Olawale Kosoko : I’m thinking a lot about the power of ideas and their ability to pull people together. I’m thinking about theory continue...

The Black Dancing Body as a Measure of Culture a performative lecture by Brenda Dixon Gottschild This performative lecture was presented as part of Reclamations! Lectures on Black Feminist Performance, curated by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, October 2, 2017. It is excerpted here for CQ . continue...

The Future Has Always Been Black A dancing-word manifesto by Thomas F. DeFrantz/SLIPPAGE At the invitation of choreographer/curator Meg Stuart, I created a six-part text for Tanzkongress 2019 held June 5–10 at the Festspielhaus Hellerau, in Dresden, Germany. TK2019, subtitled A Long Lasting Affair, offered a communal and praxis-based approach to contemporary questions continue...

Her Fishtrap A Poetic Reflection on Paloma McGregor's Building a Better Fishtrap at Brooklyn Arts Exchange by Ni’Ja Whitson Cold jar swings from the ceiling. Coating its translucence interior thick off white spill. A residue memory, and time. continue...

In Unison Writings from the Catalog for The School for the Movement of the Technicolor People by WXPT The School for the Movement of the Technicolor People began with a series of conversations between taisha paggett and artists Rodney McMillian and Cauleen Smith in 2014, with support from Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions curator Robert Couch. They discussed relationships continue...

Notes for a Lecture: Body as Archive Regarding the Persistent Essential Friction of Gesture, Attention, and Memory by Bebe Miller I want to honor my mother. I want to remember my mother's journey as part of the Great Migration north. My mother is how I learned to be invisible and visible when I needed to be. That whole skill set continue...

Technology of the Circle by Onye Ozuzu An Interview by Aretha Aoki Onye Ozuzu’s drop-in class, Technology of the Circle: Satellite-ing, was two hours of subtle surprises unfolding through improvisatory moving, sounding, and storytelling, followed by group discussion with an analytical approach toward “what happened.” At times it felt as though Onye continue...

IWB = IMPROVISING WHILE BLACK writings, INterventions, interruptions, questions by mayfield brooks with interview by Karen Nelson IMPROVISING WHILE BLACK is an interdisciplinary dance project and dance improvisation experiment. The seed for IWB sprouted out of brooks’s personal experience of being racially profiled when driving while black/DWB in San Francisco, California. continue...

Winter/Spring 2020 Vol. 45.1

Throwing the Bouquet: Part One by Nancy Stark Smith Measured on a shelf, the full run of Contact Quarterly ’s print issues—from Vol. 1#1, published in April 1975, through the last issue, Vol. 44#2, Summer/Fall 2019—amounts to a neat 23.75 inches wide. continue...

An Image That's Alive Conversation on the image worlds of Skinner Releasing Technique & Amerta Movement with Sally E. Dean, Margit Galanter, Lily Kiara, and Julie Nathanielsz What do dancers mean when we speak of “image”? What kinds of imaginal experiences—multisensorial, liminal, etc.—arise through our distinct movement practices? In 2017, Sally, Lily, Julie, and I organized and taught a workshop with Suprapto Suryodarmo (Prapto) in North continue... 2 comment(s)

Moving and Thinking with Fascia Interview with Ray Chung on the intersection of fascia and Contact Improvisation training by Kevin O'Connor How do dance artists move with emerging 21st-century biology? What forms of articulation emerge in their practice? The following is an interview I conducted with dancer and educator Ray Chung over email during research for my doctorate thesis called “Interconnective continue... 1 comment(s)

Summer/Fall 2019 Vol. 44.2

Editor Notes by Nancy Stark Smith and Lisa Nelson CQ is changing! Interregnum: Between the Already and the Not Yet, or The Rabbit and the Muffin / Nancy Stark Smith …begin end begin end begin… / Lisa Nelson continue... 2 comment(s)

Queer Contact Improvisation (QCI): Alliance and Disruption Experiences and reflections from the QCI Symposium and Festival Hamburg 2018 by Aramo Olaya and Wiktor Skrzypczak Why is CI important for queer activism? What can queerness contribute to CI practice? CI practice and queer practices can be seen as allies that support each other, but this alliance can’t exist without mutual disruption. For us, continue...

Winter/Spring 2019 Vol. 44.1

Differences Creating a Cultural Shift toward Embedded Access and Artistry plus: an excerpt from The Way You Look (at me) Tonight Accessibility Handbook by Claire Cunningham, Jess Curtis, and Luke Pell The Way You Look (at me) Tonight (2016) is an international co-production by San Francisco/Berlin-based choreographer Jess Curtis and Scottish choreographer Claire Cunningham, in collaboration with UC Berkeley philosopher Alva Noë, dramaturge Luke Pell (UK), video artist Yoann Trellu continue...

How the First Rule Brought #MeToo to Contact Improvisation by Michele Beaulieux A #MeToo disruption occurred at the West Coast Contact Improvisation Jam (wcci-JAM) this year. Twelve people sat in the middle of the dance floor at the Saturday evening jam and told their stories of harassment, assault, marginalization, and invisibility in continue... 4 comment(s)

Summer/Fall 2018 Vol. 43.2

Warrior Body/Open Heart A Dance of Cheongsong’s Immigrant Wives by María Peredo Guzmán Introduction The music sounds Asian although it is not; the dancers have Korean citizenship although they were born somewhere else. Divided in two uneven groups, they slowly move from one gesture to another in a dense ritual attitude. continue... 1 comment(s)

Contact Improvisation Intersections A Question from CQ, and a Round of Responses by Nancy Stark Smith, Keith Hennessy, Ann Cooper Albright, Geneviève Cron-Riger, Daniela Schwartz, Kent Alexander, Zach Arfa, Taja Will, Kathleen Rea, and mayfield brooks "Frictions and Illuminations" by Nancy Stark Smith CQ editors have been talking about the topic of “CI Intersections” for many years, as articles and photos pass by us issue after issue, evidencing an increasing number of CI classes continue...

Winter/Spring 2018 Vol. 43.1

CI (embodied) interrogates its own history by Karen Nelson CI (embodied) interrogates its own history, a 2017 performance event previously called The History of Contact Improvisation through the Body, came to life because of an invitation, an election of a president, an evolving dance form, a roster of continue... 1 comment(s)

Sara Shelton Mann: In the Presence of Action writings orchestrated by Anya Cloud, Karen Schaffman, and Sara Shelton Mann Sara Shelton Mann grew up in rural Tennessee. At age 17, arts, politics, and culture collided for her under one roof at Shorter College in Georgia. “I was just a southern hick running away from the people I grew up continue...

Summer/Fall 2017 Vol. 42.2

Michelle Ellsworth: Performance Engineer essay, interview, and performance texts by Nancy Wozny, Michelle Ellsworth, and Joanna Rotkin When Michelle Ellsworth’s fingers start snapping offstage before she enters the performance space in Preparation for the Obsolescence of the Y Chromosome (her ode to the end of men), I feel my anxiety notch up. I sense trouble ahead, which continue...

Mind-Fucking and Other Uncertainties a dialogue between (philosopher) Romain Bigé & (dance improviser) Charlie Morrissey (and conversely) . . . The stage as laboratory Romain: Your recent piece, Wild Card (2015), with Katye Coe and philosopher Alva Noë, reminds me of one aspect I admire in the first performances of Contact Improvisation (CI): continue...

Winter/Spring 2017 Vol. 42.1

Queering Contact Improvisation Addressing Gender in CI Practice and Community by Kristin Horrigan As a professor of Dance and Gender Studies at Marlboro College in Vermont, I have been researching the intersections of CI and gender for several years and leading workshops on the subject in the U.S. and Europe. In this self continue...

CONJURING THE SPIRIT with Merián Soto and Pedro Alejandro Todos Mis Muertos (All My Dead Ones)(1996) by Merián Soto OUT-FIT: Merián Soto’s decadent defiance in "Todos Mis Muertos" by Pedro Alejandro by Merián Soto and Pedro Alejandro Some dances are gifts. The directives for the dance simply reveal themselves to me. I follow unquestioningly. This was the process of Todos Mis Muertos. In searching for a practice of Day of the Dead traditions, my approach was to continue...

Summer/Fall 2016 Vol. 41.2

Somatics and Political Change Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity by Katja Kolcio As a college professor, I have mostly taught somatic practices in the context of the American college campus. I use movement as a way for students to establish a personal sense of place, a sense of belonging in one’s own continue...

Catching the Fall An interview with Sharon Fridman on Contact Improvisation & Choreography by Romain Bigé Ibiza Contact Festival 2014, August 27. Under the pine trees and the blue sky of the island off the coast of Spain, I had the pleasure of conversing with Sharon Fridman after a workshop he offered to some of the continue...

Winter/Spring 2016 Vol. 41.1

The Practice of Form A class by Ralph Lemon remembered by Aretha Aoki We wrecked the room. continue...

Summer/Fall 2015 Vol. 40.2

White On White by Melinda Buckwalter The Card, White on White Forgetful Snow: three naked white women stand about on a rectangular white shag carpet in a white-walled gallery space illuminated from above by a square of white neon tubes. The audience enters into continue... 1 comment(s)

Winter/Spring 2015 Vol. 40.1

Unsettling Assumptions The trans-queer formalism of devynnemory/beastproductions by devynn emory with Liza Coviello The following is an interview by curator Liza Coviello with choreographer and performer devynn emory. The interview and video documentation of emory's dance works were exhibited at NAPOLEON gallery (Philadelphia, PA) in devynn emory's Personal Public: On Gender Variance in continue...

Why Standing? Steve Paxton talks about how the Stand relates to stage fright and entrainment in Contact Improvisation edited by Karen Nelson Steve talked on two different afternoons during the seven-day Breitenbush Jam in March 2014 in Oregon. To accommodate newcomers, the second talk became a multilayered event, with Steve interrupting a recording of his talk to make comments. Talk 1 continue...

Summer/Fall 2014 Vol. 39.2

Is it Movement or Politics? LNelson prods HIJACK in Kristin Van Loon’s living room Minneapolis, March 2014 Lisa Nelson: What about movement? Or: what is the material of dance? I think we’ll agree it’s movement. What part does it play in your work? I’ve read a lot of mention of your choreographic continue... 1 comment(s)

Winter/Spring 2014 Vol. 39.1

Contact Improvisation: One Experience SK, Rythea Lee, and CQ Last April, I got an email from a woman I had never met before (referred to here as “SK”), asking for advice about how to handle a particularly disturbing experience she had had at a CI festival. Simply stated, it continue...

Terpsichore’s Deck distilled choreographic inspirations by Eliza Larson [click to order deck through CQ] Create a design book—something that will inspire you.* These were the directions that inspired me to create Terpsichore’s Deck. I was in the middle of the last semester of my graduate program in dance; the assign-ment was to write continue...

Winter/Spring 2013 Vol. 38.1

Hold Me Close and Let Me Go by Julia Wallace The dancer lying on top of me suffocates my delicate lungs and crushes my precious ribs. She’s larger than me, thick and big-boned. Her dark, short hair slides between my curled fingers. I cannot get up. I cannot roll continue... 1 comment(s)

Round Pen Scores Dances Informed by Natural Horsemanship by JoAnna Mendl Shaw JoAnna Mendl Shaw has been making site-specific performance works for dancers and horses for over fifteen years. During a guest artist residency at Mount Holyoke College in 1998, she produced a trilogy of works for fifty dancers and six equestrians continue...

Summer/Fall 2012 Vol. 37.2

The Anatomy of Center (excerpt) by Nancy Topf In the pages that follow, Nancy and her student Italica begin a dialogue about the body using images of its physical structures. These images can help us deepen and clarify the way we visualize and sense our structure. We can continue...

Winter/Spring 2012 Vol. 37.1

Post/Contact Seven class descriptions proposing ongoing experiments in dancing and performing under the influence of Contact Improvisation by Keith Hennessy 1. Improvising Contact, Queering Intimacy Dancing with bodies while dancing with questions of improvisation, intimacy, social habits (hegemony), and liberation. Is it true that no one is free unless we’re all free? In this workshop, Queer is a perspective, not an identity; an continue...

WHAMMO (ZOOM IN) by Susan Rethorst There’s nothing in the world like the feeling of being in the studio, working along, and whammo! Something starts to take off, to go wowowowow, juice up. But it doesn’t happen right at the get-go, and it doesn’t happen all continue...

Annual 2011 Vol. 36.1

Contact Improvisation: A Question by Daniel Lepkoff Author’s Note: In June 2008 at CI36--a celebration of the 36th anniversary of Contact Improvisation--I sat on a Founders Panel together with Nita Little, Steve Paxton, and Nancy Stark Smith. I don’t consider myself a founder of Contact continue... 1 comment(s)

About Performance and the Making of Improvised Pieces A Further Conversation with Julyen Hamilton [Excerpt] Interview with Nancy Stark Smith, Part 2. Dec. 22 & 27, 2009; Jan. 30, 2010 JH: I suppose I want my performances to shed light on human beings--about their concerns, their emotions, and their observations. I think it stems from the fact that I basically come from theatre, which was my introduction to the stage continue...

Fall 1990 Vol. 15.3

Releasing Dance Interview with Joan Skinner by Stephanie Skura STEPHANIE SKURA: When I first asked you if you had ever considered writing about your work, you said, "It's really hard for me to write because the work is more like poetry than science." To me, that is an important continue...

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dance &improvisationjournal

a vehicle for moving ideassince 1975

Contact
Quarterly

dance &
improvisation
journal