BIG FALL SALE IS OVER! Starting now, we are only selling our digital products. THANKS for your patience while we update this page on our site.
Important Update for our customers:
From now onward, our Store will continue to sell our digital products—books and some back issues—and our full digitized archive of Back Issues will be accessible online early in 2021 when we complete our transition to CQ Resource-Archive Site.
We are finding new distributors for our Contact Editions catalogue of print titles and Kneepads and will provide links here on our website for where you can continue to purchase them. Thanks for your patience.
And thank you for supporting CQ's mission of serving dancers worldwide by buying our products.
CQ Store
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![]() 86 Aspects of Composition
a tool for open-ended creative research
(deck of cards) by Mike Vargas
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![]() BodyStories
A Guide to Experiential Anatomy
by Andrea Olsen in collaboration with Caryn McHose
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![]() Caught Falling
The Confluence of Contact Improvisation, Nancy Stark Smith, and Other Moving Ideas
by David Koteen and Nancy Stark Smith
with a Backwords by Steve Paxton |
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$25 new distributor coming |
Available through author |
Available through HFSbooks |
$33 new distributor coming |
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![]() Contact Improvisation & Body-Mind Centering
A Manual for Teaching & Learning Movement
by Annie Brook
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Available through uwpress |
widely available |
Available through author |
Available through Pengiun... |
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![]() CQ/Contact Improvisation 25th Anniversary Sourcebook
Collected Writings and Graphics from Contact Quarterly dance journal
1975-1992
Eds: Nancy Stark Smith & Lisa Nelson
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![]() CQ/Contact Improvisation Sourcebook, Vol. II
Collected Writings and Graphics from Contact Quarterly dance journal
1992-2007
Eds: Nancy Stark Smith & Lisa Nelson
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![]() CQ/Contact Improvisation Sourcebook, Vol. III
Collected Writings and Graphics from Contact Quarterly dance journal 2008–2018
Eds: Nancy Stark Smith & Lisa Nelson
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$23
Spiral bound (reg. $26)
new distributor coming |
$30 Spiral bound new distributor coming |
$32 Spiral bound new distributor coming $27
PDF (10.9 MB) available NOW
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Available through author |
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![]() Embodied Lives
Reflections on the Influence of Suprapto Suryodarmo and Amerta Movement
Editors: Katya Bloom, Margit Galanter, and Sandra Reeve
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![]() Encounters with Contact
Dancing Contact Improvisation in College
edited by Ann Cooper Albright, et al.
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![]() Handbook in Motion
An Account of an Ongoing Personal Discourse
and Its Manifestations in Dance
by Simone Forti
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Available through Triarchy Press |
$12 new distributor coming |
Available through Contredanse |
$15 new distributor coming |
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$19.95 Spiral bound
$19.95 Perfect bound new distributor coming |
Available through Penguin... |
widely available |
Available through HFSbooks |
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![]() The Place of Dance
A Somatic Guide to Dancing and Dance Making
by Andrea Olsen, with Caryn McHose
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Available through Contredanse |
Available through HFSbooks |
Available through circozero |
Available through Pengiun... |
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![]() Sensing, Feeling, and Action, 3rd ed.
The Experiential Anatomy of Body-Mind Centering®
by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
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Available through author |
Available through UWpress |
Available through sixviewpoints |
Available through HFSbooks |
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Available through author |
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Available through Books on the Move |
Available through Pengiun... |
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![]() Contact Improvisation at 36 (DVD)
Perspectives on the Dance Form in its 36th Year
a documentary film by Nathan Wagoner
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$15 new distributor coming |
Livestreaming at GO/AT |
Available through ZAP |
$60 Indiv. Streaming soon |
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Available through Pengiun... |
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new distributor coming soon!
stay tuned!

Tools for creative research
and play
Terpsichore's Deck
by Eliza Larson
more info
&
86 Aspects of Composition
by Mike Vargas
more info
HOLIDAY OFFER!
BUY BOTH AND GET
$5 OFF
thru Jan. 1st
$44 (reg. $49)
<- productCode="2-creative-decks-of-cards" productCodeId="100322" ->
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Simone Forti in Sleepwalkers (1968/2010), Los Angeles, September 2010. Photo © Jason Underhill.
This selection of five Contact Quarterly back issues, dating between 1984 and 2012, contains seven major articles by and about renowned dance artist, writer, and CQ contributing editor Simone Forti.
Through essays and drawings, in-depth interviews, and first-hand articles about Forti’s practices and teaching methods, readers can trace three decades of her thought and evolution as an artist. Forti’s voice, written from the body, is singular in its clarity and full of surprise.
In addition to Forti's writings, each journal contains myriad writings from others working in the field at that time.

BUY YOUR COLLECTION NOW, as these beautifully illustrated in-print journals will soon become collector's items.
(reg. )
<- productCode="back-issue-bundle-forti" productCodeId="100258" ->
LIST OF ARTICLES:
[click on volume #s to see full contents of each issue]
Vol. 9.3 (Fall 1984):
“Full Moves: Thoughts on Dance Behavior” by Simone Forti [7 pgs]
“Movement Research, Inc. and the workshop process of Mary Overlie, Simone Forti, and Ping Chong” by Laurie Lassiter [7 pgs]
Vol. 19.1 (W/S 1994):
“Thoughts on To Be Continued, a sketch of a dance/narrative process” by Simone Forti [9 pgs]
Vol. 26.1 (W/S 2001):
“CI at World Tai Chi Day” by Simone Forti [2 pgs]
“Hearing/Miraculously/Structure: an apprenticeship with Simone Forti in Logomotion” by Carmela Hermann [11 pgs]
Vol. 26.2 (S/F 2001): “Animate Dancing: a practice in dance improvisation” by Simone Forti [8 pgs]
Vol. 37.1 ( W/S 2012):
“Forti On All Fours: a talk with Simone Forti” by Patrick Steffen [6 pgs]
Simone Forti is a dancer, choreographer, and writer. She was a pivotal figure in the Judson Dance Theater community, which revolutionized dance in the 1960s and ‘70s. Over the years, her work has evolved though various approaches: early minimalist dance-constructions, animal movement studies, news animations, land portraits, and, currently, Logomotion—an improvisational dance narrative form in which movement and language spontaneously weave together to explore thoughts and feelings about the world. She performs and teaches worldwide. Forti is the author of Handbook in Motion (1974, 1980), Oh, Tongue (2003), and Unbuttoned Sleeves (2006). She began publishing writings in CQ in 1980 and a full listing of her articles can be found by entering her name in Search.

Steve Paxton in video still from DVD-rom Material for the Spine – A Movement Study, produced by Contredanse, Brussels.
This selection of six Contact Quarterly back issues features writings by innovative dance artist Steve Paxton as well as performance reviews of Paxton’s solo work. Through a voice that is singularly clear, humorous, and ever provocative, in essays, interviews, images, and letters that span 1975 to 2015, Paxton speaks to a wide range of subjects including Contact Improvisation core principles and practices, performance and choreography, perception and sensation.
In addition to the Paxton articles, this collection of journals is chock full of writings, photos, and drawings by vital dance artists and movement practitioners such as: Alito Alessi, Melinda Buckwalter, Kent De Spain, Irene Dowd, devynn emory, Frey Faust, Simone Forti, Anna Halprin, Dieter Heitkamp, Paula Josa-Jones, Deborah Jowitt, Eva Karczag, Martin Keogh, Ralph Lemon, Karen Nelson, Lisa Nelson, Nancy Stark Smith, Nancy Topf, Mike Vargas, Ruth Zaporah, and more.

BUY YOUR COLLECTION NOW, as these beautifully illustrated in-print journals will soon become collector's items.
(reg. )
<- productCode="back-issue-bundle-paxton" productCodeId="100277" ->
LIST OF ARTICLES:
all articles are by Steve Paxton unless otherwise noted
[click on volume #s to see full contents of each issue]
Vol. 16.3 (Fall 1991)
“Helix – Nine Rolls” (6 pgs)
Vol. 20.1 (Winter/Spring 1995)
“Letter to Trisha” (2 pgs)
“The Man in the Box” (2 pgs)
Vol. 26.1 (Winter/Spring 2001)
“Steve Paxton: Extraordinarily Ordinary and Ordinarily Extraordinary”
a performance review by Daniel Lepkoff
with side notes by Paxton (8 pgs)
Vol. 26.2 (Summer/Fall 2001)
“The History and Future of Dance Improvisation” (2 pgs)
Vol. 30.1 (Winter/Spring 2005) CQ: The Early Years 1975-1987
Editor note: “For thirty years” (1 pg)
“Dartington March” (1 pg)
“Is Contact Improvisation a Performance Art?” (1 pg)
“Steve Paxton’s Improvisations” by Jack Anderson (1 pg)
Letters to CQ: “Improvisation Issue?” “What Authority?” (2 pgs)
Vol. 40.1 (Winter/Spring 2015)
“Gifts: Cage, Cunningham, and the Modern Dance Mutants” (3 pgs)
“Why Standing? Steve Paxton talks about how the Stand relates to Stage Fright and Entrainment in Contact Improvisation” (4 pgs)
Steve Paxton has researched the fiction of cultured dance and the "truth" of improvisation for half a century. Born in Phoenix, Arizona, he began training as a gymnast, studied a variety of modern forms (Graham, Limon, and ballet), and Aikido, yoga, and Tai Chi Chuan. He performed with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company 1960-64, and was one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater of the 1960s, the Grand Union of the 1970s, and Touchdown Dance (for the visually impaired, UK) in the '80s. In 1972, he instigated Contact Improvisation, which continues today as an international network of dancers who convene to practice and who publish news and research in the dance and improvisation journal, Contact Quarterly, for which he is a contributing editor.
In 1986, he began work on Material for the Spine and produced a DVD-rom on his approach with Contredanse (Brussels) in 2008. Paxton wrote and co-edited three Contact Improvisation documentaries (distributed by Contact Editions): Peripheral Vision 1975, Chute 1979, and Fall After Newton 1987. A film of his solo, The Goldberg Variations improvised by Steve Paxton, was produced by Walter Verdin and KAAI Theater, Belgium, in 1992.
Paxton received the Vermont Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts (1994) and Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Venice Biennale (2014) and the N.Y. Bessies (2015). His choreography for Quicksand, an opera by Robert Ashley, premiered in N.Y.C. in January, 2016. He lives on a farm in Vermont.
A full listing of Paxton's articles in Contact Quarterly can be found by entering his name in Search.
3-Volume Set

Volume 1 (1975–1992)
Volume 2 (1992–2007)
Volume 3 (2008-2018)
This 3-volume set is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Contact Improvisation (CI). The Sourcebooks offer a multi-voiced history of CI's development through letters, articles, poems, dialogues, reports, photos, and drawings by
a wide range of dedicated practitioners of this unique contemporary dance form.
The best of 43 years of CQ's
CI writings in their original layout.
Volume 1: 260 pp (reg. $26)
Volume 2: 352 pp (reg. $30)
Volume 3: 278 pp (reg. $32)
Contact Editions. 8 1/2 x 11", spiral bound.
NEW!
<- productCode="cq-contact-improvisation-sourcebooks-3-volume-set" productCodeId="100341" ->

New distributor coming soon!
stay tuned!
Perfect for dancing and
all kinds of floor work.
These hard-to-find, high quality,
washable, cotton & felt kneepads
are one size fits all!
Single pair: $15 (reg. $18)
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3 pairs for $45!
(reg. $16/pair)
<- productCode="kneepads-summer-sale" productCodeId="100345" ->
Perfect for dancing and
all kinds of floor work.
These hard-to-find, high quality, washable,
cotton & felt kneepads are
one size fits all!