The Opposite of Isolation: A contact Improv Workshop!

To register and learn more please contact: Leland@portlandtreehouse.com

All bodies welcome. Hesitant folks extra welcome. Experienced dancers, lean in further. Connect, listen, play, investigate, learn, unlearn.

About this event:

If you have been curious about Contact Improv (CI), this is the perfect time to learn about all the fun and connection it has to offer. Contact Improv is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and all over the world, people are slowly emerging from quarantining to embrace this form of closeness, community, play and physical touch: the OPPOSITE of isolation.

Our afternoon session will focus on fundamentals of CI with a dose of creativity and imagination. Beginners are welcome. Skeptics are wanted! Closeness with others after so much separation can be confronting. We will slowly work into connection from a place of deep listening. Questions will be asked like: how do we increase ease, feel more fluid and create less strain/avoid injuries while moving the point of contact and sharing weight?

Meet your facilitator:

JP Frank (they/them) has been dancing contact improvisation since 2014, and has trained with a diverse group of CI teachers including: Martin Keogh, Paul Singh, Andrew Harwood, Sole Medina, Andrea Scheel, Rosalind Holgate-Smith, Karen Nelson, Cyrus Khambatta, Sergio Palomares, Stu Phillips, Alicia Grayson,  Keith Hennesy and many others.

JP practices CI to recover from the constant navigation of verbal exchange. They revel in how CI rewires our connection to each other, to our own bodies, and to daily movement at large. They facilitate with clarity, creativity and  juicy drops of inquiry all  influenced by a decade of facilitating somatic meditation, trauma-responsive movement trainings, and multiracial community dialogues on power, identity and social change.

Cost: Sliding Scale:

$100: Supporting level: for financially secure: may own multiple assets like car, home, have investments, may have/ will inherited wealth, etc

$65: Sustaining Level: you can meet all of your financial needs with your income sources, might own a car, can rely on others to save money

$45: Access Level: for students, underemployed, others rely on you for material/financial support, etc.

*Please consider the sliding scale above and pay any amount in between $70 and $30*