HISTORY* -- Contact Jam

• Contact Improvisation is an evolving system of movement initiated in June 1972 by American choreographer Steve Paxton. 
• 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. 
• 17 students and colleagues to participate in the two-week project.
• Steve Paxton, a dancer with a background in tumbling and martial arts, was a member of several modern dance companies in New York in the 1960s, including that of the revolutionary choreographer Merce Cunningham and his longtime collaborator, composer John Cage, a major innovator in musical and artistic thinking.
• Paxton was a prime mover in the groundbreaking performances of the Judson Dance Theater in the mid-1960s in NYC, challenging assumptions about dance and opening up new possibilities for the art form, including what kinds of movement could be considered dance and how dances are made. 
• initial performances can be seen in two documentaries narrated by Paxton, Chute (1979) and Fall After Newton (1987), produced by Videoda.

DONE BY: CI is enjoyed by movers of all kinds—professionally trained dancers, recreational movers, athletes, disabled dancers, old, young. Dancers apply their work with CI to choreography, to dance training, to working with children, seniors, disabled populations, therapy, visual art, music, education, environmental work, and social activism. Many do it just for pleasure and personal development.

Influence: Contact Improvisation's influence can be seen throughout modern and postmodern dance choreography, performance, and dance training worldwide, especially in relationship to partnering and use of weight.

*** June 2014 = 40th birthday of Contact Improv

What is a Contact jam?

Contact Improvisation jams are leaderless practice environments in which dancers practice the dance form with whoever gathers—friends or strangers, old, young, experienced, novice. Some jams take place in a studio for a few hours once a week. Longer retreat jams might last several days, sometimes held in hot springs resorts or other retreat locations where dancers can practice at any hour of the day in the studio/lodge or take a rejuvenating soak or steam in the mineral waters.

http://www.contactquarterly.com/contact-improvisation/about/cq_ciAbout.php