Contact Improvisation is a dance technique that brings together an improvisational mindset with partnering that follows an exchange of weight sharing and support. Evolving out of research in the 1970s led by Steve Paxton and others (Nancy Stark Smith, Lisa Nelson, Nita Little, Daniel Lepkov, Barbara Dilly, Nancy Topf, Mary Fulkerson, and Curt Siddal) Contact Improvisation is now practiced widely across the globe and has evolved in vary different varieties of practice.

Laura has been practicing contact improvisation since 2004.

In her teaching Laura frames contact improvisation as a technical training in contemporary dance (in both improvisation and partnering), a practice of research, and a political perspective. She highlights the important influences of postmodern Avantgarde, Somatics / meditation practices, political protest, and performance.

Classes will regularly visit themes of:

• tuning the haptic / kinaesthetic body
• state changing
• noticing what you notice (tools for training attention)
• listening to the body before you move
• grounding
• functional movement patterning and efficiency
• basic biomechanics (centre of mass / base of support)
• anatomical structures and noticing movement patterns that heighten injury risk
• orienting towards the movement of weight / touch / support / falling as an improvisational landscape
• skills in rolling, falling, and redirecting the fall
• modulation of tone
• spatial orientation and the use of the eyes
• consent
• failure and agency
• and in more advanced classes: mobile support, transitional spaces, composing with states, heightened instability and flow states.

Classes train somatic awareness, an improvisational mind set, moving solo and with others, spherical space and functional use of stability / instability.

Laura also uses CI as an opportunity to reflect on dance as a political practice, one that orients towards being in the world and with others as influenced by the civil rights movement, Queer and Intersectional Feminist Studies, process philosophy, and the more than human perspective.

Laura specializes in training in contact improvisation for professional dancers often teaching in educational institutions or dance company settings but has also been a regular in festivals across Europe. With an interest in the importance of continued research and exchange as part of the practice she has also taken a leadership role as a member and organiser of ECITE (European CI Teachers Exchange), and regular attendee of the teachers meeting at the Freiburg International Contact Festival (2013 – 2018) initiating the Feedback Project (facilitated feedback formats for teachers) with her colleague Otto Akkanan.

She currently facilitates CI classes regularly for:

• Hfmdk Frankfurt (BA Tanz / MaCode)
• Folkwang Universität der Künste (Theaterzentrum)
• P.A.R.T.S school for contemporary dance, Brussels

Leaders in the field who she has studied with and been influence by include:

Peter Bingham, Andrew Hardwood, Chris Aiken, Ray Chung, Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, Karen Nelson, Nita Little, Kieth Hennessy, and Charlie Morrissey.

As well as teachers of improvisation such as: Nina Martin, Meg Stuart, Vera Mantero, Eva Karczag, Jules Beckman, and Jess Curtis.

And practices such as Lisa Nelson’s Tuning Scores, The Underscore, Viewpoints, The Bartenieff Fundamentals, Material for the Spine, and contemplative dance practice.