Noticing the New: Intermediate CI Skills

Poster design: Aya Wilson. Photo: Eryn Rosenthal

Noticing the New:

Intermediate CI Skills

with Eryn Rosenthal & Aya Wilson

Social psychologist Ellen Langer defines mindfulness as “the simple act of actively noticing new things.” In this class, we’ll explore Contact Improvisation (CI) as active noticing lab–a way of exploring finer-tuned, dialogue-based nuances of Contact and Improvisation. We’ll be working on noticing the new, right side up and upside down: building structures for sharpening one’s attunement to gravity, angles, rigor, and curiosity. We’ll also be playing games that integrate CI with compositional awareness and gradients of physical listening. Geared for movers with some experience with contact, from teachers and researchers through intermediate.

Thursdays in February, 7-9pm
Randy Warshaw Studio, 115 Wooster St #2F, Soho, NYC
$20 cash/ Venmo @ door
For scholarship opportunities: rachelkeanedance [at] gmail [dot] com

Teacher Bios:

Eryn Rosenthal is an active member of international Contact Improvisation (CI) research and teacher exchange networks, teaching, performing and facilitating at the Freiburg Festival (Germany), the Market Theatre Lab (South Africa), ECITE (Hungary), Teatro Montealegre (Chile), Gravity Tank (US), and elsewhere since 2003. She is also one of the co-founders of the NYC Underscore. In addition to her work in CI, Eryn is a choreographer, performer and social practice artist, collaborating with artists and activists in South Africa, Spain, US, and most recently in Chile, connected with the estallido social and Constitutional processes. Her work uses Contact Improvisation, installation and interview to examine the inner folds, chords and dischords within socio-political transitions. Her ongoing series The Doors Project investigates transitions–political, social, intimate–through site-based performance in different doorways around the world. Eryn also teaches CI, improvisation and interdisciplinary performance at Yale University, in Dance and Democracy: Movement Improvisation and Liberation Pedagogies, and Making Performance on Socio-Political Questions. She is delighted to be back teaching in New York. www.erynrosenthal.com
Spanish: https://erynrosenthal.com/bio-en-castellano/

Aya Wilson is a dance artist, performer, teacher, and administrator. She was a company member, teacher, and tour manager with Doug Varone and Dancers from 2015 to 2022, and she continues to stage multiple works by Doug Varone at universities, recently at Boston Conservatory and University of the Arts. Aya has danced and collaborated with artists including David Dorfman Dance, Kendra Portier/BANDportier, the A.O. Movement Collective, Mariah Maloney, Nadia Tykulsker, Sarah Council, Tara Aisha Willis, Kensaku Shinohara, and most recently with Amelia Heintzelman and Leah Fournier. Her teaching practice of dance, improvisation, and partnering includes SUNY Purchase, Gibney Dance Center, and Peridance. Hailing from Normal, Illinois, Aya earned her BFA in Dance from the University of Iowa.