Stage 1 (Evening): Monday, November 3 to Thursday, November 6, 2025 / studio at UQAM FRIDAY NOVEMBER 7 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. + jam until 10 p.m./ Jean-Claude-Malépart Center Stage 2 (Morning): Tuesday, November 4 to Friday, November 7, 2025 / Studio at Asthanga Yoga K.J. Holmes
We offer a variety of pricing plans. You are free to choose the one that best suits your budget and availability.
This year, we have the privilege of welcoming K.J. Holmes. She will be in Montreal for the Annual Contact Improvisation Jam and for two intensive workshops.
K.J. Holmes (NY) has been exploring improvisation as a process and performance art since 1981. Trained with Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, and Daniel Lepkoff, she has collaborated with Simone Forti, Lisa Nelson, and numerous international artists. Her work combines dance, theater, voice, and somatic practices (Body-Mind Centering®, Ideokinesis, yoga, singing). A teacher at NYU, Movement Research, and internationally, she has performed in works by Matthew Barney, Miguel Gutierrez, and Xavier Le Roy. She is currently developing Blu/print, an ensemble creation initiated in 2023.
Workshop 1 - For all levels of experience
Monday 3 to Friday 7 November from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Location: UQAM - Room K-S1210
840 Cherrier Street, Montreal - Sherbrooke Metro Note:On Friday evening, we will be changing studios. We’ll be moving to the space where the Montréal Annual Jam will take place, in order to welcome more participants. The class will take place from 7 pm to 9 pm, followed by a jam until 10 pm.
CONTENT "What is my body doing when I am not conscious of it?" - Steve Paxton
This workshop is to honor practices devised by dancer Steve Paxton (1939-2024). We will artfully enter the basic principles of the form of Contact Improvisation which he initiated in 1972, and his Material for the Spine, begun 1986.
"Forms for sensations and sensing" (Steve Paxton) : these classes will offer students the opportunity to deeply enter the basic study of the physics and ecological forces dancers experience as they move in relationship with each other and themselves.
We will engage with the body in spherical space to improvise in solo, duo and with the class as an ensemble. As we deepen into the discipline of practice, we will evolve the process as tools for dancing to witness how we make sense of being HERE. Playing with the chronosphere and spirals of time, space and weight, we will explore what Steve has said: “Dance is the art of taking place. Improvisation finds those places.”
Sources will include several of Steve’s writings as well as what we discover in our practices together in this living art form.
Workshop 2 - From CI to performance
Tuesday, November 4 - Friday, November 7 | 9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Location: Ashtanga Yoga Studio 118 (1st fl.)
372 Ste-Catherine O, Montreal - Place-des-Arts Metro Station
CONTENT "Fall… and Fall again better. – Theater of the body: from CI to performance"
This workshop is intended for those wishing to go beyond regular practice toward composition and performance.
A passage from the somatic to the poetic, from improvised contact to shared creation.
✨ Performance evening on Saturday Sharing of the work explored during the week.
Paraphrasing a quote from playwright Samuel Beckett, this workshop will deepen one’s relationship to the Soma through practicing contact improvisation into performance, Soma (as in Somatics) in Latin means the body. In Sanskrit, it is the nectar of the Gods. Where we meet is in the play between the facts and the fictions. This is the location of our great imaginations.
This workshop will be an entrance into physiological and poetic character/qualities of the bodymind going from practice to performance. Traveling from the physics of the body moving in relationship to earthly forces and others to actively witnessing each other, we will create a dance that will further our experience of contact improvisation into an expression of our humanity.
How do we see ourselves seeing being seen?
Biography
K.J. Holmes : has been practicing Improvisational forms as process and performance since 1981. These practices have deeply informed her journey as an independent dance artist as well as an actor, vocalist, writer and teacher. An avid improviser and creator of solo/duo and ensemble work, she has studied with the early pioneers of contact improvisation including Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith and Daniel Lepkoff, has collaborated and led work with and of Simone Forti and Troupe, and was a member of Image Lab performing the Tuning Score of Lisa Nelson. Other collaborators include poets Julie Carr and Edwin Torres, dancer Karen Nelson, drummer Jeremy Carlstedt, trumpeter Roy Campbell, Jr., actor Keith Biesack, and the Feel Trio (violinist Ramsey Ameen and poet/writer Fred Moten).
Her influences include Body Mind Centering ® and the work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Ideokinesis with Andre Bernard, Meisner acting work with Terry Knickerbocker, voice and singing with Richard Armstrong, Barbara Maier Gustern and Samita Singha, among others. K.J. is a certified Yoga teacher through her studies with Sondra Loring, and a certified Ayurvedic Holistic Health Counselor through her studies with Dr. Naina Marballi.
She teatches at NYU/Experimental Theatre Wing and Movement Research in NYC, as well as traveling nationally and internationally teaching, performing and creating, most recently at the Italy Contact Festival and at TicTac Art Center in Brussels.
K.J. has performed in the work of filmmaker/artist Matthew Barney, dancer/writer Karinne Keithley Seyers, music video of Mitski, Miguel Gutierrez, Xavier Le Roy, among others, as well as developing her own solo and group work.
She is currently conducting a new ensemble piece, Blu/print, that began Fall 2023 with a grant from the New York State Choreographers Initiative through the New York State Dance Force and with the mentorships of composer/instrumentalist Henry Threadgill.
