IMPORTANT NOTICE - COVID 19
Cancellation of ACI activities. Details: HERE
Underscore/ Compositional Space / Contact Improvisation
This practice, received from Nancy Stark Smith, will be an opportunity to explore the composition of movement and space, the opportunity to feed, contemplate, and create in the present moment. We will witness our research and let the group’s intelligence find its voice and color.
Since 2013, we’ve practiced the Underscore once a month in Montreal.
If you’ve never been to a talk-through of the theory, please contact us before Saturday’s practice.
It will be our pleasure to offer you a talk-through at 2pm on Saturday.
Looking forward to improvising together through the frame of the Underscore!!
May 2014 Montréal Underscore practice by Anasthasia: ICI
The Underscore, has been developed by Nancy Stark Smith since the 1990s and is practiced regularly around the world.
The Underscore serves as a vehicle for incorporating contact improvisation into the larger field of improvised dance.
Photo : Carolyn Lee
Practicing the Underscore regularly allows us to develop greater ease in our spherical space, alone and with others, and also to integrate the kinesthetic aspects of composition into our improvisation. With this score, improvisors become more attuned to the energy within the group, more aware of relationships and composition in the group.
This form allows dancers to understand about twenty phases or states that guide our perceptions within the practice of the "jam. These phases, each bearing a name and a graphic symbol, create a general map for the dancers. In this setting, the dancers are free to create their own movements, their dynamics and their relationships with : themselves, each other, the group, sound the music (if any), and the environment.
The 3-hour practice evolves through a wide range of dynamic states, quite possibly including long periods of subtle, private, and quiet internal activity, as well as other more energetic and interactive periods.
Each Underscore is unique, offering rich human and artistic experiences, and often inspiring for contact improvisation.