Contact Quarterly (CQ) is a contemporary dance magazine established in 1975, with a focus on improvisation and performance. In addition to its periodical publications, the magazine sponsors symposia, workshops, and other programmes to support of contemporary movement arts. It is recognized for its role in supporting the "contact improvisation" dance movement. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Contact Quarterly was launched as Contact Newsletter, during a period when "contact improvisation", a particular type of contemporary dance using improvisation, was a growing trend. It was renamed Contact Quarterly in 1975 and was a regularly published national magazine. It "collected impressions and insight into contact as well as announcements for upcoming events". [5] Early issues of the magazine are valued as educational reading for dancers and dance teachers exploring the roots of the contact improvisation movement and the techniques of its originators. [6] The headquarters of the magazine is in Northampton, Massachusetts. [7]
Bharatanatyam is an Indian classical dance form that originated in India. It is a classical dance form recognized by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, and expresses South Indian religious themes and spiritual ideas, of Hinduism and Jainism.
Choreography is the art or practice of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies in which motion or form or both are specified. Choreography may also refer to the design itself. A choreographer is one who creates choreographies by practising the art of choreography, a process known as choreographing. It most commonly refers to dance choreography.
A performance is an act or process of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function.
Contact improvisation is a form of improvised partner dancing that has been developing internationally since 1972. It involves the exploration of one's body in relationship to others by using the fundamentals of sharing weight, touch, and movement awareness. It has evolved into a broad global community of social dancing around "jams" characterized by their welcoming attitude towards newcomers to dance, as well as seasoned practitioners, and is often found overlapping with ecstatic dance communities.
Dance improvisation is the process of spontaneously creating movement. Development of movement material is facilitated through a variety of creative explorations including body mapping through levels, shape and dynamics schema.
Contemporary dance is a genre of dance performance that developed during the mid-twentieth century and has since grown to become one of the dominant genres for formally trained dancers throughout the world, with particularly strong popularity in the U.S. and Europe. Although originally informed by and borrowing from classical, modern, and jazz styles, it has come to incorporate elements from many styles of dance. Due to its technical similarities, it is often perceived to be closely related to modern dance, ballet, and other classical concert dance styles.
Nancy Stark Smith was an American dancer and founding participant in contact improvisation.
Postmodern dance is a 20th century concert dance form that came into popularity in the early 1960s. While the term "postmodern" took on a different meaning when used to describe dance, the dance form did take inspiration from the ideologies of the wider postmodern movement, which "sought to deflate what it saw as overly pretentious and ultimately self-serving modernist views of art and the artist" and was, more generally, a departure from modernist ideals. Lacking stylistic homogeny, Postmodern dance was discerned mainly by its anti-modern dance sentiments rather than by its dance style. The dance form was a reaction to the compositional and presentational constraints of the preceding generation of modern dance, hailing the use of everyday movement as valid performance art and advocating for unconventional methods of dance composition.
Aerial modern dance is a subgenre of modern dance first recognized in the United States in the 1970s. The choreography incorporates an apparatus that is often attached to the ceiling, allowing performers to explore space in three dimensions. The ability to incorporate vertical, as well as horizontal movement paths, allows for innovations in choreography and movement.
Steven Douglas Paxton was an American experimental dancer and choreographer. His early background was in gymnastics while his later training included three years with Merce Cunningham and a year with José Limón. As a founding member of the Judson Dance Theater, he performed works by Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown. He was a founding member of the experimental group Grand Union and in 1972 named and began to develop the dance form known as Contact Improvisation, a form of dance that utilizes the physical laws of friction, momentum, gravity, and inertia to explore the relationship between dancers.
Simone Forti is an American postmodern artist, dancer, choreographer, and writer. Since the 1950s, she has exhibited, performed, and taught workshops all over the world. Her innovations in Postmodern dance, including her seminal 1961 body of work, Dance Constructions, along with her contribution to the early Fluxus movement, have influenced many notable dancers and artists. Forti first apprenticed with Anna Halprin in the 1950s and has since worked alongside artists and composers Nam June Paik, Steve Paxton, La Monte Young, Trisha Brown, Charlemagne Palestine, Peter Van Riper, Dan Graham, Yoshi Wada, Robert Morris and others. Forti's published books include Handbook in Motion, Angel, and Oh Tongue. She is currently represented by The Box L.A. in Los Angeles, CA, and has works in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Generali Foundation in Vienna, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance which includes dance styles such as ballet, folk, ethnic, religious, and social dancing; and primarily arose out of Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was considered to have been developed as a rejection of, or rebellion against, classical ballet, and also a way to express social concerns like socioeconomic and cultural factors.
Robert Ellis Dunn was an American musician and choreographer who led classes in dance composition, contributing to the birth of the postmodern dance period in the early 1960s in New York City.
DanceAbility International is a dance company that trains inclusive dance teachers worldwide, as well as offering Youth Outreach and education programs, and performances. DanceAbility promotes contemporary dance performance that mixes able and disabled dancers in the same performances. This dance genre is often called "inclusive dance", "MixedAbility" or "physically integrated dance".
Somatics is a field within bodywork and movement studies which emphasizes internal physical perception and experience. The term is used in movement therapy to signify approaches based on the soma, or "the body as perceived from within", including Skinner Releasing Technique, Alexander technique, the Feldenkrais Method, Eutony Gerda Alexander, Rolfing Structural Integration, among others. In dance, the term refers to techniques based on the dancer's internal sensation, in contrast with "performative techniques", such as ballet or modern dance, which emphasize the external observation of movement by an audience. Somatic techniques may be used in bodywork, psychotherapy, dance, or spiritual practices.
Graham technique is a modern dance movement style and pedagogy created by American dancer and choreographer Martha Graham (1894–1991). Graham technique has been called the "cornerstone" of American modern dance, and has been taught worldwide. It is widely regarded as the first codified modern dance technique, and strongly influenced the later techniques of Merce Cunningham, Lester Horton, and Paul Taylor.
In dance, floorwork refers to movements performed on the floor. Floorwork is used extensively in modern dance, particularly Graham technique, Hawkins technique, and breakdancing. Some dance training practices, notably Floor-Barre, consist entirely of floorwork.
Mary O'Donnell Fulkerson (1946–2020) was an American dance teacher and choreographer. Born in the United States, she developed an approach to expressive human movement called 'Anatomical Release Technique' in the US and UK, which has influenced the practice of dance movement therapy, as seen in the clinical work of Bonnie Meekums, postmodern dance, as exemplified by the choreography of Kevin Finnan, and the application of guided meditation and guided imagery, as seen in the psychotherapeutic work of Paul Newham.
Mary Overlie was an American choreographer, dancer, theater artist, professor, author, and the originator of the Six Viewpoints technique for theater and dance. The Six Viewpoints technique is both a philosophical articulation of postmodern performance and a teaching system addressing directing, choreographing, dancing, acting, improvisation, and performance analysis. The Six Viewpoints has been taught in the core curriculum of the Experimental Theater Wing within Tisch School of the Arts at New York University since its inception (1978).
Nina Martin is an American choreographer, dancer, and pedagogue. Originally from Austin, Texas, Martin moved to New York City, where she lived for 17 years. She currently resides in Fort Worth, Texas.