ABSTRACT
Contact improvisation is a dance improvisation form based on energy and weight exchange, incorporating elements of aikido, jitterbugging, child’s play, and tumbling. Creator Steve Paxton defines it as “the ideal of active, reflexive, harmonic, spontaneous, mutual forms.” Exploding into popularity with modern dancers in the 1970s, contact “jams” sprang up in dance studios and church basements all over the USA, inviting dancers, friends of dancers, and their children to participate.
