Contact-Improvisation

This is a workshop open to students with at least a year of solid contact experience. The role of perception, sensation, expression and imagination will be examined. We will challenge the mind's beliefs about space and time and experience the dramatic effects on our bodies and movements. Finding a sense of timelessness in our dancing – a state of consciousness that is aware but not self-conscious. Dancers will be encouraged to explore the outer edge of their physical limits while still attending to the world of sensation, imagination and inspiration.


Instant Instinct

After a releasing and sense-awakening warm-up we enter the rich and instinctive arena of the unknown with an open mind and a curious body. Simple directions and basic structures will help us to harness our intuitive discoveries. We will be encouraged to lower our expectations and accentuate our inventiveness.


Improvisation for Performers

These classes focus on improvisation as a performance art. To me the unique value of improvisation lies in its live spontaneity, its potential to discover something spectacularly dynamic, physical and ''real'' in the instant, that you would never have thought of in a hundred hours of choreographic rehearsal. Improvisation requires a great deal of concentration, presence of mind and body, and abandonment of expectations and ego, all while being watched. It requires accepting that you cannot control everything. Perfection is not the accomplishment of a pre-determined goal, but rather a moment-by-moment process of perception, response and collaboration. The classes will emphasize acute physical presence, intimate yet versatile movement, fullness of breath, personalized performing, open and sharp intention, and, most of all, trust.


Andrew de L. Harwood
Andrew de Lotbinière Harwood is one of North America’s foremost improvisers. He has spent most of the past twenty-eight years investigating the art of dance and improvisation as a performance form. Harwood has danced with the companies of Marie Chouinard, Jean-Pierre Perreault and Jo Lechay and performed with Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, Lisa Nelson and Randy Warshaw among many others.