Take three classes from one teacher, one class with each teacher, or any combination. The festival is open to all dancers; no experience is necessary. All events are at the new Community Education Center (CEC)/Kumquat Studios and at The Arch in West Philadelphia's cultural area of museums, theaters, restaurants, and shops. For registration and housing information, see below and the Registration Form.

Schedule of Events

Ray Chung is a performer, teacher, researcher, engineer, and artist who has worked with Contact Improvisation since 1979. He usese Contact Improvisation as part of improvisational performance practice. He integrates other movement forms into his work, including martial arts, body work, and Authentic Movement. He regularly collaborates with dancers, musicians, and other artists, and has worked with Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, Chris Aiken, and Lisa Nelson among others. Ray's work has been featured at numerous national and interntional dance venues and festivals. He resides in Berkeley, CA, when he is not travelling.

Nancy Stark Smith first trained as an athlete and a gymnast. This experience lead her to study and perform modern and post-modern dance in the early 1970's, greatly influenced by recent dance breakthroughs by the Judson Dance Theater. She danced in the first Contact Improvisation in 1972 and has been centrally involved in its development as a dancer, teacher, performer, writer, publisher, and organizer. Over the years, she has worked with Steve Paxton and many other favorite dance partners and performance makers. She has travelled extensively throughout the world teaching and performing Contact and related dance work at arts centers, studios, schools, and festivals. In 1975 she co-founded Contact Quarterly international journal of dance and improvisation which she continues to edit and produce.

Karen Nelson has been practicing dance improvisation, contact improvisation, meditation, and performance for over twenty years. She has taught and travelled in Europe, South America, Asia, the United States, and Canada, working with a variety of dancers and performers. She has collaborated for many years with the forerunners Contact Improvisation and perceptual improvisation, including Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson, Nancy Stark Smith, the performance group Image Lab, and many others.

Special guest musician Mike Vargas trained as a classical pianist. His curiousity has lead him through many context and cultures from cocktail lounges to underground clubs on New York's Lower East Side, from the Kennedy Center to nursing homes, from Grimm's fairy tales to Playback Theater. During the last 20 years, he also taught music and improvisation in workshops and colleges, created dance scores for over 50 choreographers, and accompanied dance classes of many kinds across the US. He is currently teaching at the University of Colorado and working with Nancy Stark Smith and Andrea Olsen.

Group Motion is one of Philly's most popular collective dance groups. The Friday night open movement sessions are a community mainstay for over 20 years. Led by director/choreographer/composer Manfred Fishbeck, dancers sway to electronic sounds and acoustic rhythms in an ultimate improvisation. Fischbeck is on the faculty of Philadelphia's University of the Arts. He has been a guest artist, teaching and performing across the USA, Europe, the Caribbean, and South America.

Registration/Fees

To register, please fill in the Registration Form, make a check payable to Philadelphia Dance Projects (memo contact festival) and mail your form and check to:

Philadelphia Dance Projects
c/o Philadanco
9 North Philadanco Way
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Housing

This year, the festival is in University City near the Penn and Drexel campuses. The primary location is CEC/Kumquat Theater at 3500 Lancaster Avenue. Click here for a list of listing hotels and Bed & Breakfasts in University City. The Cornerstone Bed & Breakfast is particularly close to CEC/Kumquat. The four large hotels listed are 5-10 blocks away. This web site also lists restaurants, events, and other information about University City.

You can also stay with local contact improvisers who are hosting visitors from out of town. Please check the box on the registration form and we will contact you the weekend before the festival.

For information, please contact Chris Deephouse, cdeephouse-at-cmu.edu.

Philadelphia contact jams are the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of every month, 3:00 pm - 5:00pm. For more info, click here.

This page is maintained by Chris Deephouse. Many thanks to Peggy Leiby, Ret Turner and the Philadelphia Folk Dance Council for hosting these pages.