Improvisational Practices + Techniques

Produced by Living Arts Collective , Contact Improvisation and Somatics

Facilitated by: Anna M. Maynard
Duration: 6 Weeks
Format: Experiential seminar + movement laboratory
Course Focus: The study of lived experience through somatic perception, relational awareness, and sustained practice.

  • This 6-week class explores a range of movement improvisation practices that can be applied across disciplines, including dance, performance, and music. Together we will work with improvisational scores, perceptual exercises, and compositional tools that support real-time decision making and responsiveness in practice.

    The focus of the work includes orientation, meaning making, image composition, and the thinking and sensing body within both individual and collective contexts. Through solo and ensemble exploration, students will engage with how movement emerges through attention, relationship, and shared space.

    Participants will develop a set of practical tools, questions, and frameworks that support clarity, curiosity, and intention while improvising.

  • By the end of the course, students will be able to:

    • articulate basic concepts of somatic perception and phenomenological inquiry
    • identify how attention and orientation shape improvisation
    • demonstrate increased capacity for observation and listening in movement contexts
    • recognize energetic and relational dynamics within group environments
    • movement exercises that increase and support dexterity
    • develop an individual practice grounded in sensory awareness

  • Each session includes:

    • arrival and grounding practice
    • guided movement research
    • perceptual exercises (solo, duet, group)
    • performance, observation and reflection
    • discussion

  • Students are asked to:

    • arrive on time and consistently, prepared for physical activity
    • participate in movement and observation exercises
    • maintain a weekly reflective journal
    • engage respectfully in group processes
    • take responsibility for personal physical and emotional limits

    No prior dance experience is required. Commitment to inquiry is essential.

Weekly Outline

Week 1 : Somatics: The Body as a Site of Knowledge
 Felt Sense, turning toward one self
Authentic Movement
Tuning Score

Week 2 : Phenomenology: Experience as It Appears
 Perception and meaning-making
Attention and the shaping of experience
Subjective and relational viewpoints

Week 3 : Orientation: Organizing in Relation to Environment
 Spatial awareness and relational positioning
Listening as receptive attention
Movement as response to context

Week 4 : Energetics and Attunement
 Felt intensity, rhythm, and charge
Interpersonal sensing and group field dynamics
Adaptive relational response

Week 5 : Tone
 Nervous system modulation
Conditions that support sustained awareness
Working with fluctuation and change

Week 6 : Practice: Integration and Application
 Repetition as a tool for perceptual refinement
Articulating personal frameworks of practice
Collective reflection and synthesis

This course is an invitation to study how you are within experience as it unfolds. Through sustained attention, relational awareness, and practice, students develop tools for navigating perception, presence, and embodied learning beyond the classroom.

Week 1 : The Body as a Site of Knowledge

Self awareness, in community

Somatics - an approach to understanding and working with the body through first-person experience. It centers on sensing internal states and movement as they are lived from within, supporting awareness of how sensation, attention, and environment shape action.

Hanna, Thomas. “What is Somatics?” In Bone, Breath and Gesture: Practices of Embodiment, edited by Don Hanlon Johnson, 339–352. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1995.

Focusing - a somatic practice developed by Eugene Gendlin that centers on attending to the “felt sense,” a subtle bodily knowing that forms before clear words or ideas. Through quiet listening and descriptive language, a person stays with this internal edge of experience, supporting awareness, integration, and authentic expression.

Gendlin, Eugene T. Focusing. Bantam Books, 1982.

Authentic Movement - a somatic improvisational practice in which a mover follows internal impulses while being witnessed by another person or group. Often with eyes closed, the mover allows sensation, image, and impulse to guide movement, while the witness supports awareness and reflection within a shared relational container

Adler, Janet. Offering from the Conscious Body: The Discipline of Authentic Movement. Inner Traditions, 2002.

Tuning Scores — an improvisational performance practice developed by Lisa Nelson that uses simple verbal cues, shared attention, and compositional awareness to explore how perception shapes action. Performers work with timing, framing, spatial relationship, and the act of watching as primary materials, allowing movement and structure to emerge through real-time decision-making.

Nelson, Lisa. “Tuning Scores.” In Contact Quarterly Sourcebook: Collected Writings and Graphics from Contact Quarterly Dance Journal, edited by Nancy Stark Smith and Lisa Nelson. Contact Editions, 1997.