AJ

  • Abbi Jaffe
    • Real Dialogue
    • Contact Improv
    • My Grandmother's Hands Study Groups
    • Somatic Bodywork and Thai massage
    • Trauma Informed
    • Facilitation for Meetings
    • Coaching for Collaboration
    • Yoga
    • Ceremony and Rites of Passage
    • Playback Theater
    • Somatic Education
    • Developmental Movement Lessons
    • Polyvagal Theory Education
    • Nervous System Education
    • Somatics of Digestion Education
    • Speaker
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Contact Improv Lessons

Contact Improvisation is my most important presence and embodiment practice.  From the minute I tried Contact Improv I have devoted my life to doing it in every moment possible.  Luckily, in contact improv, the floor and gravity is your first partner, so practice is always possible.  

Contact Improv grew up next to a form of somatics called Body Mind Centering, and I sought out training in this form of somatics through Somatic Body (a program I helped steward into being) and became a Somatic Body practitioner. These forms inform each other in potent ways.  


Contact Improvisation is dance/sport/art form involving an open-ended exploration of movement by listening with our bodies through a moving point of contact.  It is a meeting point of physics, meditation and playfulness investigated within the body and in dialogue with another.  

In a lesson you could learn:
  • ease of movement as you practice safe ways to share and receive weight;
  • to cultivate awareness and listening with eyes, ears, and skin;
  • to be authentic to your own dance while moving with others  
  • ​to share your center and respond truthfully to the physics of that choice
  • micro-movements and exquisite articulations of your body
  • new movement pathways 
  • to complete movement sequences that were not visited in infancy​
  • how to fall upwards
  • lifting safely, flying and falling with ease

No prior experience required.  Great for individuals, couples or groups.  

“One lesson with AJ opened me up to an embodied play that I didn’t know was possible before. With her guidance, I felt joy and safety in doing new things with my body.” ~N.R. he/him

"I had the great pleasure of working privately with Abbi. As someone who loves dancing but is not comfortable with a lot of contact, I needed to approach the practice of contact improvisation and touch gently. I could not have asked for a more skillful, compassionate and attuned guide. She led me through experiences that opened doors, possibilities, and deepened my connection to myself, to gravity and to other. I walked out of the beautiful Everything Space feeling greater ease, peace and openness." ~Fearn Lickfield, Green Mountain Druid School

"When I came to The Everything Space for an hour-long beginner's lesson in contact improv, I had little idea of what to expect--and a little fear, too. AJ's warmth and presence assuaged those feelings of entering into the unknowns of truly sharing one's weight and center, letting go into pause, letting go into motion, and more. With deep knowledge and feeling, AJ not only communicates through the verbal, but also the language of sensation." ​ ~D.M.

Contact Abbi to sign up for a 30 or 60 
minute lesson.  

Resources to Check Out:
Kathleen Rae's Contact Improv Consent Culture:  Building of consent based culture within which to practice the art of contact dance improvisation
Richard Kim's Contact Improvisation Blog:  Evangelizing, de-mystifying, supporting, and opining about my favorite post-modern art-sport



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  • Abbi Jaffe
    • Real Dialogue
    • Contact Improv
    • My Grandmother's Hands Study Groups
    • Somatic Bodywork and Thai massage
    • Trauma Informed
    • Facilitation for Meetings
    • Coaching for Collaboration
    • Yoga
    • Ceremony and Rites of Passage
    • Playback Theater
    • Somatic Education
    • Developmental Movement Lessons
    • Polyvagal Theory Education
    • Nervous System Education
    • Somatics of Digestion Education
    • Speaker
  • About
  • Contact
    • Feedback