K.J. Holmes has been practicing Contact/Improvisation forms as process and performance since 1981. These practices have deeply informed her journey as a dance artist as well as an actor, vocalist, writer and teacher. An avid improviser and creator of solo/duo and ensemble work, she has collaborated with with the early pioneers of the form including Steve Paxton and Simone Forti as well as with the Tuning Score of Lisa Nelson, Body Mind Centering ® and the work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Ideokinesis with Andre Bernard, Meisner acting work with Terry Knickerbocker, voice and singing with Richard Armstrong, Barbara Maier Gustern and Samita Singha, among others. K.J. is a certified Yoga teacher through her studies with Sondra Loring, and a certified Ayurvedic Holistic Health Counselor through her studies with Dr. Naina Marballi. She teaches at NYU/Experimental Theatre Wing and Movement Research in NYC, as well as traveling nationally and internationally teaching, performing and creating. K.J. has performed most recently in the work of filmmaker/artist Matthew Barney, dancer/writer Karinne Keithley Seyers, music video of Mitski, as well as her own solo work 900 Bees are Humming. She is currently conducting a new ensemble piece, Blu/print, begun Fall 2023 with the mentorship of composer/instrumentalist Henry Threadgill through a grant from the NY State Dance Force
Contact Improvisation Festival - Intensive
“What is my body doing when I am not conscious of it?” (Steve Paxton)
This workshop is to honor practices created by dancer Steve Paxton (1939-2024). We will artfully enter the basic principles of the form of Contact Improvisation which he initiated in 1972, and his Material for the Spine, begun 1986. “Forms for sensations and sensing” (Steve Paxton), these classes will offer students the opportunity to deeply enter the basic study of the physics and ecological forces dancers experience as they move in relationship with each other and themselves. We will engage with the body in spherical space to improvise in solo, duo and with the class as an ensemble. As we deepen into the discipline of practice, we will evolve the process as tools for dancing to witness how we make sense of being HERE. Playing with the chronosphere and spirals of time, space and weight, we will explore what Steve has said: “Dance is the art of taking place. Improvisation finds those places.” Sources will include several of Steve’s writings as well as what we discover in our practices together in this living art form.
Contact Improvisation into Performance - Intensive
Fall…and fall again better : Theater of the Body
Paraphrasing a quote from playwright Samuel Beckett, this workshop will deepen one’s relationship to the Soma through practicing performing into Contact Improvisation. Soma (as in Somatics) in Latin means the body. In Sanskrit, it is the nectar of the Gods. Where we meet is in the play between the facts and the fictions. This is the location of our great imaginations. This workshop will be an entrance into physiological and poetic character/qualities of the bodymind going from practice to performance. Traveling from the physics of the body moving in relationship to earthly forces and others to actively witnessing each other, we will create a dance that will further our experience of contact improvisation into an expression of our humanity.