Diving into the Fabric of Touch: Technical & Relational Practices in the Movement of Contact Improvisation
Facilitated By: Nita Little
June 4-7, 2026
This workshop is a dive into the fabric of touch that is key to our relational practices in the movement of Contact Improvisation – and for many of us, in the living of life itself. The material will be steeped in somatic communication. This adventure into our movement life begins within ourselves, but moves outwardly, to where selfhood refuses to be stable, set and limiting. Instead, its instability is key to its creativity, the play that appears when our relational communication is fluid, movement scores throughout our time will make this connection. We will form and reform what we know as touch, exploring how this touch translates into the flow of movement. We increase the strength of our moving together with the human and the more than human worlds we also are.
Creative, thoughtful, heart based, skill based, our learning will be anchored in the core principles of Contact Improvisation, such as: how to move weight like water – actions of cascading. The details of touching within weight exchange. The rising and hanging of the body – each mode significant to communication. How attention lives in the very small. Extending to form surfaces that arc. Learning to trust the physicality of our extended intelligence that underlies reflexive action. The availability of many forms of temporal engagement. Our movement practices will include lots of dancing both as skills building and exploration, although, in many cases these will be the same thing.
Nita Little is one of the earliest instigators of the Contact Improvisation dance form, investigating alongside her then professor at Bennington College, Steve Paxton.
Schedule:
Thursday, June 4, 6-9pm
Friday, June 5, 10am – 1pm & 2:30 – 5:30pm
Saturday, June 6, 10am – 1pm & 2:30 – 5:30pm
Sunday, June 7, 10am – 2pm
This work will build on itself, responsive to the participants, as the workshop progresses. As such, we encourage participants to join in as much of the workshop as possible, as early on as possible. Those joining Saturday will be brought into the fold, by the existing participants, with care.
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There will be no pre-prepared food or group meals offered during the workshop. If you need to bring food we suggest preparing your own food ahead of time and using the kitchen for light prep or reheating food. You are welcome to store small items in the communal kitchen refrigerator.
Option to stay overnight at WildHeart before or after – come early or stay late. Reach out to us at contact@wildheartcenter.art to confirm your stay.
Who is this for?
Appropriate for Intermediate and Advanced Contact Improvisation practitioners, and/or advanced practitioners of an adjacent movement form, such as contemporary dance, martial arts, etc. Please inquire to learn more about whether this workshop is right for you.
“Nita’s teaching and presence have informed my embodiment – the way I move, the way I direct my attention, and the moment-to-moment choicemaking about how and who I am in the world. Her teaching is generous, sharp, honest, and…magical.”
– GS
“I need places like this to dig deeper into ideas that then live in my body from then on – less of a mental carryover into my practices, but more of a habit of being that carries over. That’s what I love about this class in particular is that I feel like I am cultivating these deeper habits of existing that then I can’t help but bring into my creation.”
– IB
About Nita Little
Nita Little investigates embodied attention within improvisational and technical movement practices with a concentration on the technicities of both creative and relational practices. Through ensemble dance improvisation practice and performance she works toward a future that recognizes our environmental entanglements and values many forms of embodied communication, recognizing that the quality of an embodied state determines the potentials of its relational capacities. A dance researcher, theorist/artist, and one of the founding developers of Contact Improvisation (CI) she teaches around the globe, guiding one of its forward leading edges. She began over 50 years ago, working alongside her teacher at Bennington College, Steve Paxton, on materials that became CI (1972) and was a participant in the earliest performances and teaching that helped it to become significant within dance and dance communities. Within CI’s first year she developed a curiosity about the relationship of the (physical) mind and relational events. Now, she investigates ecological actions of embodied attention, particularly with respect to somatic communication between humans and beyond.
Nita received her PhD in Performance Studies with a focus on the articulation of presence and creative actions of attention (2014). Her life work is inclusive of mindbody training, performing, choreographing, researching and writing about the ethics, politics and entanglement of somatic relations. With a world-wide audience for her teaching, dance making, and lecturing, she is an activist for relational intelligence and an advocate for dancers as embodied researchers, marking and exposing a field of human relational potentials. She is executive director of the Institute for the Study of Somatic Communication (ISSC, 2016), a network of laboratories populated by dancer researchers and associate research experts from diverse fields. She lives near Seattle, in the USA. Currently she tours throughout the year and may be found on 6 continents. She invites you to get her monthly newsletter available by signing up at: www.nitalittle.com
Location
This workshop will take place in the Barn. If you’re coming to WildHeart for the first time, please visit our Directions page for arrival info.
Registration
Program Costs (sliding scale)
Whole Workshop – $275 – $475 sliding scale
One Day Drop In (Thursday Evening) – $55 – $85 sliding scale
Partial Workshop (Thursday Evening & Friday) – $115 – $200 sliding scale
Partial Workshop (Weekend Saturday & Sunday) – only available to folks who have studied with Nita before – $115 – $200 sliding scale
By offering a sliding scale, and two free BIPOC spots, we hope to make this offering financially accessible. Paying at the higher end of the sliding scale MAKES IT POSSIBLE for us to offer a sliding scale and scholarship spots. Please pay at the highest level that you are able.
This work will build on itself, responsive to the participants, as the workshop progresses. As such, we encourage participants to join in as much of the workshop as possible, as early on as possible. Those joining Saturday will be brought into the fold, by the existing participants, with care.
Refund policy
No refunds, no transfers
BIPOC spots
We are offering 2 free spots for BIPOC folx. Please select BIPOC Spot from the Pricing drop down to use one.
