Where Contact Improvisation came from.

January 1972, Oberlin College

The improvisational collective Grand Union was in residency at Oberlin College in Ohio. Paxton, a member of that group, had been running what he called a soft class in the early mornings, part meditation and part mild exercise. During the residency he made a work called Magnesium for eleven men on mats, in which they threw, caught, flung and fell among one another continuously, ending in several minutes of quiet standing. He had already asked a student who was watching, Nancy Stark Smith, to stay in touch if he ever worked this way again.

Paxton brought an unusual set of influences to it: competitive gymnastics from his school years, years of aikido study at the New York Aikikai, t'ai chi, three years in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and co-founding the Judson Dance Theater in 1962. Release technique arrived through Mary Fulkerson, whom he invited into the next group.

June 1972, New York

In June he assembled a mixed group for five days of continuous practice and a public showing at the John Weber Gallery in New York City. That event was called Contact Improvisation. The group included Nancy Stark Smith, Nita Little, Daniel Lepkoff, Barbara Dilley, Nancy Topf, Mary Fulkerson, Laura Chapman, Alice Lusterman, Curt Siddall, David Woodberry and Leon Felder, with Steve Christiansen documenting on video. The first iteration of the dance was made in that week.

1975: the decision not to own it

By 1975 the dancers working with Paxton had formed ReUnion, a company that met once a year to tour the West Coast with performances and classes. They discussed trademarking the term contact improvisation and establishing a teacher certification, chiefly because the form was spreading faster than its safety practices were. They rejected both, and instead started a newsletter as a way to keep geographically scattered practitioners in contact.

Nancy Stark Smith edited and produced that newsletter, typing and photocopying the first issues herself. Lisa Nelson joined as co-editor in 1976, and the publication was renamed Contact Quarterly, described then and since as a vehicle for moving ideas. It ran for four and a half decades. The refusal to trademark or certificate is the reason there is no licensing authority for Contact Improvisation anywhere in the world today, and the reason any city's scene looks the way it does: locally organised, informally taught, and held together by the people who show up.

How the practice developed

Stark Smith went on to develop the Underscore, a long-form score that gives a group improvisation an arc of twenty or so named phases, and the hieroglyphs, a notation for the felt rhythm of a dance. Lisa Nelson's work on composition and perception shaped how the practice talks about seeing and being seen. Nita Little's research into attentional states connected CI to cognitive science. The form also moved into performance work, into dance therapy, into physical theatre and into contemporary choreography, in a way that its early practitioners had not expected.

The jam as the real institution

Because there was never an organisation, the thing that carried CI worldwide was the jam: an informal, recurring, untaught session in a borrowed room, advertised by word of mouth or a printed listing. Contact Quarterly carried those listings for decades in a section called DanceMap. That function now happens in scattered places, which is a large part of why this site exists for Miami.

Questions people ask about the history

Who invented Contact Improvisation?

Steve Paxton, an American dancer and choreographer. He developed it in 1972 out of experiments at Oberlin College and a series of performances in New York, drawing on his background in gymnastics, aikido, t'ai chi, Merce Cunningham's company and the Judson Dance Theater.

When was the first Contact Improvisation performance?

In January 1972 Steve Paxton presented 'Magnesium' at Oberlin College during a Grand Union residency, a work for eleven men on mats that ended in several minutes of quiet standing. In June 1972 a newly assembled mixed group performed the work that became known as Contact Improvisation at the John Weber Gallery in New York City.

Why was Contact Improvisation never trademarked?

In 1975 the dancers touring with Steve Paxton as ReUnion considered trademarking the name and setting up teacher certification, chiefly out of concern for safety as the form spread beyond people who had learned it directly. They decided against both and started a newsletter instead. That newsletter became the journal Contact Quarterly.

Who were the first Contact Improvisation dancers?

The group around the earliest performances in New York in 1972 included Nancy Stark Smith, Nita Little, Daniel Lepkoff, Barbara Dilley, Nancy Topf, Mary Fulkerson, Laura Chapman, Alice Lusterman, Curt Siddall, David Woodberry, Leon Felder and video documentarian Steve Christiansen. Nancy Stark Smith went on to edit Contact Quarterly and to develop the Underscore.

Sources

• Contact improvisation, Wikipedia (accessed September 2026)
• A Short History, SARMA (accessed September 2026)
• Nancy Stark Smith, a Founder of Contact Improvisation, Dies at 68, The New York Times, 27 May 2020
• Contact Quarterly, the journal that grew from the 1975 newsletter