Women's Day @Underscore Berkeley. 3 8 2020

Come celebrate International Women's Day with us moving and connecting at our Monthly Underscore in Berkeley. March 8th. Sunday, 2020 Due to corona virus dangers there is a request to put more focus this time on creating a safer space for those who prefer not to be touched. Let's explore how we can emphasize our boundaries and safety as we streamline communication and consent while still bathing in creativity. Only for those familiar with general tenets of contact improv practice. No absolute beginners, please! Underscore does not provide minute to minute instructions and is essentially a jam with participants' experience being self-directed. If you are experienced with CI but new to Underscore - please come 3:30pm for an introduction. For the rest, the arrival time is 4-4:15. FACILITATED by Vitali Kononov Arrival time is 15 minutes, Doors closed ~ 4:15. The circle will happen between 4:15 and 4:30. Please be on time, and prepare to stay for the full duration (3 hours). The score is a shared movement journey with an emphasis on INNER and OUTER composition awareness and the exploration of diversity in the contact improvisation movement choices and embodied states. We use Underscore in either prescriptive or descriptive way to facilitate our experience, although every participant is free to choose how it unfolds for them. and when things happen within the score. This is a group score facilitating shared awareness and individual choices. We begin and end together. Please do not leave until the end of the session unless in case of an emergency. Underscore Berkeley Sunday, 3/8/2020. 4-7pm Finnish Hall Auditorium located at 1970 Chestnut St in Berkeley (near University/Sacramento) just a few blocks from the North Berkeley BART station. Cost: $12-15 sliding scale The Underscore is a long-form (at least a few hours) dance improvisation structure developed by Nancy Stark Smith. It has been evolving since 1990 and is practiced all over the globe. The Underscore is a vehicle for incorporating Contact Improvisation into a broader arena of improvisational dance practice; for developing greater ease dancing in spherical space—alone and with others; and for integrating kinesthetic and compositional concerns while improvising. It allows for a full spectrum of energetic and physical expressions, embodying a range of forms and changing states. Its practice is familiar yet unpredictable. The practice—traditionally 3 to 4 hours in length—progresses through a broad range of dynamic states, including long periods of very small, private, and quiet internal activity and other times of higher energy and interactive dancing. There are 20+ phases of the score—each with a name and a graphic symbol—which create a general map for the dancers. Within that frame, dancers are free to create their own movements, dynamics, and relationships—with themselves, each other, the group, the music, and the environment. Each Underscore is unique, providing rich and often inspiring experiences of the human and artistic phenomena of dance improvisation.