Lewes Contact Improvisation with Live Music

Come join us for the last jam of the year. 

Our next Contact Improv jam in Lewes is on Sunday 6th December 

Bela Emerson

Playful Cello Flow

We are looking forward to welcoming you x

💚 Marc & Shaz 💚

@Cliffe Hall, Lewes

£ 12  or £ 15 (pay which you want) 

“Every ci dance is another journey into the curious exploration of boundaries and relationship whilst in the momentum of dance and play.”

So much of our lives are isolating, vocal, practical or digital. Ci explores something else. 

Contact Improvisation is freeform contemporary dance or movement practice. Ci was originally created by Steve Paxton in the 1970s. He built a movement community without a hierarchy. 

It has two parts, it’s in the name. 

Contact. The dance takes place whilst in contact with another or others, as duets or trios or more. It is a dance form that focuses on interaction. These interactions can be brief or long.

Improvisation. There is no form, no steps to learn. The dance is created by the dancers. In that moment. It is an unknown. It is a journey. Make a connection and start to move together. The skill is to learn to read movement and see the spaces. Is someone offering you a lift? Is someone telling you to slow down? Can I play? 

A Ci Jam with live music, is an interactive freestyle dance space with a live musician performing the soundscape. The entire event is improvised. No dance partnership will be the same and the music unwritten. 

I find contact improv an anarchic process. I don’t know what will happen. I do though have absolute power over my boundaries, my movement and my own safety. I can practice joining and leaving dances at will. It is wonderfully empowering. I also try at every jam to dance with everyone and create opportunities for trio or more momentums. 

The diversity of interactions experienced during a jam leaves me feeling literally touched. It reminds me of the kindness and joy that exist in the world and I leave feeling positive and euphoric. Reconnected. 

The Lewes jams are run by Marc and Sharon. We are a couple offering contact improvisation sessions, I like to think that this enhances the safety of the space. We have been running our jams for almost 3 years now. We both love dance. We both love community. We both love connection. 


A review from one of our dancers

“The soft, welcoming, inclusive, loving intent energy of you both, Marc & Shaz, that sets a container of deeply held capacity, for us all to find and fill our space in, both individually and collectively. It’s rich and nourishing, the focus on seasonal change was such a perfect lens for that.

I would go out of my way to recommend it to anyone I know, who shows an interest in the practice, as I’m sure some jams could seem technically intimidating to the uninitiated. What you’ve created is quite the opposite.”