Contact Improvisation is a touch-based playful improvisational partner dance form, or dance-sport which was developed by dancer Steve Paxton in dialogue with dancer-scholars Nancy Stark-Smith, Nita Little, Mary Fulkerson, and others in the US in 1972. It has emerged across the globe as a democratic form, often through jams, workshops or collective skills exchanges. Drawing on Asian martial Arts, Physics, and Somatic Education Principles, it activates organic intelligence and relational partnering skills through dance. It supports communication through touch, a readiness for being-with, and a swiftness in re-orientation in gravity, allowing for gentle sensorial, and at times acrobatic and exhilarating dancing.

CI and Goldsmiths have a strong historical connection to the introduction of the form in the UK. CI is still a taught component of undergraduate and postgraduate programs at Goldsmiths and is a part of the Student Union. Throughout the years, various practitioners have carried and facilitated CI at Goldsmiths and we give special thanks to the work done by Anne-Gaelle Thiriot, Zoé Jacob, Alicia Cesa Vianchi, Jodie Granger & William Lang.