Contact Improvisation Jams
What jams are for, how organisers hold them, and where the written guidelines live.
A contact improvisation jam is a session where dancers practise the form together.1
What jams are for
María Paz Brozas-Polo calls the jam a pedagogical device and maps five types of answer to what organisers think jams are for. She also documents a drift toward beginner-social jams that experienced dancers abandon.1 Ramaswamy and Deslauriers read jams as a hybrid of focused-attention and open-presence meditation.3
Written guidelines
The Earthdance guidelines come from the house in Plainfield, Massachusetts, updated November 2022. They say you can leave or end a dance at any time for any reason, that sensation is normal and pursuing it on the floor is the exception, that social talk happens off the dance space, and that you should check in with partners and look after newer dancers.2 Philadelphia's community wrote a longer rulebook: consent is the dancer's own act in the moment, it can change mid-dance, and it stays with the one partner it was given to.4 The consent page collects the wider debate.
Long-form jams
Nancy Stark Smith's Underscore is a structure for a whole jam as one composed arc, developed from 1990 and practised worldwide every June.5
Who is in the room
Ten teachers and organisers answered the Contact Quarterly editors' question about CI and identity. Read side by side, their answers show how wide the disagreement runs inside the community.6 Kristin Horrigan wrote her piece for the organiser who says the form is free of roles, so gender is beside the point.7 The library's accessibility text treats accessibility as a founding principle and adds the caveat that touch remains a social barrier.8
Around the world
The Freiburg Contact Festival keeps a video archive of twenty years of festival documentaries, performance films and pioneer talks.9 The library documents how the form took root in Spain10 and in Buenos Aires, where Mariela Singer argues a counterculture born of the democratic opening gave it fertile ground.11
Frequently asked questions
What is a contact improvisation jam?
A session where dancers practise the form together. What it is for depends on the organiser, and one study maps five types.1
Can I leave a dance at a jam?
Earthdance's guidelines say you can leave or end a dance at any time for any reason.2
Is a jam the same as a class?
The library treats them as different settings: Brozas-Polo studies the jam as a pedagogical device, and her other paper reads a decade of Contact Quarterly teaching scores as a pedagogy of touch.112
How do jams handle consent?
Through written guidelines such as Philadelphia's and Earthdance's, and through a continuing debate about the form's founding rule of taking care of yourself.4213
| Guides in this wiki |
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| What is Contact Improvisation? · The small dance · The Underscore · Jams · Steve Paxton · Nancy Stark Smith · Falling and gravity · Consent · Exercises · Glossary · How it is written · Contribute |
Sources in the library
1The Aesthetic and Pedagogical Nature of Jams Brozas-Polo, "Naturaleza estética y pedagógica de las jams," 2014. In the library: Jams, scores, pedagogy.
2Earthdance CI Jam Guidelines Earthdance, Plainfield, Massachusetts, updated November 2022. In the library: Jams, scores, pedagogy.
3Dancer–Dance–Spirituality Ramaswamy & Deslauriers, 2014. In the library: Attention & perception.
4Safety & Boundaries Philadelphia Contact Improvisation community, version of 11 September 2019, 6 pages. In the library: Consent, gender, hierarchy.
5The Underscore Nancy Stark Smith's long-form jam score. In the library: Jams, scores, pedagogy.
6Contact Improvisation Intersections Nancy Stark Smith ("Frictions and Illuminations") with Keith Hennessy, Ann Cooper Albright, Geneviève Cron-Riger, Daniela Schwartz, Kent Alexander, Za. In the library: Consent, gender, hierarchy.
7Queering Contact Improvisation Kristin Horrigan, Contact Quarterly Winter/Spring 2017. In the library: Consent, gender, hierarchy.
8Accessibility in Contact Improvisation Brozas-Polo, "La accesibilidad en la danza CI," 2013. In the library: Jams, scores, pedagogy.
9Freiburg Contact Festival: the video archive 2004–2025. In the library: Video library & directory.
10The Beginnings of CI in Spain Brozas & García, "Los comienzos de la danza CI en España," 2014. In the library: Jams, scores, pedagogy.
11Los inicios del Contact Improvisación en Buenos Aires Mariela Singer, "Arte y política en la apertura democrática argentina: los inicios del Contact Improvisación en Buenos Aires," Revista Actos 6(11), 20. In the library: History & scenes.
12Pedagogy of the Sensitive Body Brozas-Polo, "Pedagogía del cuerpo sensible," 2017. In the library: Jams, scores, pedagogy.
13How the First Rule Brought #MeToo to Contact Improvisation Michelle Beaulieux, Contact Quarterly 44.1. In the library: Consent, gender, hierarchy.
Cite this page
Alessi, Eric (curator). “Contact Improvisation Jams.” The Wiki of Contact Improvisation. Published 30 October 2026, updated 31 October 2026. https://ci-wiki.com/concepts/contact-improvisation-jams/. Accessed .