The deck
Games Library
58 runnable cards — 34 contact games, 12 relational, and 12 somatic. Filter to what the room in front of you needs.
The Small Dance
Paxton's foundational meditation. Introduces the whole form's premise — that dance is a negotiation with gravity — before anyone touches. Settles the nervous system and lands…
Melt to the Floor
Befriends the floor, the most important partner in CI. Teaches the sequential giving of weight and rehearses lowering the body safely — the root of all falling and rolling.
Body Weather Report
Builds the container and consent culture with words before touch. Normalizes self-awareness and gives you a read on the room. Lowers the stakes with lightness.
The Mirror Hand
First partnering, but without touch — removes the intimacy hurdle while introducing attunement, following, and shared leadership. The on-ramp to listening to another body.
Follow the Breath
The gentlest weight-and-listening game. Introduces sustained back contact and attunement through a calm, non-threatening channel: breathing.
Give Me a Pound
The literal, quantified introduction to sharing weight. Dancers learn that weight can be given in measured amounts and that a partner can be trusted with it, one increment at…
Listening Hands
Trains the core skill of following the point of contact in its simplest form, and introduces dancing with eyes closed — trusting touch over sight.
Back-to-Back Rise
The classic first counterbalance: standing up together from the floor using shared weight through the backs. A small, reliable taste of "I can't do this without your weight."
The Leaning Tower
Extends counterbalance into exploration: how far can two bodies lean, tilt, and hang off each other while staying balanced? Builds trust in shared weight as a structure.
The Rolling Point
Isolates and trains the rolling point of contact — the single most central skill in CI — first solo against the floor, then with a partner.
Sticky Points
Playful drilling of maintaining unbroken contact through changing shapes. Builds continuity and creativity while keeping the stakes light and fun.
Rolling Point Duets
The first true CI duet: a continuous improvised dance led by the rolling point of contact, integrating everything from Tier ②. This is "real" contact improv at an accessible…
The Counterbalance
Develops true counterbalance in motion — two bodies leaning into and hanging off each other's weight, moving through space as a mutually dependent structure. The doorway to…
Give and Take
Trains the active giving and taking of weight as a fluid conversation — the engine of CI. Dancers learn to offer weight, receive it, and pass it back, reading how much a…
Surfing the Table
Introduces getting onto a partner's supportive surface (the "table" — a hands-and-knees back) and traveling across it. First taste of being supported off the floor, safely…
Over and Under
Builds three-dimensional flow: dancers pass over and under each other continuously, training level changes, spirals, and the vertical dimension of the dance.
Follow the Blob
The first group contact score. Multiple bodies stay in continuous contact as one moving mass, training group attunement, spatial awareness, and shared weight beyond the duet.
Falling & Rolling Practice
Dedicated training in the single most protective skill in CI: dispersing a fall across a rounded body into a roll, rather than catching it on a joint. A group that can roll…
The Underdance
An entire duet danced low — on and near the floor — where bodies roll through, under, and around each other continuously. Delivers rich, complex contact with almost none of…
Flocking
Ensemble attunement with little or no contact: the group moves as a flock — a murmuration — following whoever is momentarily at the "front," leadership passing silently as…
Off the Vertical
Trains the willingness to leave stable uprightness — to go off-balance on purpose and trust the partner and the floor to catch the fall. The psychological gateway to advanced…
Momentum Studies
Introduces momentum as a dance partner — using swing, arc, and centrifugal force so that movement flows from physics rather than muscle. The efficiency that makes advanced CI…
The Rolling Table
Advances Surfing the Table into continuous flow: the supporting surface itself moves and morphs, and the supported dancer travels across a changing landscape — training…
Trio Weather
Trains the specific intelligence of the trio — the constant shifting of who's dancing with whom, when to join, when to give space. The bridge from duet fluency to true…
Sliding & Gliding
Harnesses momentum on a smooth floor so a body travels by gliding rather than stepping — the signature pleasure of a hardwood or marley surface. Trains sending, receiving,…
Suspension & Hang
Explores hanging part or most of one's weight off a partner's stable frame — traction, grip, and the delicious length of a hung spine. A lower-risk cousin of lifts: no…
The Spiral
A continuous helix: two bodies winding up and down around a shared axis without stopping. Integrates level change, rotation, and momentum into one seamless phrase — the…
The Landscape
Extends Surfing the Table and The Rolling Table to a group: several bodies become a shifting terrain — tables, slopes, bridges, valleys — while one or two dancers travel…
Group Weight-Sharing (The Pile)
The whole group becomes one mutually-supported structure — everyone giving and receiving weight at once, a collective counterbalance. The felt experience of a group literally…
Taking Flight
Introduces lifts — one body fully supported off the floor — arising from momentum and shared weight rather than strength. The most exhilarating and highest-risk element in…
Disorientation Scores
Deliberately trains dancing while upside-down, spinning, and spatially disoriented — the state where the body's righting reflexes lead. The frontier where advanced CI becomes…
The Round Robin Jam
The traditional culminating form of a CI gathering: an open, self-organizing jam with a witnessing container. Integrates everything — duets form and dissolve, dancers enter…
The Lift Vocabulary
Gives Taking Flight (#22) concrete form: three named, relatively accessible lifts that arise from shared weight and counterbalance rather than muscle. A vocabulary to draw on…
The Long-Form Score (The Underscore)
An extended, gently-structured group improvisation — inspired by Nancy Stark Smith's Underscore — that gives a long jam a shared arc. The room moves together through a…
The Noticing
Builds the single most foundational AR muscle: present-moment noticing, spoken plainly. Trains dancers to report what's actually here (sensation, not story) — the exact skill…
Yes / No / Maybe
Trains the consent muscle relationally and playfully before it matters physically. Dancers rehearse giving a clear, cost-free "no" and feeling that it's genuinely welcome —…
The Appreciation Circle
A closing practice that lands the group's connection in words and sends people out warmed rather than raw. Completes the relational arc; strengthens the container for next…
Eye-Gazing
The quintessential AR practice and a near-perfect CI primer. Two people simply see and are seen. It builds the capacity to stay in contact — here through the eyes — through…
The Ask
Teaches dancers to ask for what they want in contact — a skill most people find harder than consenting. Dissolves the passivity that makes CI duets vague, and builds the…
Attunement Dyads
Bridges being-with into the body. Partners synchronize without touch, training the outward attention — Circling's being with the other in their world, ART's assume nothing —…
Two Truths in the Body
Lightweight honest sharing that surfaces the actual human behind the dancer, fast. When people know one true thing about each other, weight-trust jumps. Builds AR's…
The Trust Lean
A graduated lean-and-catch that builds physical trust directly and consciously — the bridge between relational trust and weight trust. Dancers learn, in small increments,…
Wordless Conversation
Builds expressive and receptive non-verbal range — the whole channel CI communicates through. Partners hold a "conversation" in gesture, movement, and sound alone, practicing…
The Gazing Duet
The full fusion of AR and CI: a moving contact duet in which partners maintain eye contact throughout. Radically deepens presence and trust, and reveals how much dancers hide…
The Trust Circle
The classic group trust practice: one person, eyes closed, is gently supported and passed around a close circle of hands. Builds deep group trust and lets an individual…
Follow, Lead, Unite
Trains the three non-verbal states every improviser toggles between — following, leading, and co-creating — and, crucially, the fluid unspoken negotiation of who's doing…
Three-Part Breath
The foundational breath practice: a slow, full breath — around six breaths a minute — which reliably raises vagal (parasympathetic) tone and drops attention out of the head…
The Sighing Exhale
A fast, reliable tension-release: the audible sigh dumps held stress and physically drops the body's weight toward the ground — a direct rehearsal of giving weight.
Breath-Led Sway
Lets breath begin to move the body, dissolving the line between stillness and dance. Builds the sense that movement can arise on its own — the improviser's core trust — while…
Standing Like a Tree (Zhan Zhuang)
The classic qigong rooting posture. Builds a grounded, weighted, structurally-aligned stance — the physical and mental foundation of every counterbalance and every stable…
Shaking & Bouncing
Spontaneous shaking (a qigong / tension-release practice) that warms the whole body, releases held stress, and — invaluably — dissolves self-consciousness. One of the best…
Cloud Hands
A flowing qigong movement (from tai chi) that trains shifting weight side to side and moving from the center with continuous, unbroken flow — the exact qualities that make CI…
Holding the Ball
Trains the fine attention qigong calls listening — the ability to notice very small changes at the edge of the body, which is precisely the attunement a CI dancer uses to…
Cat-Cow & Spinal Waves
Mobilizes and articulates the spine — the single most important structure in CI (rolling, arching, folding all live in a supple spine). A staple of the active warm-up before…
Joint-Freeing Warm-Up
Systematically mobilizes the exact joints CI loads unusually — wrists, shoulders, neck, spine, hips, ankles — in a yoga-derived sequence. Run it moving, not as static holds:…
Constructive Rest & Body Scan
A deep-release rest posture plus a guided body scan, for arriving fully in the body's felt sense and, at session's end, for integrating and downshifting. Teaches giving all…
Finding Center (The Hara)
Locates the body's low center — the hara in Japanese practice, the lower dantian in Chinese, roughly three finger-widths below the navel — and teaches breathing and moving…
Authentic Movement
A foundational embodiment practice developed by Mary Starks Whitehouse in the 1950s out of Jung's active imagination, and formalized into the mover/witness structure used…
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