The words people use in the room.

Terms people use in a jam

The working vocabulary of Contact Improvisation, in one sentence each. None of it is required to dance; knowing it makes the first jam far less opaque.

Contact Improvisation (CI)

A partnered dance form in which two or more dancers improvise around shifting points of physical contact, sharing weight and following gravity, momentum and impulse.

Jam

An open, unguided session where anyone present can dance. No teacher, little or no music, an edge to sit and watch.

Score

A stated constraint that gives an improvisation a shape, such as dancing only below the hips, or following the point of contact without interrupting it.

Small dance

Small dance is the standing practice that opens a session: you stand still and follow the micro-adjustments the body makes to stay upright, rather than trying to hold still.

Weight sharing

Deliberately giving part or all of your weight to a partner and taking theirs, with the support of the skeleton and the floor rather than muscle. It is the core mechanic of the form: one dancer gives weight, the other receives it, and the roles trade continuously.

Spotting

Standing ready, hands free, near a dancing pair, so that if a fall goes wrong there is someone in reach to slow it.

Underscore

A long-form group score developed by Nancy Stark Smith, moving through around twenty named phases and used to shape an entire practice session or festival.

Landing

Arriving on the floor from a fall or a lift, usually by rolling through the contact point so the floor takes the weight progressively.

Solo

Dancing alone inside a jam. Entirely normal, and often where the most interesting work happens.

The edge

The perimeter of the room where people rest, watch, drink water and re-enter. Watching from the edge is participation, not absence.

Contact point

The single place where two bodies touch. Keeping it singular is what stops the dance becoming a grapple.

Duet

Two dancers. The basic unit of the form, though CI also happens in trios and larger groups.

Open jam

A jam with no experience prerequisite. If a jam is closed to beginners, the listing will say so.

Consent practice

The habit of asking, declining and renegotiating inside the dance. Treated as part of the technique rather than a policy.