Video room
Our own films are being made. Until then, this room is credit where it is due.
This jam has not shot a video yet, so nothing on this page is ours. Every film below was made by the channel named on it, plays through that channel's own player, and stays that channel's work. What we are shooting for Miami is listed as what it is: in production, with no runtime and no date until a file exists.
Every film on this page was made by someone else and is credited to them by name: 22 pieces, each embedded from the platform that hosts it. None of them was shot in Miami, and none of them is this site's. The jam's own films are in production, listed here as planned pieces; each one moves to the top of this page as ours only when the finished file is hosted here.
What we are filming
None of the films below exist yet. This jam has not shot a video, so there is no film of ours to show you on this page today, and this page will not borrow the credit by passing off someone else's film as ours. These are in production, in this order:
- What actually happens at a contact improv jam — shot at a jam in Miami, which is the only Miami-shot contact improv film that will exist anywhere the jams page
- Contact improvisation for beginners: the first 20 minutes — the warm-up and the first exercises a beginner is actually given the first-jam walkthrough
- Rolling point of contact, weight sharing, floorwork — the technique underneath the dancing, shown slowly enough to copy the weight sharing definition
- Is contact improv sexual? — the question that stops people attending, answered plainly safety and consent
- The small dance — the standing practice, tied to the definition this site already owns the glossary definition
No runtime and no filming date is given for any of them, because neither is known yet: a runtime is read off the finished cut and a filming date is a day that has already happened. Both appear on this page only when the file does, and when the file exists the piece moves to the top of this page as ours.
Reference watching
Everything in this section is someone else's film. These 22 pieces were made and published by the channels named on each one, they play through those channels' own players on the platforms that host them, and this site owns none of them and filmed none of them. We link to them because they are the records worth watching, and the credit stays with the person who made them.
They are also, at the time of writing, nearly all of what exists: the supply of contact improvisation film is thin and largely old, and none of it was shot in Miami. That gap is why the films in production above are being made here.
Start here
If you have never seen this dance, watch these three first.
The plainest demonstration in the set. Two dancers working through the underlying weight sharing, useful the week before your first session.
Archive material from the founding year, uploaded decades later. Watch it for how little it resembles a performance and how much it resembles standing around until something happens.
Part of a documentary series, and it answers the question in its own title directly.
Duets
Sustained two-person work, from near-stillness to fully airborne.
A single continuous duet, shot as film rather than documentation. No interview, no title cards, no talking. The cleanest picture on YouTube of what sustained contact feels like from the inside.
Irene Sposetti and Johan Nilsson, cinema-verite, natural light, long takes. Slow, unshowy, structurally clear.
Low camera, rolling bodies, almost no event. Still one of the most quoted records of the form as a physical conversation rather than a display.
Sasha Dodo and Dolores Dewhurst Marks. Colour-graded, tightly framed, strong lifts and counterbalance, no spoken content.
Filmed at Earthdance, the long-running CI centre in Massachusetts. Handheld, unhurried, clearly a good session rather than a performance.
Close technical footage of lift mechanics and counterweighting. Watch this one if you have been told you are too heavy or too light to fly.
Body Research performance work. Movement-led and experimental rather than instructional.
Full duet documentation by a well-known Berlin pair. Clean framing, music-led, no narration. Embedding is open on Vimeo, which is not always the case for dance film.
A shot dance film rather than documentation. Painterly, made for a screen, worth watching for what contact work looks like when it is composed for camera.
Festivals and jams
What a gathering of CI dancers looks like when the room fills up.
A festival jam filmed as it fills up. Multiple duets, ambient music, no narration. This is the shape a busy room takes.
Thirty-one minutes of beach and studio footage from a large tropical festival. The closest thing here to what a South Florida outdoor session could look like, at scale.
A complete opening: the warm-up that a first-timer should watch before attending a jam, followed by the jam itself.
Senior teachers performing for a festival audience. Shows the performative end of what the practice can produce when experienced dancers push it.
One minute, outdoors, no context needed. The best short clip here to send someone who has never seen the form and only has a moment.
Performance documentation, one of the few higher-production CI performance uploads still public and openly embeddable on Vimeo.
Documentary and the originators
The people who made the form, in their own words.
A documentary on Stark Smith and on touch as the medium. Contains interview material as well as dancing, so it is an editorial watch rather than a background loop.
Vintage footage of two of the earliest practitioners, uploaded in 2020. Silent, archival, and the best evidence of how the form looked before it had a name people recognised.
Archive clip of the form's originator from the contactimprovdoc channel. Low-resolution and quiet, and the primary source for why any of this exists.
Gregory Catellier and Kristin O'Neal on what the practice teaches off the floor. The best single answer to a sceptical relative asking what this is for.
Who made the films in this section
Every film above belongs to the channel that made it and plays through that channel's own player on the platform that hosts it. None of it is this site's work and none of it is presented as this site's work. Nothing is downloaded, re-cut or re-hosted here. If you own one of these and would rather it were not embedded, say so and it comes down the same day.
- Aaron Brandes (Brando) — Blake Nellis and Brando at Earthdance
- Andrew Wass — CIPD
- Art of Contact — Contact Improvisation at Summer Dance
- BeingMotion — Irene Sposetti — Embraced, Contact Improvisation: moments of practice
- Dan Farberoff — Silkies
- Forgotten Land — Contact Improvisation, Goa Contact Festival, India
- Karl Frost — Shaken
- Katelyn Stiles — Elske Seidel and Joerg Hassmann: Contact Improvisation duet
- Neige Christenson — the play of weight
- OKI — Contact Improvisation: a couple of basic exercises
- Sasha Dodo — Contact Improvisation: the art of jamming
- TEDx Talks — Life lessons learned through Contact Improvisation
- Xandy Liberato — Lifting: contact and improvisation
- Yevhen Titov — Teachers' performance, Kyiv Contact Improvisation Festival
- ci rollingpoint — What happens in a Contact Improvisation jam?
- contactimprovdoc — Steve Paxton
- klubki — Contact Improvisation 1972
- szimi82 — Poland Contact Improvisation Festival: Warsaw Flow 2012, jam
- virginia negru — Opening jam and guided warm-up with Steve Batts
- visioniarborescenti — The poetics of touch: Nancy Stark Smith, a pathway into contact improvisation
- whitefiredancer — Nancy Stark Smith and Karen Nelson (1990)
Watched enough
Nothing on this page will teach you what two minutes on a floor with another person will.
Miami Contact Improv (2026). Contact Improvisation video room. miamicontactimprov.com. https://miamicontactimprov.com/videos