Either Side of Vertical
with Contact Improvisation Melbourne
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Show n Share May 2026, dancers from Contact Improvisation Melbourne community. Photo by Lewis Nicolson.
The dance form Contact Improvisation (CI) is rarely presented as a performance event. As part of their 30 year celebration the Contact Improvisation Melbourne community brings their practice out of the jam space and into performance.
CI is a dance form that explores, plays with, and challenges the body in relation to the physical forces of weight, gravity, momentum and inertia, through the sense of touch and shared center. As an improvised form each dance is unique. Each combination of dancers present new and varied possibilities, with the dancers co-creating the dance in the emerging moment.
Join veteran and emerging dancers from Contact Improvisation Melbourne as they celebrate and share 30 years of dancing, teaching, researching and community.
Lead Artist Nicole Alicastro and Catherine Magill
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The Melbourne Contact Improvisation (CI) community began in the mid-1990s with the performance collective State of Flux, whose members cultivated a local CI practice rooted in exploration, trust, and shared movement. Since then, the community has grown into a vibrant, intergenerational collective of dancers, teachers, and improvisers committed to keeping the form alive and evolving.
With over 29 years of continuous practice, the community has hosted weekly jams, workshops, and classes across many venues—from Danceworks in South Melbourne to Cecil Street Studio, the Abbotsford Convent, and now Dancehouse, which has supported a long-standing Monday night jam since 2020.
Volunteer-led and open to all levels, the Melbourne CI community fosters spaces for embodied inquiry, creative connection, and collective practice through movement, touch, and improvisation.
