30 Years of Contact Improvisation
with CI Melbourne
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Contact Improv 30-Year Celebration (2026). Photo by Ian Ferguson.
CI Melbourne hosted a three-day Celebration Weekend marking 30 years of the Contact Improvisation jam community in Melbourne. The event brings together founders, experienced teachers, and practitioners to celebrate the history and ongoingevolution of this improvisational movement practice.
The weekend featured a mix of workshops, discussion sessions, performances, and social gathering across Friday evening, Saturday, and Sunday. Participants explored Contact Improvisation through various lenses — from martial arts connections and contemplative practice to collaborative scores and community conversations.
Saturday | 20 June
The opening session focused on State of Flux, the foundational project that grew from a casual coffee meeting 30 years ago between Janice Florence, Wendy Smith, Llewellyn Wishart, and Martin Hughes. The session included detailed backgrounds on all five founders and their significant contributions to dance, disability arts, Body-Mind Centering, and CI communities across Australia.
There was also an extensive lineup of workshops covering weight and trust in Contact Improvisation, exploring CI through martial arts principles such as Aikido and Tai Chi connections, dancing with eyes closed, and experimental lounges combining CI with text, sound, and light. A contemplative dance session and surprise workshop round out the day.
The evening features a music jam with The Space Between Trio (performing voice, viola, piano, and percussion) and a “Constellation Score” celebrating the community’s connections.
Sunday | 21 June
Sunday sessions focused on core Contact Improvisation concepts like falling and momentum, explore emerging artistic concepts, and culminate in a Global Underscore — a worldwide synchronised CI practice happening simultaneously across communities around the world.
Produced by Contact Improvisation Melbourne 30yr Celebration Event Team
30yr Celebration Event Team Catherine Magill, Martin Hughes, Joey Lehrer, Nicole Alicastro, Dom Burke, Anita Alexander & Doreen Oi
Photographers Ian Ferguson and Lewis Nicolson
Thanks to Dancehouse for their ongoing support via the Dancehousing program. CI Melbourne Jam kitty and all the session leaders, event volunteers, musicians, dancers, Gopals restaurant, various helpers and all those who contributions seen and unseen made this event such a success.
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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.
