Contact Improvisation and the Argentine Tango are two improvisational forms and emerging dance vocabularies gaining worldwide popularity. They have vastly different roots, and yet have many interesting intersections which offer opportunities for dancers of each form to expand their social consciousness and movement skill sets. They are both forms which have performing arts and social trajectories, offering their dancers a wide range of explorations in which to build dance as both an art form and a social container.
In this Workshop, Eliana and Daniel will explore some of the overlapping commonalities and distinctive differences of the two forms. They hope to encourage dancers to widen their improvisational vocabularies and overcome any confusions about how these two divergent forms of improvisational dance can inform each other. And we will have fun doing it.
Arrival, Onsite Check-In, Opening Circle, Departures and COVID Testing
- Arrival and Onsite Check-In: The welcoming will commence for Friday, July 14th from 4:00pm-7:00pm. Dinner is at 6-7pm.
- Opening Circle: Friday, July 14th at 7:30pm.
- Friday Class and Dance Evening ONLY: Arrive at 7:30pm, Departure is at 12am.
- Saturday Dance Evening ONLY: Arrive at 7:30pm, Departure is at 12am.
- Departure: All participants will depart after the final group clean at 3pm on Sunday, July 16th.
- COVID Testing: Please make sure that you have tested for COVID on the day of arrival for both Full and Half Jam. If needed, participants may purchase tests from Earthdance for $10 each.
- Bring loose fitting clothes, leather dance shoes or socks to dance in.
***Please do not wear high heels or tight fitting clothes. You will be dancing Contact Improv influenced by Tango, not strictly Tango!
Housing Options
Gratitude Lodge Tickets
Includes a bed in the Gratitude Lodge for 2 nights, workshop offerings, and healthy delicious food.
The Gratitude Lodge (a.k.a. the Earthdance dorm) is the main lodging facility, connected to the Farmhouse by a short wooded trail. The lodge includes large and small rooms featuring dormitory-style bunks and beds (twin & queen size) and is included in the base event cost. Beds are available on a first come basis.
Camping Tickets
Includes a spot to camp for 2 nights in Earthdance’s wooded areas or grass field, workshop offerings, and healthy delicious food.
PRICING
Gratitude Lodge
$575 – Financially Wealthy
$425 – Financially Abundant
$325 – Financially Stable
$250 – Financially Coping
$200 – Financially Strained
Camping
$550 – Financially Wealthy
$400 – Financially Abundant
$300 – Financially Stable
$225 – Financially Coping
$175 – Financially Strained
FRIDAY, July 14th Class and Evening Dance DROP-IN
$50 starting at 7:30pm
SATURDAY July 15th Evening Dance DROP-IN
$35 starting at 7:30pm
Our Fees Explained
Earthdance offers a sliding scale payment for participation in this event, please take a moment to reflect as you decide on where you best fit.
Your level of contribution is self selected and does not need to be advocated for. However, we invite you to remember this contribution is currency and we ask that you stretch where you are able so that those who cannot stretch as far of a financial distance may also have potential access to community events. As you choose your rate please consider the following factors:
- Your access to income and wealth, as connected to family and partnership, both currently and anticipated in the future.
- The historical, systemic impacts of wealth accrual based on culture, race and other intersection marginalizations for you and your family.
- The regional ease of your attendance, while some community members can drive to Earthdance, others will need to consider tuition based on their ability to travel longer distances.
- Earthdance is a community and rental funded organization which recently, historically and uniquely through the Covid-19 pandemic has struggled to have viable income.
Equity & Access Tickets
Although we’re not able to offer any full scholarships this year, we’re excited to offer up to 3 Equity & Access Discounts to individuals who feel part of an underrepresented and/or marginalized group in CI and have a relationship with CI. We know that for those who come from marginalized populations showing up to spaces filled with primarily privileged groups can be a challenge, and can feel vulnerable.
“Apply” and see more details here. Application deadline is July 13th.
For those who do not identify as marginalized and are in a represented group of CI, we invite you to stretch in your payment to help support those who cannot stretch and create a more diverse jam experience for all.
Note: While Earthdance is making efforts to better support Equity & Access at all its events, the Summer Jam offers particularly strong support for diversity, equity, and inclusion through:
- Reduced pricing offered to people self-identifying as being underrepresented and/or marginalized in CI.
- Classes and discussions that aim to bring up the level of awareness and inclusion at the jam as a whole
- Affinity spaces (jams, discussions, etc.) for particular groups of people to connect, share CI space together, and rest from the pressures of being in a minority status at the jam.
Cancellation Policy
Refund available up to 10 days (July 4th) before the event less a $50 processing fee.
No refunds available less than 10 days from the start of the event.
Partial refunds might be given if a cancellation takes place under extenuating circumstances (e.g. a death of a 1st or 2nd degree family member, serious non-preventable illness or accident requiring hospitalization). Refunds in such cases remain at the discretion of the local organizers and will be decided on a case to case basis according to the timing of the cancellation and other factors.
COVID Precautions
No specific requirements on vaccination status are needed to attend this event. However, ALL registrants are required to take an antigen test on the day of before arriving on Friday, July 14th at Earthdance. If you need a test, Earthdance will have them available to purchase for $10 each.
Please take adequate measures to limit your exposure in the days before arriving. If you are feeling sick, or have a known close exposure to someone with COVID in the past 5 days, please sit this one out to keep the community well.
Participant Community Support
Earthdance runs as a community, thus part of the participation is that all individuals contribute to 1-2 work shifts (typically meal cleans) throughout the event and participate in a final house clean on the last day of the event. These are great ways to connect more with your fellow participants and Earthdance staff, and to feel more at home in the Earthdance buildings & grounds. Your contributions to this collective caring of this space are invaluable!
Earthdance’s buildings are ADA accessible. More info here.
HOST BIO
Eliana Bonard, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Eliana began her path in movement improvisation at 15 through the Aberastury System. Her training includes contemporary dance, ballet, tango as well as yoga, eutony and somatics theater and clown. She likes to experiment with hybrid/juxtaposed languages on scene, and has choreographed dance-theater pieces, aerial dance, dance for children and also made site specific and street performances.
She fell in love with Contact Improvisation in 1987, at Daniel’s first workshops in Buenos Aires,
and began teaching CI four years later. She has been a CI teacher at the School of Artistic
Education (ESEA) since 2012. She is a co-creator of Eimcila, Latin America CI Teachers
Meeting in 2011, co-organizer of the Buenos Aires CI-50 Celebration, as well as ongoing Jams
in her city. Another passion of hers is to work in heated water. She gives Aguahara sessions and facilitates @milon.gota mixing CI and tango in water.
She loves simple things, like practicing yoga at the seaside, cooking or collecting grapefruit in
my neighborhood, and sharing time with my beloved 20 year old son.
IG: @eli.bonard
Daniel Trenner, M.Ed. Dance, Northampton MA
Daniel’s first introduction to Improv and Contemporary Dance was with Bill T Jones, at the American Dance Asylum in 1975. He began his own Jazz Improv group in 1978 and has been involved with Contact Improv since 1980, first with Steve and Nancy’s cohort on the East Coast, and then with the men of Mangrove on the West Coast.
He travelled widely in the 1980s teaching Contact, BMC, Tap, and Contemporary Dance. His travels led him to Argentina in 1987, where he taught at the State School of Contemporary Dance for the next 7 years, and began his tango obsession, one which eventually redirected his career. He has become one of the prime movers in Tango’s modern revival, helping create the Tango tourism industry in Buenos Aires, and the first Tango store in North America. He is one of the founding cohort of Earthdance, senior faculty at DNE, and a co-owner of CTT.
He resides in Northampton, MA, where he is the owner of a co-living experimental dance house, and Tango Archive.