BUILD-A-FLOOR CELEBRATION FESTIVAL
Honoring floors for dancing and the lineage of
Nancy Stark Smith, Steve Paxton, and Contact Improvisation
Nancy Stark Smith, Steve Paxton, and Contact Improvisation
Thursday - Sunday, MAY 2-5, 2024
The Workroom at 33 Hawley + Shepherd's Barn at Historic Northampton, Northampton, MA
Hosted and curated by Andrea Olsen
FULL EVENT DETAILS, TICKETS, and REGISTRATION BELOW
***all proceeds go to support festival artists***
The Workroom at 33 Hawley + Shepherd's Barn at Historic Northampton, Northampton, MA
Hosted and curated by Andrea Olsen
FULL EVENT DETAILS, TICKETS, and REGISTRATION BELOW
***all proceeds go to support festival artists***
THURSDAY, MAY 2
“A good floor will gather us together, it will support us as we create and watch live performances, and it will last for generations.” - Jeffery Bliss, 2020

Underscore +/- Group Showing
6-9pm, The Workroom
(Attendees may come and go as they wish)
Sliding scale $10-$20
The Underscore +/- Group offers a “showing” of their practice to commemorate the completion of the new sprung floor (sometimes called “Nancy’s Floor”) in honor of Nancy Stark Smith.
The Underscore is a framework for practicing and researching group dance improvisation developed by Nancy Stark Smith in 1990, incorporating Contact Improvisation into a broader arena of improvisational dance practice. The Underscore guides dancers through a progression of changing states.
This 3-hour showing will include periods of small, private, and quiet internal activity and times of higher energy and interactive dancing. The 20+ phases, 12+ connections, and 7+ aspects of the score—each with a name and graphic symbol—create a general map for the dancers. Within that frame they are free to create their own movements, dynamics, and relationships—with themselves, each other, the group, the music, and the environment. Each Underscore is unique.
While not initially designed as a performance form, the Underscore offers rich and often inspiring views of the human and artistic phenomena of dance improvisation. The environment is “somewhere between a 3D moving art installation, a visit to the zoo, and your living room.” Attendees are invited to observe their own experience and their influence on the space, letting go of being traditional audience members. Attendees can shift their vantage point throughout, leave and return, draw or write (at the drawing/writing corner), in support of the whole experience.
The Underscore +/- Group began in 2010, initiated by Nancy as a weekly peer dance workgroup to research the Underscore and other related work. Dancers: Neige Christenson, Patrick Crowley, Claudio Garrido, Gabrielle Revlock, Ione Beauchamp, Liana Foxvog, Lani Nahele, Meta Bobbe, Rythea Lee, Dale Rosenkrantz, Saliq Savage, Sarah Young. Musician: Richie Barsay
“This sprung floor is a buoyant home.” - Patrick Crowley, 2020
6-9pm, The Workroom
(Attendees may come and go as they wish)
Sliding scale $10-$20
The Underscore +/- Group offers a “showing” of their practice to commemorate the completion of the new sprung floor (sometimes called “Nancy’s Floor”) in honor of Nancy Stark Smith.
The Underscore is a framework for practicing and researching group dance improvisation developed by Nancy Stark Smith in 1990, incorporating Contact Improvisation into a broader arena of improvisational dance practice. The Underscore guides dancers through a progression of changing states.
This 3-hour showing will include periods of small, private, and quiet internal activity and times of higher energy and interactive dancing. The 20+ phases, 12+ connections, and 7+ aspects of the score—each with a name and graphic symbol—create a general map for the dancers. Within that frame they are free to create their own movements, dynamics, and relationships—with themselves, each other, the group, the music, and the environment. Each Underscore is unique.
While not initially designed as a performance form, the Underscore offers rich and often inspiring views of the human and artistic phenomena of dance improvisation. The environment is “somewhere between a 3D moving art installation, a visit to the zoo, and your living room.” Attendees are invited to observe their own experience and their influence on the space, letting go of being traditional audience members. Attendees can shift their vantage point throughout, leave and return, draw or write (at the drawing/writing corner), in support of the whole experience.
The Underscore +/- Group began in 2010, initiated by Nancy as a weekly peer dance workgroup to research the Underscore and other related work. Dancers: Neige Christenson, Patrick Crowley, Claudio Garrido, Gabrielle Revlock, Ione Beauchamp, Liana Foxvog, Lani Nahele, Meta Bobbe, Rythea Lee, Dale Rosenkrantz, Saliq Savage, Sarah Young. Musician: Richie Barsay
“This sprung floor is a buoyant home.” - Patrick Crowley, 2020
FRIDAY, MAY 3
“With a sprung dance floor, we will be able to continue to support and grow our thriving dance and somatics communities.”
- Jennifer Polins, 2020
- Jennifer Polins, 2020

Contemplative Dance Practice, led by Jennifer Polins
9-10am, The Workroom (space open 30 min before for check-in/arrival)
Sliding scale $0-$10; open to all levels of experience
This event follows the format of the Contemplative Dance Practice (CDP) developed by Barbara Dilley in the 1970's, and shared by Nancy Stark Smith in Florence, MA through 2020—also called “20-20-20.” After a brief introduction to the practice, we meditate in silence, move with eyes closed, and move with eyes open. Changes are signaled by the ringing of a meditation bell; participants bow in, bow out of each section. Writing is welcomed throughout. Wear comfortable clothes and bring a journal for this quiet contemplative introduction to your day!
Jennifer Polins is the director of the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, and a long-time practitioner of contact improvisation with Nancy Stark Smith and Steve Paxton. She hosts contemplative practice as presented by Barbara Dilley and Nancy Stark Smith.
9-10am, The Workroom (space open 30 min before for check-in/arrival)
Sliding scale $0-$10; open to all levels of experience
This event follows the format of the Contemplative Dance Practice (CDP) developed by Barbara Dilley in the 1970's, and shared by Nancy Stark Smith in Florence, MA through 2020—also called “20-20-20.” After a brief introduction to the practice, we meditate in silence, move with eyes closed, and move with eyes open. Changes are signaled by the ringing of a meditation bell; participants bow in, bow out of each section. Writing is welcomed throughout. Wear comfortable clothes and bring a journal for this quiet contemplative introduction to your day!
Jennifer Polins is the director of the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, and a long-time practitioner of contact improvisation with Nancy Stark Smith and Steve Paxton. She hosts contemplative practice as presented by Barbara Dilley and Nancy Stark Smith.
"The floor is your first partner." - Angie Hauser, 2020

The Unrepeatable Moment
Improvisation workshop with Chris Aiken & Angie Hauser
10:30am - 12pm, The Workroom
Sliding scale $15-$30; for experienced movers
Where am I when I am dancing? Who and what am I in dialogue with? How do I make creative and sensitive choices in relation to myself, others and my surroundings? This workshop is for those who wish to immerse themselves in the practice of learning, making and exploring improvisational dance and contact improvisation. Drawing on our many years of performing and teaching, we will offer specific compositional and technical exercises that are designed to support embodied dancing, witnessing, compositional awareness and choice making. We will consider how action, perception and imagination are at play as we explore our poetic sensibilities through movement and touch.
Chris and Angie are leading international performers of dance improvisation and composition who have collaborated with Steve Paxton and Nancy Stark Smith and received numerous awards for their artistic work individually and together.
Improvisation workshop with Chris Aiken & Angie Hauser
10:30am - 12pm, The Workroom
Sliding scale $15-$30; for experienced movers
Where am I when I am dancing? Who and what am I in dialogue with? How do I make creative and sensitive choices in relation to myself, others and my surroundings? This workshop is for those who wish to immerse themselves in the practice of learning, making and exploring improvisational dance and contact improvisation. Drawing on our many years of performing and teaching, we will offer specific compositional and technical exercises that are designed to support embodied dancing, witnessing, compositional awareness and choice making. We will consider how action, perception and imagination are at play as we explore our poetic sensibilities through movement and touch.
Chris and Angie are leading international performers of dance improvisation and composition who have collaborated with Steve Paxton and Nancy Stark Smith and received numerous awards for their artistic work individually and together.
“The floor is the foundation.” - Andrea Olsen, 2020

Dancing Your Age Workshop/Event
with Andrea Olsen + world-music percussionist Tony Vacca
2 - 4pm, The Workroom (space open 30 min before for check-in/arrival)
Sliding scale $15 - $30; for experienced movers; limited places
Dancing Your Age in The Workroom is a group improvisation that features the lives of participating dancers and the world-music of percussionist Tony Vacca. Each participant draws on their kinesthetic imagination and embodied memories to explore every year in their lives through movement, from their earliest days to the present, creating a shared experience that is at once individual but held within the rhythms of Tony Vacca's music and this unique place and time.
Dancing Your Age is a practice that is taking place at multiple dance workshop sites held by Olsen globally during 2023-25.

Andrea Olsen is a dancer, writer, educator, and long-time participant in creative endeavors in Northampton—including hosting the Build-A-Floor project and celebration. She teaches and performs internationally and is author of four books on embodiment: Bodystories, Body and Earth, The Place of Dance, and Moving Between Worlds.
Tony Vacca is a self-described “rhythm nomad.” Over the course of his career locally and globally, he has made a habit of pushing the already adventurous conventions of World Music into new territory, both as a soloist and as the leader of three group projects: World Music Ensemble, Fusion Nomads, and The Senegal-America Project. Twenty-one trips to West Africa and many cross-cultural collaborations have contributed to his unique approach and to his depth of knowledge regarding African and American musical traditions. He currently has eight recordings and a new book of words called “the Rescue of Luminous Being."
Tony has worked creatively with Olsen since l978, creating balafon music for dance classes at Thornes Market; they continue their journey four decades later through the Dancing Your Age project.
Tony Vacca is a self-described “rhythm nomad.” Over the course of his career locally and globally, he has made a habit of pushing the already adventurous conventions of World Music into new territory, both as a soloist and as the leader of three group projects: World Music Ensemble, Fusion Nomads, and The Senegal-America Project. Twenty-one trips to West Africa and many cross-cultural collaborations have contributed to his unique approach and to his depth of knowledge regarding African and American musical traditions. He currently has eight recordings and a new book of words called “the Rescue of Luminous Being."
Tony has worked creatively with Olsen since l978, creating balafon music for dance classes at Thornes Market; they continue their journey four decades later through the Dancing Your Age project.
SATURDAY, MAY 4
“The floor is the environment, the other, the world.” - Christie Svane, 2020
Drawing on their years of experience dancing and teaching contact improvisation and their engagements with Nancy Stark Smith and Steve Paxton about the form, Chris Aiken, Angie Hauser, and Sarah Young will look at contact improvisation from a historical and futurist perspective. They will consider aspects of its fifty-year evolution and ask questions about how it might continue to grow. Considerations will likely include the contexts where CI is practiced, how it is taught, and its relevance within the broader contexts of dance.
“Providing a sprung floor that is safe and caring of the body is a profound way to recognize the value that this kind of work has in society.” - Kathy Couch, 2020

Floor Donor’s Celebration and Early Seating
6-6:40pm, The Workroom
for floor donors only
Were you a Build-A-Floor Donor? THANK YOU!
Join the floor project team hosted by Lisa Thompson for a welcoming conversation including the vision for the sprung floor, the Workroom and 33 Hawley's successful renovations; choose your seats early for the performance!
6-6:40pm, The Workroom
for floor donors only
Were you a Build-A-Floor Donor? THANK YOU!
Join the floor project team hosted by Lisa Thompson for a welcoming conversation including the vision for the sprung floor, the Workroom and 33 Hawley's successful renovations; choose your seats early for the performance!
“The floor—not just any floor, but a floor designed and built to support creative exploration—is the literal platform which holds artist and audience together, forging community.” - H.B. Kronen, 2020

TRANSMISSION: A Gala Performance
honoring the new floor for dancing and the lineage of Nancy Stark Smith, Steve Paxton, and Contact Improvisation
7-9 PM, The Workroom
Sliding scale: $15-$30
This Gala performance pairs seven decades of older and younger dancers, lighting designers, and musicians. The celebratory evening includes dance artists Chris Aiken, Angie Hauser, Sarah Konner and ensemble, Maya LaLiberté, Cameron McKinney, Andrea Olsen, Molly Rose-Williams, Joey Schmitz, and lighting and design elements by Kathy Couch with Emrys Maxner and Ruby Aiken.
honoring the new floor for dancing and the lineage of Nancy Stark Smith, Steve Paxton, and Contact Improvisation
7-9 PM, The Workroom
Sliding scale: $15-$30
This Gala performance pairs seven decades of older and younger dancers, lighting designers, and musicians. The celebratory evening includes dance artists Chris Aiken, Angie Hauser, Sarah Konner and ensemble, Maya LaLiberté, Cameron McKinney, Andrea Olsen, Molly Rose-Williams, Joey Schmitz, and lighting and design elements by Kathy Couch with Emrys Maxner and Ruby Aiken.
SUNDAY, MAY 5
“The floor is about the future.” - Lisa Nelson, 2020

A Tuning Score: composition, communication, and the sense of imagination; with Lisa Nelson
9-10:45am, The Workroom (space open 30 min before for check-in/arrival)
Sliding scale: $15-$30; all levels of experience welcome
How do we sense and make sense of movement, from inside and out? While innate patterns of our sense organs are programmed to detect stability and change moment by moment, we layer on filters of attention throughout our lives, building new sensing-movement patterns that help us survive our cultural environment. We make choices from this pallette. What happens when we alter these habitual patterns and filters while moving and observing...anything? A Tuning Score is a living format that offers communication tools for real-time editing, recycling and collaboration within a shared image space. Through our play, we can touch the (extra)ordinary self-knowledge that animates our choices as beings and artists facing challenges together, and collectively reimagine the illusion of a stable world.
Lisa Nelson is a dance artist and explorer of the role of the senses in the performance and observation of movement. She is intrigued by dance behaviors, systems of transmission and translation, patterns of surviving culture and the sense of imagination. She co-edited Contact Quarterly dance journal beginning in l976 with Nancy Stark Smith and continues to shepherd its digital presence into this decade. Lisa dedicates this Build-A-Floor event to her long-time creative partner, Steve Paxton.
9-10:45am, The Workroom (space open 30 min before for check-in/arrival)
Sliding scale: $15-$30; all levels of experience welcome
How do we sense and make sense of movement, from inside and out? While innate patterns of our sense organs are programmed to detect stability and change moment by moment, we layer on filters of attention throughout our lives, building new sensing-movement patterns that help us survive our cultural environment. We make choices from this pallette. What happens when we alter these habitual patterns and filters while moving and observing...anything? A Tuning Score is a living format that offers communication tools for real-time editing, recycling and collaboration within a shared image space. Through our play, we can touch the (extra)ordinary self-knowledge that animates our choices as beings and artists facing challenges together, and collectively reimagine the illusion of a stable world.
Lisa Nelson is a dance artist and explorer of the role of the senses in the performance and observation of movement. She is intrigued by dance behaviors, systems of transmission and translation, patterns of surviving culture and the sense of imagination. She co-edited Contact Quarterly dance journal beginning in l976 with Nancy Stark Smith and continues to shepherd its digital presence into this decade. Lisa dedicates this Build-A-Floor event to her long-time creative partner, Steve Paxton.

Dancing Your Age—Performance
12-2pm, Shepherd Barn, Historic Northampton
66 Bridge Street, Northampton
Sliding scale $10-$25
In partnership with A.P.E@Hawley. Funding benefits Historic Northampton and A.P.E@33 Hawley
Dancing Your Age is a group performance that features the lives of five dancers and the world-music of percussionist Tony Vacca inside the newly restored, historic Shepherd Barn (1805). Each dancer draws on their kinesthetic imagination and embodied memories to explore every year in their lives through movement, from their earliest days to the present, creating a performance that is at once individual but held within the rhythms of Tony Vacca's music.
Dancing your Age is a practice developed by dance artist Andrea Olsen that is taking place at different dance sites around the globe from 2023-25.
Welcome and introductory remarks by Historic Northampton co-directors Elizabeth Sharpe and Laurie Sanders.
Performances by Chris Aiken, Angie Hauser, Maya LaLiberté, Cameron McKinney, and Andrea Olsen
Q & A and conversation with the audience to follow performance.
12-2pm, Shepherd Barn, Historic Northampton
66 Bridge Street, Northampton
Sliding scale $10-$25
In partnership with A.P.E@Hawley. Funding benefits Historic Northampton and A.P.E@33 Hawley
Dancing Your Age is a group performance that features the lives of five dancers and the world-music of percussionist Tony Vacca inside the newly restored, historic Shepherd Barn (1805). Each dancer draws on their kinesthetic imagination and embodied memories to explore every year in their lives through movement, from their earliest days to the present, creating a performance that is at once individual but held within the rhythms of Tony Vacca's music.
Dancing your Age is a practice developed by dance artist Andrea Olsen that is taking place at different dance sites around the globe from 2023-25.
Welcome and introductory remarks by Historic Northampton co-directors Elizabeth Sharpe and Laurie Sanders.
Performances by Chris Aiken, Angie Hauser, Maya LaLiberté, Cameron McKinney, and Andrea Olsen
Q & A and conversation with the audience to follow performance.
“A sprung dance floor allows me to be fully creative, responsive, and comfortable in bringing my dance visions to life.”
- Cameron McKinney, 2020
- Cameron McKinney, 2020

Cameron McKinney: Master Class in Nagare Technique
Co-hosted with SCDT and Maya LaLiberté
2-4pm, The Workroom (space open 30 min before for check-in/arrival)
Sliding scale $15-$30; for experienced movers
While rooted in a contemporary floorwork-based sensibility, the class combines the grace of modern with the speed and fluidity of streetdance styles and capoeira. The class activates oppositional forces and contrasting sensations to achieve fluid transitions in and out of the floor. Phrases will involve every part of the body -- whether in the air or on the ground. The class focuses on how to move from smoothly high to low, and on how to rediscover "the down" through the floorwork-oriented aspects of house dance, capoeira, and contemporary dance. By shifting the focus from an internal dialogue to creating movement that, in its own physicality, can tell a story by itself, the class will delve deeper into the cathartic potential of sweat and exhaustion, while offering a new and active method of expression.
Cameron McKinney is a New York City-based choreographer and educator. As the Artistic Director of Kizuna Dance, he uses the performing arts to further connections between the American and Japanese cultures. In addition to being both a U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission Creative Artist Fellow and an Asian Cultural Council Individual Fellow, he has been awarded choreography fellowships from The School at Jacob’s Pillow, Princeton University, and the Alvin Ailey Foundation. He has presented work and taught in twenty states and four countries, including in the U.S. Ambassador’s Residence in Tokyo. He has received over 30 commissions from arts institutions across the country and abroad. His professorial credits include Princeton University, Montclair University, and NYU Tisch, among others. Each year, he organizes Kizuna Dance’s Open Intensive, a week of day-long intensives made entirely free for all participants. His 2024 teaching tour will feature workshops in the UK, Belgium, France, and Germany. Cameron studied with Nancy Stark Smith in 2013 at the Bates Dance Festival and just celebrated the 10th anniversary of Kizuna Dance. See Cameron's Instagram.
Co-hosted with SCDT and Maya LaLiberté
2-4pm, The Workroom (space open 30 min before for check-in/arrival)
Sliding scale $15-$30; for experienced movers
While rooted in a contemporary floorwork-based sensibility, the class combines the grace of modern with the speed and fluidity of streetdance styles and capoeira. The class activates oppositional forces and contrasting sensations to achieve fluid transitions in and out of the floor. Phrases will involve every part of the body -- whether in the air or on the ground. The class focuses on how to move from smoothly high to low, and on how to rediscover "the down" through the floorwork-oriented aspects of house dance, capoeira, and contemporary dance. By shifting the focus from an internal dialogue to creating movement that, in its own physicality, can tell a story by itself, the class will delve deeper into the cathartic potential of sweat and exhaustion, while offering a new and active method of expression.
Cameron McKinney is a New York City-based choreographer and educator. As the Artistic Director of Kizuna Dance, he uses the performing arts to further connections between the American and Japanese cultures. In addition to being both a U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission Creative Artist Fellow and an Asian Cultural Council Individual Fellow, he has been awarded choreography fellowships from The School at Jacob’s Pillow, Princeton University, and the Alvin Ailey Foundation. He has presented work and taught in twenty states and four countries, including in the U.S. Ambassador’s Residence in Tokyo. He has received over 30 commissions from arts institutions across the country and abroad. His professorial credits include Princeton University, Montclair University, and NYU Tisch, among others. Each year, he organizes Kizuna Dance’s Open Intensive, a week of day-long intensives made entirely free for all participants. His 2024 teaching tour will feature workshops in the UK, Belgium, France, and Germany. Cameron studied with Nancy Stark Smith in 2013 at the Bates Dance Festival and just celebrated the 10th anniversary of Kizuna Dance. See Cameron's Instagram.