Lucía and José have lived, danced, and taught together for over 25 years in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Their research is rooted in the simple phenomena of everyday life, interwoven with Contact Improvisation (CI) as an initiatory practice that can unite the different quadrants of Being. They are currently interested in the process of individuation through the power of physical contact, as an entry into the state of "Primordial Improvisation." They have also been captivated by the passion of assisting and accompanying births.

For them, CI is a way of life, a language for understanding and sharing in the world, a policy of action that distills feeling and thought. They create and produce events related to Contact Improvisation: Jams, Labs, performances, classes, gatherings, and festivals (Buenos Aires CI Festival). A current focus is on generating offline spaces for practice and teaching to care for and nurture nature without the interference of the ethical and aesthetic indoctrination proposed by domestic technological devices and social networks. Recently, they conceived and coordinated a seminar on teaching Contact Improvisation Pedagogy in a laboratory format, aimed at discovering keys for the transmission and expansion of the practice of C.I., which is their main interest at this time.

Choreographer/improvisor, pedagogue, dance theorist and performer Nina Martin Performance. Centered in the phenomena of perception, composition and spontaneous movement states her research springs from over 40 years of embodied research in postmodern dance aesthetics and especially into the workings of the human neuro/visual perceptual system and preconscious movement phenomena. Martin tours across the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia teaching and performing inspired by dance systems: Ensemble Thinking™ and ReWire Movement States™ which complement her practice of Contact Improvisation.

Performance/collaboration credits include Lower Left Performance Collective, Martha Clarke, Shelley Senter, Roma Flowers, Barbara Dilley, David Gordon Pick-Up Company, Mary Overlie, Deborah Hay, Simone Forti, and Steve Paxton along with Daniel Lepkoff, Lisa Nelson, Warshaw, and Nancy Stark Smith in the PBS Dance in America Beyond the Mainstream nationally televised program. Martin’s choreographies received six fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as other honors. Martin also danced as a founding artist of Channel Z in NYC with Lepkoff, Paul Langland, Diane Madden, Stephen Petronio, Warshaw, and Robin Feld.  

Martin is an artist member of the Lower Left Performance Collective where cooperative inquiry is valued: Lower Left Collective. ReWire Movement States™ and Ensemble Thinking™ are dance systems initially conceived by Nina Martin and continually developed by Lower Left artists which also offers a certification program inEnsemble Thinking. Martin hosts dance destinations in Far West Texas in the artful town of Marfa in the Chihuahuan Desert. Martin is a newly certified teacher in Gyrotonic™ and she is a Professor of Dance Studies at TCU School for Classical & Contemporary Dance SCCDance.

Director, choreographer, dancer, teacher, and somatic movement educator.

Originally from Hermosillo, Sonora, and based in Tijuana since 2007, Miros is a graduate of the Mazatlán Professional Dance School, holds a Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Sonora, and a Master's degree in Marine Sciences from UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico). She was co-director, choreographer, teacher, and artist-manager of the Péndulo Cero Contemporary Dance company from its inception for 15 years, and currently serves as president of Péndulo Cero AC. She co-founded and co-directed the Chilean-Mexican company Hunabkú Danza, with whom she collaborated in Mexico and Chile from 2002 to 2006.

Committed to the development of artistic, environmental, and humanist projects from an interdisciplinary perspective, her work has been presented in China, South Korea, Japan, India, Spain, the United States, Argentina, Guatemala, Chile, Germany, and Mexico. She is a certified Somatic Movement Educator by the Body Mind Movement Center Mexico, and a certified facilitator of Participatory Collaborations from Cultural Biology at Matríztica School of Thought.

She currently promotes her project Somas Somos, directs the comprehensive space Casa Viva, and offers workshops such as Expansion from the Body, Body Sanctuary, Water Bodies, Body Love and Autonomy, and Movement and Well-being for Adults in their Prime. In addition to her personal research projects in various fields, she collaborates throughout the year with Mujeres en Ritual Danza Teatro, Purple Dancing Club, and is a co-facilitator in the binational experimental dance platform (somatic and contemplative practices) PORTAL.

Choreographer, dancer, actress, and arts educator

Born in Mexico, she has been based in the border city of Tijuana, Baja California, since 2004, and is a graduate of the Professional Dance School of Mazatlán, Sinaloa. In her career as a performer, she has worked with choreographers such as Claudia Lavista, Phillip Adams, Allyson Green, Leslie Seiters, Joe Alter, Victor Ruíz, Daina Ashbee, Jess Humphrey, and Sebastian Garcia Ferro, touring in Mexico, South America, the United States, and Europe.

She is passionate about movement as a means of dialogue in relation to space and the physical, sensory, emotional, social, and abstract body, in diverse sociocultural contexts; powerful stimuli for stage creation, energetic renewal, and physical, emotional, and mental well-being. She is interested in body-based education as a catalyst for regenerating social fabrics, supporting emotional well-being, and providing fundamental education for human development in contexts of neglect, vulnerable areas, and for older adults. She is curious about the intersection of disciplines in contemporary stage creation, elements that broaden the theatrical spectrum with global concepts and codes, capable of generating interaction between the spectator and the performer.

She currently collaborates on various projects in the San Diego-Tijuana region, including Incendio Producciones, Clepsidra Scenic Research Laboratory, and Mascherología en Movimiento. She co-directs the binational platform PORTAL with artists Miroslava Wilson and Jessica Humphrey, and directs the Mobility and Wellness project for older adults.

Jessica makes dances to leverage the profound healing potential of human beings moving together, attending to space, time, and bodies, and deepening their relationships with each other and the world through the tenderness and vulnerability elicited by the creative process. Her movement research began in childhood with gymnastics and continues with dancemaking from various, shifting perspectives, and states of body~mind. Her dances are expressions of her engagement with paradox, contemplative and somatic practices, Integral Theory, Practice-as-Research, and reverence for works of those within whose lineages she moves. 

She has co-created several evening-length dances over the past 20 years with artists such as Deborah Hay, Sara Shelton Mann, Gabor Tompa, Guillermo Gomez-Pena’s La Postra Nostra, Leslie Seiters, LIVE, and throughout her 13-year collaboration with Eric Geiger. 

In 2021, she initiated Portal, a transborder dance experiment born on Zoom during the pandemic and continuing to grow IRL on both sides of the US-Mexico border. She now co-facilitates this platform for dances created through somatic and contemplative experimentation alongside Briseida López Inzunza and Miroslava Wilson Montoya.

She has an MFA in Modern Dance with a focus on contact improvisation and creative process from the University of Utah (2008) and a BFA in Dance from California State University, Long Beach (2002). 

Intensive study with Deborah Hay in 2009 changed her life and continues to inspire her every move.  She is a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist (RSMT) with the International Somatic Movement and Therapy Association (ISMETA) and is certified in Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis through the Integrated Movement Studies Program (IMS, 2006) with primary teachers Peggy Hackney and Janice Meaden, Dance-Specific Pilates with Body Arts and Sciences, International (BASI, 2002) with Karen Clippinger and Rael Isocowitz, has studied Body-Mind Centering® (BMC®) with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and Amy Matthews, and will graduate from the BMC® Somatic Movement Educator Program at Moving Within with Mary Lou Seereiter in 2025/26. She has studied the Feldenkrais Method® with Seiters, Geiger, and Kristen Baum Wilcox and Alexander Technique with Marjean McKenna, Eileen Troberman, and Shelley Senter. 

After experiencing the shadow dynamics of horizontal, non-hierarchical group structures, she was inspired to pursue training in the facilitation of conflict as a creative process as well as leadership that cultivates healthy hierarchy through the integration of both top-down and bottom-up processes. Her certification in Integral Facilitation® (Ten Directions, 2019) with Diane Musho Hamilton, Rob McNamara, Cindy Lou Golin, Gabriel Wilson and Rebecca Ejo Colwell informs her work in the studio, within institutions, and throughout the community.

In her role as a Professor of Dance at SDSU, Jessica continues to learn through teaching (dancemaking, contact improvisation, embodied anatomy, somatics, making dances with students and mentoring their dancemaking processes), researching (somatic and contemplative practices in dancemaking as paths to healing, psychophysical development, and spiritual deepening), and working with the Prison Arts Collective to bring arts education to incarcerated participants.

www.jesshumphrey.com

Dancer, producer, and movement researcher dedicated to Somatic Education, Contact Improvisation, and Evolutionary Aquatic Movement. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Dance from UDLAP and is a Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist certified by Body-Mind Movement® (Mexico and Brazil), a certified Janzu® Aquatic Therapy facilitator, and currently in ongoing training with AquaSoma®.

Her work is focused on the exploration of developmental movement patterns as portals to sensitivity, perception, and proprioception, both in terrestrial and aquatic environments. Her somatic landscape is largely grounded in the practice of improvisation and CI, through which she investigates how movement and contact open sensomotor pathways for the creation of relational ecosystems, where the soma is inhabited as a living territory, revealing more embodied forms of presence.

Since 2011, she has organized and participated in numerous gatherings, workshops, and events related to dance, improvisation, Contact Improvisation, and Somatic Education in Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Argentina, New Zealand, the United States, and Ecuador.

Natalie is a community weaver, interdisciplinary planner and psychedelics lawyer based in San Diego, CA. Her creative practice is at the intersection of dance, ritual theatre, and spiritual ecology.

She is the founder and producer of The Ouroboros Collaborative, a creative platform supporting movement-based and ceremonial offerings, and co-founder and co-curator of SAVIA CI & Somatic Movement Festival.

Natalie’s movement lineage includes long-term study and collaboration in Contact Improvisation, aikido, yoga, and experimental dance, with teachers and artists from California and abroad.

She has a BA in Theatre & Political Science from Boston College, JD from UC Law of San Francisco, and MA in City & Regional Planning from UC Berkeley. She was born & raised in Northern Virginia, is a dual Mexican citizen, and has ancestral roots in the Upper Peninsula and Finland.

www.theouroboroscollaborative.com

A mover exploring the relationships that emerge through contact between bodies, curious about bridging embodied experience and language.

She has trained independently across Mexico, Argentina, and the United States through workshops in dance improvisation, composition, acrobatic movement, and somatics.

In 2017, she completed the Formación de Artistas Contemporáneos para la Escena at Galpón FACE. She began practicing Contact Improvisation in Buenos Aires in 2019, and it has since become central to her movement practice.

She co-founded and co-directed Improvisación & Contacto until 2024, a platform for improvisation and performance creation workshops in Tijuana.

She currently teaches regular Contact Improvisation classes at Círculo de Aikido dojo, where she actively works to build and sustain community, and co-organizes Savia: CI and Somatic Movement Festival.