David will facilitate an Underscore and will play live music for it. More details to follow soon.
Attendees are invited to bring food to share together afterwards.
3:00 - 4:00 Arrive and talk through for people who haven't done the Underscore before
4:00 Arrival of people familiar with the Underscore
4:00 - 4:30 Assembly - a space for the group to come together, share and set intentions
4:30 - 7:00 Moving together for 2.5 hours
7:00 - 7:30 Harvest - coming together to verbally share and reflect
7:30 - 8:30 Foodshare meal
8:30 - 9:00 Clearing up and leaving
Supported : £15
Standard: £18
Extra support: £10 (For those in financial difficulty - limited number available)
Any queries email
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The Underscore practice
The Underscore, which was conceived by Nancy Stark Smith, takes the improvising dancer through a number of states of listening and awareness that commonly occur within an improvised dance / Contact jam setting. Beginning with a deeply internal focus the practice gradually expands outwards until the dancer is invited to engage more fully with the physical space and everyone within it.
Nancy always referred to the Underscore as both a personal research tool, one that allows each individual the opportunity to scrutinize how they engage with the dance, while at the same time being a frame that supports the dancers to establish deeper and more sustaining connections with the others that they are sharing the practice with.
An important aspect of the Underscore is that the facilitator does not guide the dancers through the process but rather introduces the practice before the practice starts. This leaves the responsibility of navigating through the various stages of the practice to each individual. In this way, the practice exists in between being both a prescriptive guide and a descriptive tool, that beautifully supports and under-scores what naturally happens when we come together to dance.
Having first worked with Nancy and her partner, composer Mike Vargas, in 2003, my approach to my facilitation of the practice remains very true to how I was introduced to it. As a facilitator of the practice, I am particularly focused on emphasizing how the Underscore can greatly support each individual’s personal journey into contact improvisation: with the practice effortlessly providing permission and space for a wider range of connections through dance.
Teacher Biography
Double bassist and dancer, David Leahy has been an active member of both the free improvised music and contact improvisation scenes ever since his arrival from New Zealand in 1998. As a musician, David has performed with many of the leading figures on the free music scene and has a long-standing relationship with artists such as Philipp Wachsmann, Terry Day, Loz Speyer, and Neil Metcalfe to name a few. Beyond being a member of the London Contact scene, David cites Paris-based dancer Claire Filmon, former Pina Bausch dancer Geraldo Si, and Nancy Stark Smith as formative influences on his practice.
David works at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, where he is a lecturer to both music and dance students. He is particularly interested in cross-disciplinary and spatialized performance practices and continues to base much of his personal practice on Nancy Stark-Smith's, Underscore, which he translated into a music-based practice in 2014.
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