Beginner Contact Improvisation Workshop

This class will take a gentle approach to how to enter into touching, dancing and sharing weight with others.

This class will serve as an introductory class to partnering, for the student new to partnering and those who are looking for a slow dive into using touch in their dance practice. Utilizing contact improvisation techniques, and a massage therapist’s perspective on touch, this class will take a gentle approach to how to enter into touching, dancing and sharing weight with others. We will build consent, safety, and conditioning exercises as a foundation for the partnering scores we explore throughout the class. Opportunities for open discussion surrounding touch will be incorporated throughout class.

Cost: $20-30 pay upon arrival, low income options available email beadle.kara@gmail.com for more information

Time: 6:30-8:30pm Tues, Feb 17nd

Location: Spectrum Dance Theater, 800 Lake Washington Blvd, Seattle, WA 98122 

Age: 18+

Additional Info:

This summer Kara Beadle will teach the Beginner Cohort at Velocity Dance Center’s Seattle Festival of Dance + Improvisation. his is a great opportunity to try out dancing with Kara! The Beginner Cohort is for adults who want to dive into the world of dance in Seattle. This cohort meets in the evening three days a week. Participants in this cohort will start by taking beginner technique classes in the styles of Contemporary and House. The focus of this cohort is to create a supportive environment for people new to dance to take risks, get in their bodies, and find a shared practice within the community. This year the Beginner Cohort will make a new dance in collaboration with Kara Beadle. This workshop is an introduction to Kara’s choreographic process to give you a taste of what working with them this summer will be like! Read more here: https://summer.velocitydancecenter.org/beginner-performance-cohort/

BIO:

Kara Beadle (they/them) is a movement artist, dance educator, and massage therapist based in Seattle, WA. As a non-binary, neuro-queer dance maker, Kara values queering dance through humor, improvisation, and object/human relationships to explore their interest in the interplay between neurodivergence, gender-nonconformance, the pressure to fit into society, and performative art. Kara is a lead collaborator of Heap, a Seattle-based performance troupe created with musician and handyman extraordinaire Andy Zacek and several rotating artists. Their experimental theatrics celebrate abundance, while critiquing overconsumption. Inside the fantasy worlds they build, Heap queers reductive ideas on bodily autonomy by drawing parallels between humans and objects. In Kara’s work absurd scenarios are created between objects and bodies to subvert objectification and flaunt our lust for inanimate things.

Since 2019, Heap has performed in NYC’s Estrogenius Festival, On The Boards Spectacle Spectacular, Next Fest Northwest: Rupture/Reverence, Texas Dance Improvisation Festival, Show 5, Georgetown’s Art Attack, The Shed’s Being Mode Residency Showing: Character Arc, Open Flight Studio’s Flight Deck Residency Showing, 18th and Union’s Portable Performance Festival, Velocity Dance Center’s Fall Kick-off: Portals, Launch, TakePause, and The Seattle International Dance Festival. Kara is a 2025/2026 City Artist Grant Recipient which has helped fund their project, HeapRide, which puts audiences on bikes to witness performance along Seattle streets from behind the handlebars. HeapRide will take place on May 2nd, 9th, and 17th.