Contact Improv, or Contact Improvisation (CI), is an improvised dance form that the dance journal Contact Quarterly describes as an evolving system of movement initiated in 1972 by American choreographer Steve Paxton.
An early definition by Paxton and others, printed in Contact Quarterly in 1979, says the form is based on the communication between two moving bodies that are in physical contact and their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern their motion: gravity, momentum and inertia. Practice includes rolling, falling, being upside down, following a physical point of contact, and supporting and giving weight to a partner.
According to Contact Quarterly, CI was first presented as a series of performances conceived and directed by Paxton in June 1972 at the John Weber Gallery in New York City, with about 17 students and colleagues invited to take part. Paxton, a member of several New York modern dance companies in the 1960s, including that of Merce Cunningham, first proposed Contact Improvisation during his time with the dance theater collective Grand Union.
The journal reports that the form has spread from the East and West coasts of the United States to studios, schools and art centers around the world, and that thousands of people practice, perform and teach it on all continents except Antarctica. Contact Quarterly describes jams as leaderless practice environments where dancers practice the form with whoever gathers. The journal itself began in 1975 as the Contact Newsletter and became Contact Quarterly in 1976.