Updated June 09 2025 – Mis à jour le 09 juin 2025
Let’s Dance! Subscription information is at the bottom of this newsletter. – Ian!
Hello, Ottawa/Gatineau area dancers and movers.
Events in or originating from the local Ottawa/Gatineau/Wakefield/Lanark/CarletonPlace Region
Events that recur weekly or monthly show only the nearest upcoming event or two. Follow the link for future events.
The events in this section recur weekly, with some exceptions. Check the official event page to make sure the event is scheduled on the day you want to attend.
If you’re new to Contact Improvisation Dance, attend the next free CI Basics class/jam in September 2025 below.
CI dancers who have already taken a CI Basics class in Ottawa are welcome to attend any of our weekly Saturday CI jams in June 2025 and September 2025 through June 2026. (No Saturday CI during July and August.)
This dance takes place mostly weekly, outdoors at Mooney’s Bay, all year round. See the facebook: Dance to Nature group or contact Alana O’Donnell for current information. Some Sundays have no facilitated dances.
The grassy dance area is not very friendly to wheelchairs, though there are paved paths adjacent. Accessible city washrooms are available in the main building at Mooney’s Bay.
Bonjour à toutes et à tous: J’aspire pour cette nouvelle année à une abondance de rêves improbables. Puisque les résolutions ne semblent pas marcher, allons dans le mystère de la vie et dansons.
La pratique régulière de la biodanza est essentielle au processus de développement humain que la Biodanza propose. Le groupe Multiniveau du mercredi est là pour vous faire découvrir et profiter du plaisir de danser.
Je vous propose une session hiver-printemps 2025 le MERCREDI SOIR de DIALOGUE AVEC LES POSSIBLES. Les possibles sont les potentialités que nous possédons déjà ; à nous de les manifester, « L’impossible devient possible, le possible devient facile, le facile devient agréable et l’agréable devient élégant » (Feldenkrais)
Alors osons l’élégance et la danse !
Au plaisir de vous retrouver ou de vous rencontrer pour révéler nos possibles.
A bilingual English/French Biodanza evening open to all to celebrate summer and discover Biodanza. Facilitated by Isabelle Burnier and by Alana O’Donnell, EBM facilitator in training. Proceeds will be donated to a local charity. No Biodanza experience is necessary.
Une soirée de Biodanza ouverte à toutes et à tous pour célébrer l’été et découvrir la Biodanza. Facilitée par Isabelle Burnier et Alana O’Donnell, facilitatrice stagiaire de l’EBM. Les bénéfices seront distribués à une association caritative. Aucune expérience de biodanza nécessaire.
- VENDREDI 13 JUIN de 19H30 À 22H
- aucune expérience de Biodanza nécessaire.
- LIEU : The Space. Hotel British. 71 rue principale à AYLMER, stationnement dans les rues voisines
- TENUE: souple et confortable. On peut danser pieds nus ou avec des espadrilles d’intérieur. (sol en vinyle mixte). L’espace est climatisé. N’oubliez pas votre bouteille d’eau.
This event is for women only.
✨ Intuitive Belly dance workshop ✨
Join us for a unique Sacred Flow: Belly Dance Workshop, where movement becomes a gateway to deeper connection, release, and joy.
🔥This is a space for self-expression, emotional freedom, connection with others, and the celebration of the body. 🌟No Experience Needed
This workshop invites you to explore movement as medicine. Dance as a therapy. Through guided activities, you’ll have the opportunity to express emotions, connect with others, and experience the joy of movement in a supportive environment.
This is not a technical class in Belly dance. Rather than focusing on specific steps, the workshop offers an opportunity to explore movement as a form of expression and emotional release, emphasizing personal connection, creativity, and community.
✨You are warmly encouraged to participate fully and authentically.
Intuitive Belly Dance is a transformative practice that blends the expressive movements of traditional belly dance with the freedom and self-awareness of intuitive movement. Unlike structured choreography, this approach encourages dancers to listen deeply to their bodies and emotions, allowing spontaneous movement to emerge in response to inner sensations and feelings.
This event is for women only.
The start time is approximate. Each weekly dance does it differently, so you have to check The Facebook event for the current week to know the actual start time and dance schedule.
These Thursday evening Ecstatic Dances usually take place on the first and third Thursdays of each month at the Rosemount Orange Hall at 41 Rosemount Avenue in Ottawa. Different people run these events, each with their own facebook sites, so you have to look in multiple places to find out the details. The start times aren’t always the same; check online before you head out. The events are only visible on The Facebook; there is no public web page. Try looking in all these places for the upcoming events:
The Rosemount Orange Hall is not accessible; there are many steps up to the dance floor and the washroom is too small for a wheelchair.
Slip inside your skin, taste deeper instincts, what is here under your feet, senses awakening. Sensation, vibration, texture, form…the aliveness moving through you right now. Listen, follow, this moment as it shifts as it changes. Blink of your eyes, twist of your flesh, a flick of wrist, the uncurling spine welcomes new insight, lick your lips. Pause, softening breath, presence. Beginners and lovers of dance welcome. 5Rhythms is a simple, yet profound map. No experience necessary, just a willingness to move.
Sarah Blagg is a qualified & experienced 5Rhythms Teacher. She has offered classes & workshops for 17 years. Sarah is also an Open Floor Movement Teacher, Yoga Instructor & runs support circles for girls. Raised in Quebec & Ottawa. Lives in England. Reach Sarah at dancetherhythms@gmail.com
If this speaks to you, and you are all ready to register. Please complete the form below and make a payment to confirm your early bird spot. We looking forward to have you join us!
Register for 5 Rhythms Solstice
Au Solstice D’ été ç’est le temps d’ honorer le soleil, la lumière en nous
avec la danse. Atelier du niveau “Waves”
“Awakening Instinct” 20-22 Juin, 2025
Instincts plus profonds
Qu’est ce qu’il y a ici sous tes pieds ?
Réveillez vos sens
la vitalité qui te traverse en çe moment
Ecoute, suis ce moment qui change…
qui change en un clin d’oeil..
La colonne vertebrale qui peut deroulé, soulagé les muscles, çe corps éveillé
Laisse adoucir ton souffle avec presence.
Que ce sois ta première fois ou centième..Bienvenue à tous!
5Rhythms sont une forme simple mais avec profondeur.
Aucune expérience nécessaire, seulement une volonté de bouger.
Atelier animé par 5Rhythms facilitatrice Sarah Blagg, pleinement qualifié avec plus de 16 ans expèrience avec les classes, les ateliers et les danses dans le bois.
Sarah enseigne aussi Open Floor et dirige des cercles de soutien pour les filles.
Sarah viens d’Ottawa et le Québec. Elle habite à Sheffield en Angleterre.
Ottawa hosts its first ever Contact Improvisation facebook event: Global Underscore 1 Ottawa Gatineau
The Global Underscore long-form Contact Improv Dance Jam takes place world-wide on Saturday June 21 in 2025.
Here in Ottawa, we are hosting a parallel three-hour Underscore event on Saturday June 21 in the usual Studio “B” at Arts Court, preceded by an hour-long Underscore Talk-Through Orientation:
Underscore1
Ottawa Gatineau Underscore1 will be held in the fully accessible ODD/CDC Studio “B”, Arts Court at 2 Daly Avenue, downtown Ottawa. Arts Court is wheelchair accessible through the entrance at 67 Nicholas Street.
For additional information and questions: Noris at mangos72@hotmail.com or via Facebook/Messenger: Ori Evale
For registration: please send an e-transfer to Alejandro at aledemaio@yahoo.com and include the word Underscore1
Sliding scale: $5 Talk-Through Orientation, $10 Underscore CI-Jam. The studio has a maximum capacity of 30 people. Advanced registration is highly recommended.
Safety: 1) Stay home if you are feeling unwell. 2) To maintain our dance community standards, dance experience and training including consent is required.
Description: This event will focus on Nancy Starks Smith underscore principles presented in a detailed Talk-Through orientation 11:15-12:15. You can skip the orientation if you have already attended a Talk-Through session in the past. After the orientation, we have 3 hours for the underscore.
The underscore is a safe container to explore several phases, as one connects to oneself, others and the rest of the global underscore mass. More information regarding the event and facilitators will follow.
Hope to see you there!
The Global Underscore (in this newsletter)
You can find Global Underscore events in other communities on the facebook Global Underscore page.
We welcome you to our Dances of Universal Peace.
We will dance at the First United Church in the Westboro neighborhood of Ottawa. You are invited to dance for peace – bring a friend! The Dances of Universal Peace are a 40 year old tradition of dancing to simple chants from a variety of the world’s religions in a simple and peaceful moving meditation. Newcomers are happily welcomed. No previous experience or dance partner needed. All dances and movements are learned on the spot. A donation will be requested (Suggested $10.) No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Our leaders and musicians team includes Marlene Neufeld, Bob Neufeld, Pat Kerr and Yves St-Pierre.
This location is wheelchair accessible with an accessible washroom.
PRE REQUIS: expérience hebdomadaire de Biodanza nécessaire
STAGE EN RÉSIDENCE AVEC ISABELLE BURNIER
La vie se construit sur des propositions, avec des oui et des non, cela s’appelle l’évolution. La vie se construit aussi sur des impositions, avec des je dois et des il faut; cela s’appelle la socialisation. Entre les deux, mon identité se manifeste, entourée de responsabilité et d’illusions.
Tout est proposition en Biodanza; le but est de nous amener à consentir le plus librement à ce qui se propose. Sortir de ce que je sais de moi pour écouter ce que la vie veut pour moi.
« Même la plus grande des forteresses reste ouverte à tous les vents »
Alors consentir à l’expérience du vivre intensément se fait si je donne mon accord à ce qui est, si je me laisse toucher par l’inconnu et si j’ai la capacité de me retirer si cela ne me convient plus.
Free CI Basics class and dance jam open to everyone on
Saturday September ?? at 11:15am.
Invite your CI-curious friends! All Welcome! No experience necessary!
We teach you everything!
Please arrive on time (11:15am) for the consent talk.
This September event is the first CI Basics class of the season. The next CI Basics class will be the first Saturday in October.
The accessible, community-run Ottawa/Gatineau Contact Improvisation Dance classes and jams run a free all-welcome CI Basics class and dance jam at 11:15am on Saturday September ?? open to everyone, especially people new to CI dance. Follow this link for details on time, location, and what to wear: Contact Improv Dance Basics. Please arrive on time (11:15am) for the consent talk.
The next free CI Basics course will be held on October 4 at the same time and venue. (This September event is the first CI Basics course of the new season.)
CI dancers who have already taken a CI Basics class in Ottawa are welcome to attend any of our weekly CI jams running mostly weekly (check the schedule!) for ten months on Saturday at 11:5am until June 27 2026 and then resuming weekly again in September 2026.
The ODD/CDC studio is fully accessible, with a large accessible washroom on
the same floor as the dance space.
This is just a Save the Date for the Wheel of Consent course being offered in Ottawa in November (with a registration link to come shortly).
The workshop will be 3 full days, Friday through Sunday (Nov 7–9) led by Helena deFelice (highly skilled!) and hosted in a large home in Central Ottawa easily accessible by public transit, bike and has street parking.
Here’s more info about Wheel of Consent: https://bettymartin.org/videos/
Unfortunately, the various Ottawa dance organizers don’t cooperate and list their events on one site, or even on each other’s sites, so you have to watch a half-dozen different places to know what’s going on. Many events don’t have public web pages, so you have to sell your soul to The Facebook to access their information. We’ve included links to some of the dance events we know about, below.
Except for the community-owned, community-run Ottawa/Gatineau Contact Improvisation Dance group, all dances are privately run.
Events outside the local Ottawa/Gatineau/Wakefield/Lanark/CarletonPlace Region
Contact Ian Allen about car pooling from Ottawa to some of the above dance events.
🌸Please join me Valerie Sabbah for ESSENTIALS : 4 sessions of 6-week courses for those beginning to roll into Contact-Improvisation and are searching to deepen their curiosity of this enigmatic and fascinating movement practice.
Although ESSENTIALS is especially for movers with no previous experience in Contact-Improvisation, it is also open to those who would like to brush up on their basic skills.
🌸 Rejoignez-moi Valerie Sabbah pour ESSENTIELS : 4 sessions de 6 semaines destiné à celles et ceux qui débutent en Contact-Improvisation et souhaitent approfondir leur curiosité pour cette pratique de mouvement énigmatique et fascinante.
Bien qu’ESSENTIELS soit spécialement conçu pour des personnes n’ayant aucune expérience préalable en Contact-Improvisation, il est également ouvert à celles et ceux qui aimeraient réviser leurs compétences de base.
An Open Floor Movement Workshop with Kathy Altman and Lori Saltzman
To unmask is to reveal our stories: the ones we hide, and the ones we always tell until they become our presentation to the world, Our stories change through the lens of time. To know, mine and revise our stories is maturity in action. Sharing stories in the good company of others is to be true to yourself and to let yourself be known.
Unmasking is for anyone who believes they are not an artist, and everyone who knows they are. Together we’ll ride the untamed river of our creative juices and let its wild current carry us. We’ll dance outside the box, draw outside the lines, pursue imperfection, and listen to the whisper of words on page.
We’ll dance with abandon, take dictation from our bodies, make colorful messes and marvel at the art taking shape in and through our hands.
Stop waiting for a creative moment and realize that you are one. Remember, it doesn’t matter how badly you dance, sing, scribble, or paint, as long as you don’t do it badly like anyone else.
Kathy and Lori have spent decades honing the craft of weaving visual art, writing and theater with dance.
Ottawa is participating in the Global Underscore
The Global Underscore long-form Contact Improv Dance Jam takes place for four hours simultaneously, world-wide at 10am-2pm EDT (14:00-18:00 UTC) on Saturday June 21 in 2025. Follow the link for a location near you, or join the global Zoom link. You can find events in other communities on the facebook Global Underscore page.
The Global Underscore Talk happens on June 14. A meta-sharing harvest happens on June 28.
The Underscore is a long-form dance improvisation structure developed by the late Nancy Stark Smith. It has been evolving since 1990 and is practiced all over the globe.
The Underscore is a vehicle for incorporating Contact Improvisation into a broader arena of improvisational dance practice; for developing greater ease dancing in spherical space—alone and with others; and for integrating kinesthetic and compositional concerns while improvising. It allows for a full spectrum of energetic and physical expressions, embodying a range of forms and changing states. Its practice is familiar yet unpredictable.
The practice—usually 3 to 4 hours in length—progresses through a broad range of dynamic states, including long periods of very small, private, and quiet internal activity and other times of higher energy and interactive dancing.
Big Heart Dance Camp always starts on the first Tuesday after Father’s Day (which itself is the third Sunday in June). 2025 will be the 15th year of celebration.
See the Big Heart Learn More page for details about Big Heart Dance Camp.
Contact Ian Allen about car pooling from Ottawa to this event.
Contact Ian Allen about car pooling from Ottawa to this event.
Details to be announced. Save the dates!
July 24–27 (over four days: Thursday to Sunday) in Sutton QC near the USA border 120km south-east of Montréal.
NOTE: The jam is four days long again this year, as it was last year!
Come for dance, pond swimming and sauna playing outdoors and night bonfire singing. Hear the roosters crow, horses gallop and frogs croak. Sleep in cabins, the big house or tent in the orchard or forest. Your summer dreams come true.
Dance New England Summer Dance Camp
Wednesday July 30 through Sunday August 10 2025.
NOTICE: The DNE web site may not be updated to 2025 yet; it may still show old information from 2024.
Up to eleven days of dance, movement, drumming, yoga, workshops, food, and clothing-optional private swimming in the woods of Camp Timber Trails outside of Tolland in south-western Massachusetts. On-site all-ages daytime child care is included in the event fee so that parents may attend workshops. A camp schedule is available (may not be updated yet for 2025).
Contact Ian Allen about car pooling from Ottawa to this event.
The Burlington Vermont International Contact Improvisation Dance Jam returns! Friday September 12 through Sunday September 14 in the historic Burlington City Hall, 71 Park St. in Burlington, Vermont.
Contact Ian Allen about car pooling from Ottawa to this event.
Contact Ian Allen about car pooling from Ottawa to this event.
Contact Ian Allen about car pooling from Ottawa to this event.
Recurring Events outside the local Ottawa/Gatineau/Wakefield/Lanark/CarletonPlace Region
Some of these events changed during the pandemic. If the listing below seems out-of-date, please contact the organizers.
facebook: Groove Tonic PEC hosts a weekly barefoot, free-form movement and dance event in Picton (Prince Edward County).
For wheelchair and washroom accessibility information, contact the organizer.
Dear contact dancers (or those who want to do contact improvisation!), Suzanne and Opal are continuing to host Contact dance Jams in Peterborough, after a summer hiatus. Details are below. Please feel free to share widely! Contact Improvisation is movement inspired by the spontaneous interaction between two people playing with weight, momentum and gravity. Beginners welcome! Contact Dance Jam is hosted the 4th Sunday of the month (with some exceptions - see below).
We will start with just an hour and a silent jam and we can consider expansion, depending on interest. Mark your calendars!
We have created guidelines to foster a culture of consent. Please review them (your feedback welcome, if you have any). We ask people to sign that they will abide by them.
This location is wheelchair accessible with an accessible washroom.
For other Peterborough dance events, e.g. Ecstatic Dance, see Dance Your Bones
OnDanse Val-David est un collectif soutenant la pratique de la danse extatique. Offert hebdomadairement, la danse suit une courbe musicale particulière pour induire un contact à soi à travers l’expression corporelle et une exploration personnelle dans le mouvement. Une rencontre entre le festif et le sacré!
Our mission: to invite pure, unabashed self-expression through movement, in a warm, permissive, nonjudgmental space. NOTE: the capacity of our space is limited to 65 people; therefore, please register ahead so that you can ensure you have a spot.
This is a dance intended for all bodies, and St. Peter’s Church is an accessible space with an elevator. There are no “moves” or “steps,” but rather just an invitation to do what feels right. This kind of dance can look like anything – it can be big, small, upright, or lying down. As long as you are moving and breathing, you are doing it right.
Dance and celebrate – Danser, se rassembler, célébrer, s’émerveiller …
Classes in Biodanza and Authentic Movement in and near Montréal with Catherine Fabiola Lessard
Currently (January 2025) only the French pages are up-to-date. The English pages still date from 2021. Use the French pages.
I recall always dancing. A tiny, faded 3×3 photograph of me in traditional garb with hair in plaits doubled over, age 4, in my village in India, shows me dancing (and caught self-consciously!). I’ve tried many forms of movement and 5Rhythms® is my home-coming. 5Rhythms® is free-form movement meditation, in every class we dance through the five energies/rhythms of Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness®. There is a vast ever-changing inner landscape of our bodies and psyches for us to be fascinated by and navigate with curiosity. Certified at the Waves level of this practice, philosophy, and perspective, you can find out about my classes here. As an accredited 5Rhythms® teacher, all class and workshop hours with me count towards teacher training prerequisites.
I produce workshops where I invite teachers to Montreal/Ottawa to share their wisdom, experience, perspective, and learnings. Upcoming workshops can be found here.
Freeing the Creative Spirit Teaching people to experience the pulsating sensual energy inside them and awakening their connection to flowing breath, rooted feet and a centered alive pelvis – reach up, root down, live in the heart center. Visit https://www.erik.iversen.ca/ or https://www.5rhythms.com/teachers/Erik+Iversen or contact Erik Iversen for more information. (For wheelchair and washroom accessibility information, contact Erik.)
Dance a weekly Thursday night 5Rhythms class with Lynne Adams in Montréal. (For wheelchair and washroom accessibility information, contact Lynne.)
facebook: Contact Improvisation Bas-Saint-Laurent
Groupe pour faciliter l’épanouissement de la communauté de contact impro dans la région. Cours, jams, covoiturage vers des activités ailleurs au Québec, etc.
Bienvenue à tous. Les jams de Contact improvisation seront annoncés dans le groupe par le biais d’évènements. Consultez la publication épinglée pour plus d’information.
Classes are facilitated in French (with possible English translation on request): Biodanza Sherbrooke: français and Sherbrook Biodanza: English (The English pages may not be updated; use the French pages!)
Shake! Mornings, afternoons, and evenings
facebook: ~bioLUMINosity®~ Edge of Trance dance, meditation, playground.
Dancing is not just getting up painlessly,
like a leaf blown on the wind;
dancing is when you tear your heart out
and rise out of your body
to hang suspended between the worlds.
We have come to be danced
not the pretty dance
not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance
but the claw our way back into the belly
of the sacred, sensual animal dance
the unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance
the holding the precious moment in the palms
of our hands and feet dance
[…]
If people ask me how to Contact Improvise, I simply say, “Start small” or, “Start small for a long time.”
After fifty years of all this, I realize I should have said,
“Go beyond small to the place where no message is being given. Start there. Let small be the first of the pleasures to come.”
Accept the first perturbation of that emptiness as the focus of the next moments. It is not a dance about you, or your partner. It is a dance about its movement.
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. … No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
[…]
At the still point of the turning world.
Neither flesh or fleshless;
Neither from nor towards;
at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement.
And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered.
Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline.
Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance,
and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
[…]
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
[…]
Dancers who pursue graceful movement must practice being aware of their bodies and being aware of wordless communication. These skills are particularly important today, when we spend so much time sitting and in virtual realities. Our way of life has taken us further from our own physical experiences and the understanding of the wordless emotional messages of others. For example, contact improvisation makes the dancers listen attentively to the body of their partner. Touch is known to reduce pain, fear and anxiety.
