Oka Ver

Facilitator

The Underscore

Offering Description

The Underscore is a long form Contact Improvisation structure, developed and researched by Nancy Stark Smith since 1990. The score invites us to widen our senses, sharpen our awareness of the whole, and open our Contact Improvisation practice to be permeable, to create and co-create each shared moment in solo, group and ensemble form. It is designed to allow a full spectrum of physical expressions, forms and changing states.

The Underscore is not a monument set in stone, but a living document describing an evolving field of play and research, where different possibilities to share the dance meet and collide in countless ways.

To join in an Underscore, participants should have attended at least one talk-through of the score. The Underscore is not led verbally: the idea is that people “know” it and come together to share the practice.

Underscore participants arrive on time and stay for the duration of the event.

“The Underscore is a form of play and research, not the law. I hope you will approach it in this spirit.”

Nancy Stark Smith, Caught Falling

Biography

Oka Ver has spent over two decades researching, performing, interrogating, arguing and practicing the Underscore with Nancy Stark Smith and others. Their recent work on the score, in collaboration with Jun Akiyama, has been applying a decolonial, intersectional lens to Nancy Stark Smith's score and evolving it toward a decidedly anti-racist practice, in conversation with NSS before her passing in 2020, and honoring the integrity of the form, as well as Nancy's rigor and endless curiosity, in the years after.

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