Paris Cullen

Single Class Teacher

Class Description

In my research and teaching of contact improvisation, I am interested in dance as a question. I offer falling skills as a survival mechanism. We train presence and releasing, remaining soft and available in the body while building strength, and invert as a method to shift perspective. I am interested in the aikido origins of the form, and studying the kinesthetic awareness, intuition, and wisdom of martial arts sensibility. I am curious about how dancers can soften at the edge of fear, retraining fear reflexes in order to safely access greater risk in their dancing. Through training these skills, we develop comfortability within disorientation, trust within self, and embodiment.

Biography

Paris Cullen is a movement artist and facilitator based in Brooklyn, originally from San Diego. Their practices, based in the creative spirit of improvisation, connect them with presence, gravity, and imagination— contact improvisation, breaking, aikido, visual art, meditation, singing, thai bodywork. They created the NYC queer contact improvisation jam in 2022 with collaborators Julianne Cariño and Sarah Zucchero. They’ve taught at the queer jam, NYC contact improvisation, Earthdance, and Wildheart. Paris has shared performance work at Movement Research at Judson Church, Groundswell Series, BK Art Haus, CreateART, The Craft, and HATCH, and has performed with Pilobolus, Anya Cloud & Makisig Akin, Hana Van Der Kolk, Paul Singh, Alison Chase/Performance, Monica Bill Barnes, among others. Through study, play, and collaboration they’re guided into realms of the future.

Learn More About Teacher