Shel Wagner Rasch has been exploring, performing, producing and teaching Contact Improv -- dancing in public and in private spaces, with friends and with strangers -- since 1985, and it still intrigues her. A lot. She taught CI at the University of California, Los Angeles for 10 years, and has been a featured guest teacher in many college settings, contact improv festivals, and jams. She is a member of the West Coast Contact Improv Festival teaching pool. Shel’s Improv scores and choreographic works have been well received throughout the US and she is a recipient of the Lester Horton Award for Excellence in Choreography.  Her Contact teaching is informed by the Alexander Technique (certified as a teacher in 1991); Somatic Experiencing (certified as a Practitioner in 2006); her life-long fascination with the stories our bodies have to tell; and decades of various movement explorations (rock climbing, jui jitsu, capoeira, parkour, authentic movement).  Shel co-led the weekly Eastside Lab Jam in Los Angeles, California for 7 years before moving to Oregon, where she currently has a private practice as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and collaborates with her partner, mover and animator Justin Rasch, dancing and running a stop motion animation studio.

Significant teachers

David Zambrano Mary Herzog Caroline Stewart