The CI Global Calendar (CIGC) is part of the Round Robin Project (RRP), an international adventure initiated in 2008 to serve the dance form Contact Improvisation (CI) and all the people worldwide who are engaged in that work—dance practitioners, performers, researchers, teachers, and any other interested people.
The goal of the CI Global Calendar is to make information about Contact Improvisation events easily accessible in several languages—representing, at a glance, CI activities around the globe. It offers listings of CI classes, jams, workshops, festivals, and events happening throughout the global CI community, posted individually by event organizers and teachers.
The Round Robin Project had two aspects :
The vision of creating a global sharing place on the Internet for CI calendar and archival material emerged from CI36, Contact Improvisation’s 36th Anniversary event in 2008, at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, US. The initial team investigating this vision included Eckhard Mueller, Nancy Stark Smith, and Dieter Heitkamp.
Numerous individuals have joined the team for periods of time, contributing their expertise and commitment to the project, including Tinu Hettich (who introduced the idea of a “round robin”-style of sharing information), Colleen Bartley, Norbert Pape, Martin Huelse; and more recently Defne Erdur and Emma Bigé.
In March 2012, Nancy Stark Smith (Contact Quarterly), Dieter Heitkamp (University for Music and Performing Arts Frankfurt am Main) and Norbert Pape met and exchanged with other archive projects (Motion Bank, Siobhan Davies Archive, Pina Bausch Archive…) in the framework of the 3rd Dance Education Biennale 2012 Frankfurt am Main. Colleen Bartley and Dieter Heitkamp participated in the European Video Dance Heritage Conference 2013 and continuously shared the project in other dance events.
In 2018, Emma Bigé joined the Round Robin Project team and obtained a Research and Archive Grant from the Centre National de la danse in Pantin, France, for a project entitled Anarchive internationale du Contact Improvisation. This new “anarchical” orientation for the archives underlined the idea of Contact Improvisation being a movement form to which anyone can contribute, its archives should be structured similarly.
After the passing of Nancy Stark Smith and the bequeathment of her archive to the New York Public Library, Dieter Heitkamp, Emma Bigé and Defne Erdur (who had joined the Round Robin Project Team in 2018, and contributed to the realization of CI Global Calender) gathered again to ask themselves the question: what kind of archive would three queerdos from Germany, France and Turkey make if they were to retrace their lineages in the practice of Contact Improvisation? Meaning: if they were to look at ancestors working with social justice, queer & feminist frames & consent practices? At a moment of global turmoil, in the midst of the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movements, it became urgent to celebrate the runaway and fugitive tendencies that have been a motor in Contact Improvisation's development. And so instead of starting Global, the anarchive decided to delve in the minor, and celebrate the insurgent and activists trends of Contact Improvisation herstories.
This resulted in the creation, in 2022, of the wroncontact.zone, “a web- and practice-based archival project that investigates the counter-hegemonic potentials and wayward histories of Contact Improvisation,” which is still ongoing and open to contributions.
We welcome you to participate in the calendar development and use. (See here for ways to get involved).