Dr. René Alvarez (Oakland, CA) once a recreational slam dancer, rediscovered love for dance upon moving to San Francisco in 1999. René is a fire dancer since 2000 and while living with the performance troupe “Infinite Kaos” in their warehouse event space, René began taking CI classes at the 848 community (San Francisco). René began teaching in 2007, and has since presented at the Sierra Contact Festiva and co-hosted both the Moab Jam and 4th of July Jam at Earthdance. René has 20 consecutive years of participation in the Burning Man Project, where he stewards the daily Center Camp Jam and teaches CI classes at Camp Contact. René teaches the Tuesday pre-jam class at CounterPulse (San Francisco), the pre-Ecstatic Dance class (Oakland), and the Saturday Class at ODC (San Francisco). René curates and teaches both the Thursday and Saturday pre-jam classes in Berkeley. René was selected to be a research catalyst for the CI Ground Research Residency at Earthdance (MA) and Co-taught the Nevada City CI Winter Intensive. Every Year, since 2015, René teaches a 3 month class series for experienced dancers. René is the founder of InterKinected LLC whose mission is to investigate and promote Contact Improvisation, through organization and sponsorship of classes, jams, festivals, intensives, laboratories, films and showings. 

Significant teachers

Nancy Stark Smith, Sara Shelton Mann, Ray Chung, Martin Keogh, Frey Faust, Nita Little, Chris Aiken, Angie Hauser, Scott Wells, Alicia Grayson, Ronja Ver, Carol Swann, Brenton Cheng, Keith Hennessy, Karen Nelson, Alito Alessi, Anna Halprin, KJ Holmes, Malcolm Manning, Kira Kirsch, Mirva Mäkinen and Terry Sendgraff