A Day of the Underscore with Anne Cooper

Name: A Day of the Underscore with Anne Cooper
Start: 2026-03-28T09:00:00-07:00
End: 2026-03-28T16:45:00-07:00
Location: 1011 N State St, Bellingham, WA 98229-8982, United States

Schedule

Sat Mar 28 2026 at 09:00 am to 04:45 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

1011 N State St, Bellingham, WA 98229-8982, United States | Bellingham, WA

March 28, 2026
Sliding scale: $60-$160
Art: Michal Lahav & Roel Hammerschlag
Photo: Rajendra Serber - Winter JAM 2026

1101 N State Street - Aikido Peace Education Center aka „the dojo“
This day can be booked in combination with Deepening - Contact Improvisation Series with Carmen and Rajendra Serber on March 29:
https://www.carmenserber.com/deepening-contact-improvisation-series/

9:00 Open Space
9:30 Talk thru with guided physical exploration
11:45 Lunch
1:00 Underscore practice
4:30 Clearing arts
The Underscore was developed by Nancy Stark Smith in the 90's. It is a spacious experience shared by the participants which can spark surprising kinesthetic and compositional improvisation and Contact Improvisation within this defined framework.
In the morning we will have enough time to not only talk through the Underscore but also explore ways in and qualities of a few of the least understood phases of the practice. There will be time for questions and wonderings.
I invited Anne as she is studying and practicing the Underscore for many years and spent a lot of time with Nancy before she passed away. When I first witnessed Anne talking through the Underscore, I could feel how all the phases she was mentioning immediately landed deeper in my own felt sense understanding of the practice. Anne can truly represent the Underscore in an embodied way through practicing the practice for many years.
When I asked her to write a bit about what insights or other meaningful endeavors this practice has invoked in her over time, she wrote me this: "I think the Underscore is a meaningful practice for people that enjoy, see the value of it and have fun when they go deeply into something, appreciate duration & who have a little bit of an appetite for rigour. I don't really want to try to sell this beyond what it is, I feel the practice itself is profound."