Flo/NoHo Global Underscore 2026
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Flo/NoHo Global Underscore 2026
Saturday, June 20
9:45 am–2:00 pm EDT (doors close at 10:00 am)
music by Rob Flax
Florence Community Center, 140 Pine St, Florence, MA 01062
We will email details in a few weeks, once you've registered.
$30-$35-$40 sliding scale (low-regular-abundant)
Venmo: @patrickmcrowley, Zelle & Apple Cash: 617-320-9792.
If cost is a problem, we have work/exchange for part of the fee — contact us soon.
Support the overall GUS worldwide: https://globalunderscore.com/donate/
Global Underscore (GUS) centers around an annual event in which the Underscore, developed by Nancy Stark Smith, is practiced simultaneously for a 4-hour period by people all over the world.
We are excited to be in the Florence Community Center, where the Global Underscore was conceived by Claire Filmon in Nancy's 3-week January Workshop 2000.
Together, we will focus on contact improvisation, attention, and composition — and telescope our awareness to the world.
At 10:50 am and at 1:55 pm of the practice, dancers at each site do a 5-minute Stand/Small Dance facing another site, making a line that spirals 6 times (!) around the earth. These are called the Facings.
An hour in-person Talk-Through is required for people new to Underscore. Nancy suggested Underscore practitioners keep returning to talk-throughs to deepen in their learning. You can register for the Global In-Depth Talk-Through (Zoom) on June 6, 8–10:30 am, or review the (_) phases, connections, and aspects on your own. https://globalunderscore.com/talk-through/
There will be 95+ sites around the world participating in GUS. GUS 2026 Sites: https://globalunderscore.com/2026-gus-sites/
Our site will participate in Live Streaming for GUS sites who want to connect with others around the world. Would you like to be our site's Zoom liaison for this? It is not much effort.
Health safety information: come with no symptoms and no exposure to any contagious sickness including COVID in prior 3 days.
These Northampton seasonal Underscores are open to people who already have a firm base in Contact Improvisation, have an interest in improvisation and composition, and have participated in an hour-long Underscore talk-through. Participants come for the whole duration of the event.
The Underscore is a long form improvisational framework developed by Nancy Stark Smith in 1990 for incorporating Contact Improvisation into a broader arena of improvisational dance practice; for developing greater ease dancing in spherical space — alone and with others; and for integrating kinesthetic and compositional concerns while improvising. It allows for a full spectrum of energetic and physical expressions, embodying a range of forms and changing states. Its practice is familiar yet unpredictable.
The practice progresses through a broad range of dynamic states, including long periods of very small, private, and quiet internal activity and other times of higher energy and interactive dancing.
After teaching Contact Improvisation for over 15 years in the 1970’s–1980’s, Nancy increasingly felt confined by her own curriculum and found herself prolonging open, structureless sections of class without exercises or scores. Her students noticed specific parts of class happening and talked to her about them. Nancy realized there was a consistent score happening operating "under" this open space in her workshops.
There are 20+ phases, 12+ “connections", and 7+ “anytime, all-the-time aspects" of the score—each represented by a "glyph"—which create a general map for the dancers. Within that frame, dancers are free to create their own movements, dynamics, and relationships — with themselves, each other, the group, the music, and the environment. Each Underscore is unique, providing rich and often inspiring experiences of the human and artistic phenomena of dance improvisation.
The Underscore is generally not led with verbal cues; the idea is that people “know” it already and are coming together to share the practice.
"The Underscore is a hologram, not a railroad track."
Nancy Stark Smith
Saturday, June 20
9:45 am–2:00 pm EDT (doors close at 10:00 am)
music by Rob Flax
Florence Community Center, 140 Pine St, Florence, MA 01062
We will email details in a few weeks, once you've registered.
$30-$35-$40 sliding scale (low-regular-abundant)
Venmo: @patrickmcrowley, Zelle & Apple Cash: 617-320-9792.
If cost is a problem, we have work/exchange for part of the fee — contact us soon.
Support the overall GUS worldwide: https://globalunderscore.com/donate/
Global Underscore (GUS) centers around an annual event in which the Underscore, developed by Nancy Stark Smith, is practiced simultaneously for a 4-hour period by people all over the world.
We are excited to be in the Florence Community Center, where the Global Underscore was conceived by Claire Filmon in Nancy's 3-week January Workshop 2000.
Together, we will focus on contact improvisation, attention, and composition — and telescope our awareness to the world.
At 10:50 am and at 1:55 pm of the practice, dancers at each site do a 5-minute Stand/Small Dance facing another site, making a line that spirals 6 times (!) around the earth. These are called the Facings.
An hour in-person Talk-Through is required for people new to Underscore. Nancy suggested Underscore practitioners keep returning to talk-throughs to deepen in their learning. You can register for the Global In-Depth Talk-Through (Zoom) on June 6, 8–10:30 am, or review the (_) phases, connections, and aspects on your own. https://globalunderscore.com/talk-through/
There will be 95+ sites around the world participating in GUS. GUS 2026 Sites: https://globalunderscore.com/2026-gus-sites/
Our site will participate in Live Streaming for GUS sites who want to connect with others around the world. Would you like to be our site's Zoom liaison for this? It is not much effort.
Health safety information: come with no symptoms and no exposure to any contagious sickness including COVID in prior 3 days.
These Northampton seasonal Underscores are open to people who already have a firm base in Contact Improvisation, have an interest in improvisation and composition, and have participated in an hour-long Underscore talk-through. Participants come for the whole duration of the event.
The Underscore is a long form improvisational framework developed by Nancy Stark Smith in 1990 for incorporating Contact Improvisation into a broader arena of improvisational dance practice; for developing greater ease dancing in spherical space — alone and with others; and for integrating kinesthetic and compositional concerns while improvising. It allows for a full spectrum of energetic and physical expressions, embodying a range of forms and changing states. Its practice is familiar yet unpredictable.
The practice progresses through a broad range of dynamic states, including long periods of very small, private, and quiet internal activity and other times of higher energy and interactive dancing.
After teaching Contact Improvisation for over 15 years in the 1970’s–1980’s, Nancy increasingly felt confined by her own curriculum and found herself prolonging open, structureless sections of class without exercises or scores. Her students noticed specific parts of class happening and talked to her about them. Nancy realized there was a consistent score happening operating "under" this open space in her workshops.
There are 20+ phases, 12+ “connections", and 7+ “anytime, all-the-time aspects" of the score—each represented by a "glyph"—which create a general map for the dancers. Within that frame, dancers are free to create their own movements, dynamics, and relationships — with themselves, each other, the group, the music, and the environment. Each Underscore is unique, providing rich and often inspiring experiences of the human and artistic phenomena of dance improvisation.
The Underscore is generally not led with verbal cues; the idea is that people “know” it already and are coming together to share the practice.
"The Underscore is a hologram, not a railroad track."
Nancy Stark Smith
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Where is it happening?
Florence Community Center, 140 Pine St, Florence, MA 01062-1218, United States
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.
Host or PublisherPatrick Crowley Dance : Bodywork : Yoga : Somatics
