LBCI: January Training with Alicia Grayson & Ezra LeBank
Schedule
Sat, 03 Jan, 2026 at 10:00 am to Wed, 07 Jan, 2026 at 05:00 pm
UTC-08:00Location
California State University, Long Beach | Los Alamitos, CA
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January Training in Contact ImprovisationEchos of Flight:
Lightness as a Living Principle
with Alicia Grayson and Ezra LeBank
January 3-7, 2026
35 hours of improvising over 5 Days
in Long Beach, CA
We will dance for five full days 10am - 5pm (Saturday - Wednesday) of focused training with Alicia & Ezra. Along with plenty of improvised meals alone or together, and an organized evening conversation. Our intention is to create a transformative experience for a group of dedicated improvisers.
Apply Here: https://forms.gle/dcj9MQyH7Lgz8FeJ9
*This is event is pre-LBCI Festival. LBCI Fest is Jan 8-11, 2026. www.bossyflyer.com/lbcifest
Course is limited to 24 participants.
Some previous contact improvisation experience assumed.
Admission is on a rolling basis until the course is full. Early application recommended.
Echoes of Flight: Lightness as a Living Principle
Lightness can be a physical sensation, a way of dancing to support connection and choice, and a way being in the body/mind. In this immersive five-day training, we will explore how we can investigate buoyancy, momentum, and presence to transform our dancing into a practice of lightness amidst connection.
Beginning from the ground, we attune ourselves to the subtle conversations between body, partner, gravity and space. As we strengthen our foundations, we will open into the expansive possibilities of lift, loft and drift in flight, discovering how to fall, float, and rise with less effort and more ease. Through thoughtful technical explorations and improvisational scores, we will invite transparency in our choices and cultivate trust in the intelligence of momentum while we refine a lightness that commits to motion.
Together, we will research how lightness can become more than a fleeting moment in the dance, as we find how lightness can be lived as an ongoing principle of practice and presence. Expect a week of rigorous play, investigation, and unexpected discoveries in vertical and spherical space.
Biographies
Alicia Grayson has been passionately involved with dancing, teaching and performing Contact Improvisation for the past 35 years. She has taught CI as an adjunct faculty at George Washington University, University of Denver, Naropa University and Shenandoah University. She teaches CI classes in Boulder, CO, and regularly travels nationally and internationally to teach. Her long time practices of authentic movement, yoga and pilates and her love of nature are important influences on her dancing and teaching. She facilitates somatically based transformational workshops, teaches yoga and pilates and works with individuals in-person and online. She is a certified Hakomi therapist, certified perinatal somatic attachment therapist, certified Feminine Power transformational coach and facilitator and mentor for coaches and facilitators in training and certified Biodynamic Breath and Trauma Release practitioner. She delights in exploring and discovering new depths to contact improvisation and related disciplines and is particularly interested in the intersection of physics and expression and the mind/body relationship. She is dedicated to supporting her fellow humans to be the most amazing embodied beings that we are! www.aliciagrayson.com
Ezra LeBank is a Professor of Movement at California State University Long Beach. Meditation, Aikido, and acrobatics work their way into his curiosity of CI. His approach is inspired by many wonderful teachers including Nancy Stark Smith, Ray Chung, Mike Vargas, Nita Little, and Andrew Harwood. He has been invited as a teacher at International Contact Festival Freiburg, West Coast Contact Improv Jam, Seattle Festival for Dance Improvisation, Poland Contact Festival, Oberlin CI@50, and many more. Through his research company Bad Goat Dance, he studies Dirt Work & Cloud Tectonics as methods of bringing ourselves closer to the earth and to each other. www.badgoatdance.com
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Where is it happening?
California State University, Long Beach, Csulb Club Sports and Recreation, Long Beach, CA 90815, United States, Los AlamitosEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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