Team members as of July 1, 2021

Ann Cooper Albright, project director*

Becca Janovic, project coordinator*

Student assistants:

Kate Fishman, OC '21

Gabe Gomez OC '22

Emmacate Sauer OC '23

Natalia Cohello Siles, SRU '23

Local arrangements and documentation coordinator, Brian Schultis

Archives and video screenings coordinator, Jennifer Keller

Accessibility coordinators:

Charlotte Andrews

Kelly Blaser

Cara Graninger

Joy Mariama Smith

Adrianna Michalska

Taja Will

Response Team:

Charlotte Andrews

Yusa Jacobo

Vova Kuperman

Adrianna Michalska

Guru Suraj

Gabriel Torta

Nicholas Travers

Oberlin College Artist Residents and Festival Volunteers:

Cara Graninger

Yusa Jacobo

Autumn LeBank

Jaqui de Melo Silva

Adrianna Michalska

Michal Schorsch

Brian Schultis

Guru Suraj

Gabriel Torta

Nicholas Travers

Anya Yermakova

Teresa Więcko

Oberlin College Student Volunteers:

Sophie Bransfield

Lola Chalmers-Dibbell

Lily Crikelair

Nina DiValentin

Cosima Dovan

Miriam Entin-Bell

Ava Fisherman

Elizabeth Hawk

Jaden Labowe-Stoll

Sky Milstein

Piper Morrison

Isabelle Pflanz

Annabel Sexton-Daldry

Nessie Slyker

Elias Wallman

WD Williams-Derry

Guest artists to date include: Steve Paxton (not in person), Lisa Nelson, Ishmael Houston-Jones, mayfield brooks, Karen Nelson and Jurij Konjar.

Plus, the help of numerous departments at Oberlin College and the assistance of staff from the Jerome Robbins Dance Division along with other local and global volunteers.

*Ann Cooper Albright is a dancer, scholar and aging contact improviser, and Professor/Chair of the Department of Dance at Oberlin College, where she is currently busy organizing Critical Mass: CI @ 50. She has taught Contact almost every fall for over thirty years. Over a decade ago, she came out of the closet as a jock and now teaches Varsity Contact in the spring. Her latest book, How to Land: finding ground in an unstable world (2019), uses her contact training to offer ways of thinking about and dealing with the uncertainty of our contemporary lives. The book, Encounters with Contact Improvisation (2010), is the product of one of her adventures in writing and dancing and dancing and writing with others.

*Rebecca Janovic is an Oberlin alum ’18, whose life path has been deeply altered by discovering contact improvisation in her senior year of college. After graduating Becca was incredibly lucky to continue to begin her days moving in Warner Main space as Ann Cooper Albright’s teaching assistant for the introductory and varsity contact classes, while also teaching an exco and community class in town. The next year while Ann was on sabbatical Becca taught an introductory exco in the fall and facilitated a collaborative practicum for experienced contacters in the spring. In January of that year she was honored to attend Nancy Stark Smith’s last January workshop. After making a pivot to Chicago and spending the pandemic year dancing in a pod of eight dancers, Becca is elated to return to Oberlin where she can ensure dancing contact improvisation 4+ times a week and give back to the legacy and future of contact improvisation by helping to organize Critical Mass: CI @ 50 and make it a reality!