Teacher bios

2025 Teacher: Ezra LeBank

Ezra LeBank (he/him) is the Chair of Theatre Arts and Professor of Movement at California State University Long Beach.

Meditation, Aikido, and acrobatics work their way into his curiosity of Contact Improvisation (CI).

Ezra's approach is inspired by many wonderful teachers including Nancy Stark Smith, Steve Paxton, Ray Chung, Mike Vargas, Nita Little, and others.

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, Ezra studies Dirt Work and Cloud Tectonics as methods of bringing ourselves closer to the earth and to each other.

Past Teachers

Alicia Grayson

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.

Alicia 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 a facilitator and mentor for coaches and facilitators-in-training. She is also a certified Biodynamic Breath and Trauma Release practitioner.

Alicia 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!

Andrew de Lotbinière Harwood

Andrew Harwood is renowned as a leading light in the field of dance improvisation. He is an internationally recognized pioneer of contact improvisation (CI) and a master teacher and performer in both real-time composition and CI. For over 48 years, he has dedicated himself to research, development, education, collaboration, and dissemination of these rigorous artistic practices as sophisticated performing art forms.

Andrew first studied and then performed with Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, Nita Little, and Kurt Siddal - the instigators of Contact Improvisation. His journey has continued to evolve through the development of consciousness, various investigations of perceptual awareness as well as an abundance of collaborative performances around the globe with the likes of Peter Bingham, Chris Aiken, Ray Chung, Daniel Lepkoff, Kirstie Simpson, Alito Alessi, Karen Nelson, K.J. Holmes, Lisa Nelson, Julyen Hamilton, Benno Voorham and Benoit Lachambre, to name a few.

Formerly founder and artistic director of AH HA Productions (2000–2014), Andrew also danced for the companies of Marie Chouinard, Jean-Pierre Perreault, Jo Lechay, Joint Forces and Fulcrum, as well as the improvisational dance collectives Discovery Bal, The Echo Case and The Improvisational Movement Fund.

Still passionate about teaching, he transforms his training and performance experience into a personal language, which he has shared throughout the world since 1977.

In Montréal, Andrew has been a guest teacher with the world-renowned companies of Marie Chouinard, O’ Vertigo Danse, Le Cirque du Soleil, Les Sept Doigts de la Main, and Toronto’s Dance Makers. He has also shared his enthusiasm and knowledge with hundreds of students at l’École de Danse Contemporaine de Montréal, Concordia University, l’Université du Québec à Montréal and The National Theater School of Canada. In 2000, Andrew was awarded the Canada Council of the Arts Jacqueline Lemieux Award.