Malcolm Shute

Malcolm Shute, MFA, CMA, has led partnering workshops in Prague, Bogota, Kyoto, and various cities in the US and Canada. He has practiced contact improvisation for 35 years, and studied tai chi and aikido, which influenced the form. Shute teaches in the Dance Department at Towson University. He founded Human Landscape Dance (hldance.org) in 2006, and has since brought contact choreography around the world. Specializing in artist partnerships, Human Landscape Dance has given performances, held workshops, and shot video footage in Europe, Asia, and South America, as well as cities across the US and Canada. Noted for “…ingenious choreography and staging…” by the Washington Post, Shute’s dances are characterized by intimate portraits of people using touch to communicate, bodies molding to create a collage of images.

DC Contact Improv class + jam session 

Contact Improvisation (CI) is improvised partner dance based on mutually following shared points of contact. Our Dance Place CI sessions consist of a combination of a class and a jam. On most days we hold a one hour class to help newcomers and familiar dancers alike develop and deepen their experience with Contact Improv. That’s followed by around two hours of “open jamming”, a respectful space for participants to explore the practice. On the first Sunday of each month we hold a special session, an “Underscore”: a kind of combined class and jam that takes up the entire session. People of all levels of movement experience are welcome to all sessions. 

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