Nancy Stark Smith trained as a modern and postmodern dancer in the early 1970s, graduating from Oberlin College with a degree in dance and writing. She danced in the first performances of Contact Improvisation in New York and has since been central to its development as a dancer, teacher, performer, organizer, and writer/publisher.
Teaching and performing across the world, Stark Smith’s principal research interests lie in “the bodymind states that are generated while dancing, the life cycle of form as it manifests in improvisation (…) that can be communicated in performance and in print”. She also co-founded Contact Quarterly, a vehicle for moving ideas, an international dance and improvisation journal, and co-directs Contact Editions that produces and distributes new dance literature.
