Spiral & Root

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Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Spiral & Root, Festival, 252 Prospect Street, Plainfield, MA.

10/09/2026

“I really felt like I do belong here, and I could show up as my authentic self.”

For three weeks, a cohort lives and trains together. You witness your own journey unfold, and everyone else’s too. That witnessing builds trust. Dancers from across the world learn from one another as much as from the teachers, in the studio, around the table, and walking through the snow. By the end, the group is close-knit, and you leave as part of the Spiral & Root family!

Three weeks of Contact Improvisation at Earthdance, in the Hilltowns of western Massachusetts.

January 8–29, 2027 · Sliding scale available · Link in bio

10/05/2026

At Spiral & Root, teacher arrives with their own way into the body. One begins with breath, another with the floor, another with the long spiral of the spine. Class by class, these different doorways lead toward the same questions: how we carry one another, and how we carry ourselves.

Over three weeks of Contact Improvisation, each dancer brings the body they have, with its own history, rhythm, and strength. That body is where the practice begins, and everything we learn grows from there.

Spiral & Root at Earthdance, in the Hilltowns of western Massachusetts.

January 8–29, 2027 · Sliding scale available · Link in bio!

09/30/2026

Coming out of Spiral & Root, I really feel like I have a strong foundation.”

Last January, dancers from the US, Japan, Guatemala, and around the world spent three weeks together in the snowy Hilltowns of western Massachusetts, immersed in Contact Improvisation. Here’s what they carried home.

They spoke about the teachers: generous, thoughtful, and always asking what the group needed. They spoke about dancing with people who danced with Nancy Stark Smith, and feeling the roots of the tradition alive in the practice. And they spoke about the rest of it too: singing together in the sauna, walks in the woods, dancing in the snow.

“I felt really welcome and cared for, and pushed in a loving way.”

Spiral & Root returns January 8–29, 2027, at Earthdance. Three weeks to dive deep into Contact Improvisation, its history, and the community that carries it.

Details and registration at the link in bio!

09/26/2026

Daniel Hayes has lived many lives — medical doctor, epidemiologist, anarchist collective member, eco-village founder, peace builder — and Contact Improvisation runs through all of them.

Born in Baltimore and raised in the Netherlands, Daniel trained as a physician at the University of Amsterdam and completed his PhD in Tropical Medicine and Epidemiology in the UK, with extended periods living and working in Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi. He then spent a decade in Can Masdeu, an anarchist collective on the outskirts of Barcelona, where he and his partner Lina founded the Vidalia eco-village.

Daniel is also the current Executive Director of Earthdance, bringing to the role a rare combination of scientific rigor, community organizing, and a deep commitment to what happens when people move together with intention.

January 8–29, 2027 · Earthdance, Plainfield MA
For more information and to apply, link in bio.

08/14/2026

We’re each shaped by the path we’ve walked, and the one we’re still walking. At Spiral & Root, we ask what that shape becomes when it meets another body on the floor.

Curiosity becomes a way of moving. A question is a duet. The dialogue that usually happens in the mind — proposing, exchanging, listening — becomes something the body does too: an impulse followed before it’s named, a moment of being guided, of being surprised.

Three weeks of practice and reflection, held together.

January 8–29, 2027 — link in bio.

08/04/2026

Meta Bobbe first encountered Contact Improvisation in 2012 — and it’s been a throughline in her life ever since.

In 2018 she joined the Underscore +/- group with Nancy Stark Smith, and has practiced with them weekly for the past fourteen years — investigating what sustained, dedicated repetition reveals in a body over time.

Meta is an integrative body therapist, embodiment and movement researcher, and CI community organizer. She’s a Certified Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist, an Ilan Lev Method Practitioner, and a Licensed Massage Therapist. She’s also part of Earthdance’s leadership team, serving on the seasonal CI Community (CICo) jam organizing team since 2019, and is a former Earthdance Board Member.

We’re honored to have her at Spiral & Root: Earthdance Professional CI Training this January.

For more information and to apply, link in bio.

07/30/2026

What happens when a whole room starts listening to itself.

At Spiral & Root, the group becomes the teacher — bodies finding each other, the space, and the objects within it, together.

Three weeks. One floor. A shared inquiry.

Link in bio!

07/23/2026

Sarah Young is a dance artist and teacher whose practice is rooted in Contact Improvisation, the Feldenkrais Method, and a decade-long immersion in the work of Nancy Stark Smith.

Since 2011, Sarah has been deep in the Underscore — the open-form CI structure developed by Nancy Stark Smith that has become one of the most significant frameworks for improvisational practice worldwide. She has been a co-coordinator of the Global Underscore since 2020 and a member of the Underscore +/- research group in Northampton, MA, since 2013. Her relationship to Nancy’s work, including her research into “States of Grace,” continues to shape everything she brings to the floor.

A Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner, Sarah has collaborated and performed with some of the most significant artists in contemporary and improvisational dance, including Nancy Stark Smith, Chris Aiken, David Dorfman, and Sidra Bell. She is a former director of Earthdance — which makes her return to Plainfield for Spiral & Root something of a homecoming.

Sarah splits her time between Northampton, Massachusetts and Stolzenhagen, Germany, where she continues to teach and research.

January 8–29, 2027 · Earthdance, Plainfield MA
For more information and to apply, link in bio.

07/22/2026

There’s a kind of knowing that lives below thought: in the shoulder, the spine, the soles of the feet.

At Spiral & Root, we practice trusting sensation over sight, letting the body lead where the eyes can’t.

What surfaces when watching isn’t an option?

These three weeks are a chance to travel inward — to practice the art of interiority, so we can better meet each other on the other side of it.

Spiral & Root 2027 — link in bio.

07/08/2026

Mirva Mäkinen holds a Doctor of Dance from the University of Arts in Helsinki, where her doctoral research focused on the somaesthetics of Contact Improvisation — the felt, aesthetic dimensions of the practice and how they manifest in performance.

A dancer, choreographer, and teacher based in Finland, Mirva has spent 25 years teaching in international dance schools and professional companies across more than 40 countries, including the Cullberg Ballet in Sweden and Echo Echo Dance Company in Northern Ireland.

Her work is rooted in a deep curiosity about kinetic energy, rhythm, and the body’s relationship to gravity — the falling responses, the inertia, the feeling of flow that arises when movement finds its own logic.

At the heart of her practice is a belief that making art is an act of listening — an open process where we step into the unknown together.

January 8–29, 2027 · Earthdance, Plainfield MA

For more information and to apply, link in bio.

Address

252 Prospect Street
Plainfield, MA
01070

Website

https://www.earthdance.net/spiral-root-earthdance-professional-ci-training/

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