Biographies
Example text: intro to the bios explaining how people come into the group.
Gretchen Spiro is the founding member of Tumblebones Contact Improvisation Collective. Her explorations as a dancer, yoga teacher, Gyrotonic® trainer, and movement therapist keep her busy, happy, and inspired. She received a BFA from Cal Arts and an MA in Dance Therapy from Naropa University. Gretchen began exploring CI in 1982. Primary mentors have been Nita Little, Martin Keogh, Keith Hennessy, and Touch Monkey/Carolyn Stuart. Avidly practicing and teaching for the past 17 years - Gretchen aims to offer herself wholly to the mysteries of liquid dancing. She teaches CI in Boulder and beyond with her husband Steve… teaching with humor, precision, and fiery enthusiasm.
Alicia Grayson has been passionately involved with dancing, teaching and performing CI for the past 27 years. She has taught contact improvisation as an adjunct faculty at George Washington University, University of Denver, Naropa University and Shenandoah University. She teaches CI, yoga and pilates classes in Boulder and regularly travels to Europe and around the U.S. to teach. Her long time practices of authentic movement, yoga and meditation are important influences on her dancing and teaching. She is also a core member of the Boulder Contact Lab. As a registered psychotherapist and certified Hakomi therapist she works with clients in somatic psychotherapy and movement education. She continues to delight in exploring and discovering new depths in contact improvisation and related disciplines and is particularly interested in the intersection of physics and expression and the mind/body relationship.
Steven Homsher has been dancing CI for 10 years. A graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, he is a visual artist and works as a construction supervisor. His background also includes 10 years of martial arts, gymnastics, social dance, and aerial dance performing extensively with Nancy Smith’s Frequent Flyers Productions. Steve finds CI to be the vehicle to express his fullest range of humanness and finds great joy in dancing, teaching and performing with his wife Gretchen. As a group, Tumblebones Contact Improvisation Collective is a rare opportunity to drop into the deepest possibilities of this practice of CI.
Avery Ryder Turner ...
Kristen Wheeler began improvising in the theatre and was a member of Playback Theatre West for six years. Feeling that her body knew how to improvise more than her mind, she left Playback Theatre West in 2005 to spend more time dancing. While not dancing, Kristen works as a business consultant (www.kristenwheeler.com). Her curiosity about being in states of wonder led to masters degrees in Mythological Studies and Somatic Psychology, and ultimately to Tumblebones.
Lucien Renjilian-Burgy is a bodyworker and dancer with a passion for knowing himself more deeply and making contact with the world in kind, authentic and fun ways. Hailing from Boston, MA., Lucien has a background in athletics and began dancing in the free-form dance and 5 Rythms communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. After 3 years on the island of Maui, Lucien reunited with his identical twin brother Sarkis in Boulder, where he now calls home. www.ShiftingStates.com
Jun Akiyama ...