An Underscore is a special kind of contact improv event. More focused, relatively formal, and generally longer than most jams, it combines an analytical approach with the air of high ceremony. The Underscore framework was developed by the late grande dame of CI Nancy Stark Smith over the course of her teaching and it served as a means for structuring and studying dance improvisation long before it got its eventual name. For years, I’ve read, it was known merely as “the score.” Specifically, the vague but palpable one underpinning the spontaneous unfolding of collectively improvised dancing. And then one day, lore has it, Nancy heard herself describe this as the “under”-score, and that stuck—an ace name origin story, if you ask me.

Every Underscore I’ve attended has been preceded by an introductory talk explaining the form and introducing the relevant concepts described by Nancy in her work. Though usually this intro is optional for non-newcomers, I’ve never skipped it, because for me, being there for the “what is” and the “how to” is part of arriving. (And “arriving” itself, the preambles make clear, is a concept split into two, each sub-type paired with a unique symbolic glyph and imbued with its own significance to an Underscore’s getting underway.)

Some of my most satisfying and transformative dances have been during Underscores, probably because my state of awareness and capacity to listen are uniquely heightened in response to the academic outlook and atmosphere of ritual at play. My sense is that the photos I take during an Underscore, too, bear this out.

In this post I’m presenting highlights from a recent daytime Underscore organized by Warsaw-based movement instructor Andrzej Woźniak for his CI student body at the light-filled Studio 42 in Twarda. It was a pleasure and an honor to frame and capture the coincidences, confluences, divergences, and engagements I observed. And my thanks go out to both the people who agreed to be in the photos and the ones who didn’t (but trusted me with the camera in the space just the same).

For more on the Underscore, enter underscore and nancy into your search engine. For more on Andrzej Woźniak, go to his Facebook profile or check out this post. For more of my photos of bodies adance, see many of my recent and upcoming blog posts.