CI & Play Fighting
Exploring movement, responsiveness, trust and play
Saturday 27th February 2027 | 2pm to 7pm
Maypole Hall - Stroud
Hosted by Richard Parker & Roy Graff
This workshop brings together two movement practices that have a lot to learn from one another. Through a combination of Contact Improvisation, Play Fighting and an integrated exploration of the two, we'll be investigating how we move, respond and relate to one another physically.
In Contact Improvisation, it's easy to develop familiar ways of moving and responding. We can find ourselves falling into patterns, anticipating what our partner might do next and making choices at a speed that allows us to think through our movements.
Play Fighting offers something quite different. The faster pace of interaction invites a different quality of attention. There's less time to think about what to do next, and more need to respond directly to what's happening. It invites us to trust our body's intelligence, let go of habitual responses and discover a more immediate, spontaneous relationship with movement.
There are also interesting possibilities around weight and trust. In CI, we can sometimes be hesitant about giving weight, unsure how much to offer or whether our partner can receive it. Play Fighting offers opportunities to develop a clearer sense of our own strength and that of our partner, communicating through physical interaction and learning to trust one another in the process.
And the relationship works both ways. Contact Improvisation offers a rich foundation for Play Fighting, developing skills around rolling, falling, sharing weight and moving fluidly with the floor.
What we'll explore
We'll move between the two practices, exploring some of the connections and differences between them.
Some of the areas we'll play with include:
Developing a more responsive, immediate quality of attention.
Moving beyond familiar patterns and habitual responses.
Exploring different speeds of attention and how we use our eyes and bodies to respond more quickly.
Learning to trust the body's capacity to respond without having to think everything through.
Giving and receiving weight, tuning into when weight is offered and allowing it to arrive and settle before responding.
Developing trust in our own strength and our partner's capacity to meet us.
Exploring rolling, falling and fluid movement with the floor.
The day will include dedicated time for each practice, alongside an integrated exploration of how they inform one another, finishing with a jam to play with and bring together the material we've explored.
Who is it for?
The workshop is open to anyone interested in exploring these practices and the relationship between them. It's particularly aimed at people with some experience of Contact Improvisation or Play Fighting who are interested in deepening their practice, developing new skills and exploring different approaches to movement and physical interaction.
Whether you come primarily from a CI background, a Play Fighting background, or have experience of both, there will be opportunities to discover something new.
An invitation to move beyond the familiar, develop greater trust in the body, and discover new possibilities through movement, responsiveness and play.
Make a weekend of it
If you’re travelling to the event, why not make a weekend of it? Richard’s regular Contact Improvisation class and jam will be happening in Stroud on the Friday evening beforehand.
If you’d like to come along, you can find more details here.
Need somewhere to stay? Feel free to get in touch. We may be able to connect you with someone from the local community who can offer a place to stay.
Teachers
Richard Parker
Richard has been dancing Contact Improvisation since 2006 and teaching since 2011. Over the years, he has trained extensively with many pioneering and influential teachers from the early generations of Contact Improvisation, developing a broad and detailed understanding of the form.
He is the founder and organiser of Emerging Hearts Contact Improvisation Camp and has been creating and facilitating CI workshops, festivals, retreats and community gatherings for over a decade, working across professional, educational, festival and community settings.
Richard is passionate about the relational and deeply human experience that can emerge through Contact Improvisation. His teaching brings together clear and grounded technical exploration with creativity, play and open-ended investigation. He loves sharing both the fundamental movement principles of the form and the subtle nuances that help us embody them more fully.
At the heart of his approach is a sense of curiosity, care and co-creation, supporting dancers to develop their skills while cultivating deeper relational awareness and a sense of togetherness within the dance.
Roy Graff
Roy is a London-based relationship coach, psychotherapeutic counsellor, and the founder of Open Relating — a platform dedicated to helping people build conscious, expansive, and authentic relationships.
He first discovered play fighting at a Burning Man regional event in Europe in 2018. After gaining further experience in workshops, he recognised the potential of this practice to help people become more embodied, to learn about their own boundaries and to improve their non-verbal communication and empathetic listening to others. The range of expressions people create in play fighting is truly incredible and extremely imaginative. Roy’s further training in Psychotherapy, Radical Honesty, Non-Violent Communication, Wheel of Consent and his personal contact improvisation dance practice all serve to inform the way he constructs the practices and flow of the workshops.
The first time Roy facilitated a play fighting workshop was at Burning Nest, the UK regional Burning Man event in Devon, UK, in the summer of 2022. Since December 2022, in collaboration with other amazing professionals in the field of conscious connection, he has facilitated workshops in London, Brighton, Manchester, Nottingham and Bristol. In 2025, he also collaborated internationally in Berlin and Amsterdam.
Venue & Travel
Venue: Maypole Hall, Stratford Road, Paganhill, Stroud GL5 4AN Google Maps Link
Facilities: Sprung wooden dance floor, matted area for play fighting, good heating, natural and ambient lighting, soft rest space, toilets and changing facilities, as well as access to a full kitchen.
Free Parking: Outside the hall and on surrounding roads.