The What, Why & How of Rejection in Contact Improvisation

One of the biggest shadows in Contact Improvisation is the experience of REJECTION. Without the container of the length of a song, we often find ourselves wondering: Is this dance over? Is my partner still enjoying this? Am I? Rejection shapes how we enter, stay in, and exit each dance. And it influences the rhythm and texture of the dance itself, surfacing as doubt, second-guessing, or careful negotiating of space.

We’re told we can leave a dance at any time, no explanation necessary, however, many of us develop elaborate strategies to protect ourselves from rejection. If someone leaves us, we’re told not to take it personally. Yet, there are many reasons why we might want to end a dance and sometimes it does have to do with the other person, or least with what they are doing or how they are behaving. This knowledge, delicate though it may be, can offer us a valuable mirror to our own patterns and choices.

In this workshop, we lean toward discomfort rather than away from it. Through warm-ups, facilitated conversation, authentic relating exercises, simple role-play, and dancing with verbal reflection, we will explore the what, how, and why of rejection and notice what emerges when we name it and its motivations alongside our dance.

Participants should have some CI experience, however beginners are warmly welcomed. What’s most needed is curiosity and a willingness to play and be honest.

Price & Registration: The workshop is priced on a sliding scale between $30-60. Participants who would like to attend but cannot pay at that range are also encouraged to reach out (thedeepplayinstitute@gmail.com) as the workshop can accommodate a limited number of reduced tuition participants.
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Maximum Number of Participants: 26

Location: The venue is in Bushwick - Brooklyn NY. (exact location shared upon registration)

NOTE ON EMOTIONAL REGULATION: This workshop will involve the exploration of diverse emotional landscapes that unfold within and among our psyches. Many of the practices we explore are designed to cultivate vulnerability, with its pleasures and hardships, and might be compared to the way one's deepest romantic relationships sometimes surface one's most challenging psychological material. Conflict and hurt may arise that might conventionally be quieted or minimized. It is not uncommon for participants to encounter triggers of psychological wounds within these practices, and this should be considered a possibility. The facilitator will use techniques to contain and care for what arises, but will not be able to provide ongoing care for emotional fallout. We invite you to be watchful of one's own safety and opt out in little and big ways as needed, and to have emotional processing methods in place (such as therapy, meditation, journaling, processing with friends, etc) that can help you learn with and from what happens at the intensive. Additionally, we ask that you have some inner settledness and calm available so we can play deeply together. If at this moment in your life you find you are highly activated by something you cannot set down, it may be best not to participate at this time. We understand that therapy can be very expensive and trusted therapists are hard to find, and there might be some temptation to come to this group for that kind of care, but it is not designed for that kind of individual attention.

About the Deep Play Institute The Deep Play Institute is a nonprofit organization committed to exploring life’s deepest questions through transformative play. DPI’s facilitators – therapists, artists, coaches, and philosophers – aim to use play to bring people into an experiential questioning of what it means to exist. Each program that DPI runs is a unique container, creatively constructed and inspired by practices that include: Gestalt therapy, Process Work, Psychodrama, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Tavistock Group Relations, Relational Psychoanalysis, Authentic Relating, Nonviolent Communication, Circling, coaching, performance art, contact improvisation, experimental theater, LARPs, surrealism, existential games, and various schools of meditation.

ABOUT THE FACILITATORS

Netta Sadovsky lives in Philly and works as a therapist with a focus on group process. Netta first learned Contact Improv from David Marchant in 2013, and has since studied with many wonderful guides including Jungwoong Kim, Merián Soto, Lilliane Kane, Nuria Bowart, Anne Cooper Albright, and others at Earthdance and the Field Center. Netta approaches Contact Improv as a creative encounter with the body's shifting impulses towards the other. She is interested in how dancing those instincts hones our integrity in embodied relating. Outside of dance, Netta studies relationship as contemplative practice through Circling, Tavistock Group Relations, Internal Family Systems, and psychodynamic group work. In addition to her work as a therapist, Netta serves as Assistant Director of The Deep Play Institute, where she leads workshops, intensives, and retreats playing between the arts, experiential therapies, and spiritual practice.

Gabrielle Revlock is an NYC-based artist and educator whose work blends movement, social practice, and relational experimentation. Her participatory projects—The Apocalypse Singles Club, Anonymous Apologies, and Restorative Contact—create playful and meaningful pathways for connection. She has been a practitioner of Contact Improvisation (CI) for over 20 years and teaches locally and abroad, emphasizing mutual support and innovation. Her writing on CI’s therapeutic applications appears in Resistance and Support: Contact Improvisation at 50 (Oxford University Press, 2024) and she is a co-producer of the 2026 NYC Contact improvisation Festival on Governors Island. More at GabrielleRevlock.com