Nancy Stark Smith

Nancy Stark Smith (February 11, 1952 – May 1, 2020) was an American dancer and founding participant in contact improvisation.

Early life and education Born in Brooklyn, New York, on February 11, 1952, Stark Smith was the child of Dr. Joseph J. Smith, a professor of gynecology and obstetrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and his wife Lucille (Stark) Smith. and had little interest in dance, “I’d see the dancers standing in front of a wall of mirrors looking at themselves and making little movements. I didn’t understand what was exciting about that.” Stark Smith’s interest in dance was sparked in her first year at Oberlin College, where she participated in a residence with the Twyla Tharp company. She was intrigued by Tharp’s movement practices and inspired to continue studying modern and post-modern dance. Stark Smith herself stated that having a partner is the key to contact improv, both to the form itself and to its growth through sharing the technique with others: we “create partners so we could continue to dance.” In the early years of contact improvisation, Contact Quarterly expressed Steve Paxton, Stark Smith's, and other core members choice to make informal leadership and community groups the culture of contact improvisation. Eschewing a trademark and policing of teachers, they used Contact Quarterly to influence and create open communication among leaders, teachers, and contact dancers. Stark Smith maintained that there was no precise pedagogy for teaching the form, and this gave dancers the freedom to innovate. About learning improvisation, she stated, “Once you get a clear feel for the basic premise, develop a few safety skills, and get your reflexes primed and ready, then you're off. You learn by doing.” . The conscious knowledge of these sequences and phases can help to initiate long-form contact improvisation jams, while providing guidance in the development of the dancing. The actual practice is preceded by a verbal talk-through one night before, in which the key phases are outlined. The Underscore is envisaged as an arc that enables dancers to establish the mind–body connections that most support improvisation and to explore various forms of connection, before concluding with reflection ("harvesting"). When introducing the Underscore, facilitators use Stark Smith's 'hieroglyph' movement drawings. Originally created by Stark Smith as spontaneous drawings, the shapes and lines of such 'hieroglyphs' are intended to communicate the internal sensations of a moving body and elicit free interpretation by dancers. Dancers are encouraged to create their own 'hieroglyph' drawings. The process of translating the experience of dance into the illustration reflects her aim to communicate the subjectivities and fluidity in dance as a stimulus for creative practice. The illustrations are intended to trigger an esthetic response in others, and participants are invited to embody them.

Death She died from ovarian cancer in Florence, Massachusetts at the age of 68, on May 1, 2020.