Burlington International Contact Jam

Burlington International Contact Jam

Save the Date:  September 12th 13th and 14th

Guest Artists:

Juliette Gomes

Juliette Gomes is a Cape Verdean and African American dancer, artist, and Earth scientist based in Montreal where they are currently obtaining a Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Science. Juliette is inspired by the intersection of landscapes of memory, decolonizing the body, and building generative relational practices through movement and connection to the Earth. As a Contact Improviser, their teaching comes from researching bodies in motion through the poetics of Earth systems and decay. Juliette most recently taught at the Montreal 2025 Summer Arcs Festival and hosted the Earthdance 2024 Falling Leaves Jam.

and Olive Frank 

Olive Frank lives in reverence to the gravitational pull that keeps us all on the same  Earth.  Olive studies Structural Integration, the Axis Syllabus,  Contact Improvisation and enjoys co-creating dances that helps them experience gravity in new and playful ways.  They have studied CI in numerous wonderful containers including Spiral and Root at Earthdance, Leviathan in Lasqueti and Mission Improvable in Buffalo NY.  They have been a regular attendee at most CI Jams at Earthdance for the past several years, learning from each dance that they have the opportunity to experience.  Olive is currently perusing a Doctorate in Occupational Therapy at Western New England University. 

Musicians for the Jam: Moti

Moti (Mark) Zemelman, MFA, began practicin Contact Improv 34 years ago in 1988. Over the past 26 years he has taught and performed across USA, Canada, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Europe and Israel. In 2008-09 he taught as Dance Professor at the Instituto Naciónal de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Moti has been both a teacher and a board member at Earthdance Retreat Center in Plainfield, MA where he also co-directed the annual Touch&Play Festival for six years.  He was an original member of Wire Monkey Dance Company (Holyoke, MA) and is a featured dancer in Sanford Lewis' documentary film about CI "An Intimate Dance." As a musician Moti plays vocal-electronic music for Contact Jams and in 2007 released his debut CD, Doorwaves.  He also designs and moderates the international Contact Improv resource website www.contactimprov.com 

and Lalaina

Lalaina was born in France into a home filled with music and adventure. He was raised by a mother who was a teacher and musician steeped in humanism. She instilled in him her love of adventure, mystery, and the transmission of knowledge, which would determine his career path: He completed a master's degree in musical improvisation with machines and then found himself teaching and performing music on the roads of France and Canada.

His artistic practice, coupled with his love of meditation and philosophy, led him to study the ancestral practices of his people of origin, consisting of deeply communal ritual ceremonies blending music and dance. These led him to learn the arts of movement, in a search for unison between body and mind. Through art and its transmission, he seeks to observe the daily application of Antoine Lavoisier's law: "nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.”