ELEVATE CHICAGO DANCE 2018

LAB ARTIST 2018

Rob Welcher is a Chicago-based contact improviser, performer, and teacher. He earned his masters degree in kinesiology at the University of Michigan. He is part of the team that facilitates the Chicago contact jam and pre-jam class. He is a frequent guest CI teacher at DePaul University and Columbia College in Chicago. Teaching roles outside Chicago include Ontario Regional Contact Jam (2018, Toronto), NDEO’s Men in Dance Conference (2017, UWV), Contact Meets Contemporary Festival (2016, Germany). Recent performances include the initial work-in-progress performance of Volledig, and work with Kristina Fluty, Jason Torres-Hancock, Michael Schumacher, Katie Eberhardy, and Sarah Gottlieb.

Rob’s dance making is focused heavily in improvisation. He uses it for material development as well as performance. Within performance, he is exploring the continuum between pure improvisation (nothing is set before walking on stage) and total structure. Between, there lies a variety of possibilities in terms of levels of structure and open choice. What is particularly intriguing to him is what happens when a structured improvisation is performed multiple times. The same structure can manifest very differently from one performance to the next. There is also the possibility of allowing the structure to morph over time and subsequent performances.