Nancy Stark Smith (born 1952, Brooklyn, New York) is a dancer and founding participant in contact improvisation.
An alumna of Oberlin College, Smith initially trained as an athlete and gymnast. She studied and performed in modern dance and postmodern dance shows in the early 1970s. She danced in the first contact improvisation shows in 1972, and has since worked as a dancer, performer, instructor, author, and organizer. She has travelled the world to teach and present shows of contact and improvised dance.
She has collaborated with numerous partners including Steve Paxton, Julyen Hamilton, Karen Nelson, and, recently, the musician Mike Vargas. In 1975, she founded Contact Quarterly, an international journal of dance and improvisation, which she continues to co-edit and produce.
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And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it,
But they knew that it was modern.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons.”
—Imamu Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)
“With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eyes is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.”
—Adam Smith (1723–1790)