Nancy Stark Smith was an American dancer and founding participant in contact improvisation. Born in Brooklyn, New York and an alumna of Oberlin College, Stark Smith initially trained as an athlete and gymnast. She studied and performed in modern dance and postmodern dance performances in the early 1970s. She danced in the first contactimprovisation performances in 1972, and later worked as a dancer, performer, instructor, author, and organizer. She travelled the world to teach and present performances of contact and improvised dance. She collaborated with numerous partners including Steve Paxton, Julyen Hamilton, Karen Nelson, and, recently, the musician Mike Vargas. In 1975, Stark Smith founded Contact Quarterly, an international journal of dance and improvisation, which she continued to co-edit and produce until her passing. 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 teachers, they used Contact Quarterly to influence and create open communication among leaders, teachers, and contact dancers. Stark Smith developed the Underscore, a series of exercises leading to contact improvisation duets and phases providing guidance in the development of contact dance. It is an arc that enables dancers to establish the mind/body connection that most supports improvisation, explores various forms of connection, and concludes with harvesting through reflection. When introducing the Underscore, facilitators draw Stark Smith's hieroglyphic symbols representing each element. Because they open interpretation to dancers, these translations from experience of dance to the telling of it, illustrate her attempt to convey and include the subjectivities and fluidity in dance as creative practice. They trigger an aesthetic response in others by inviting participants to embody them. She died from ovarian cancer in Florence, Massachusetts.
