You've mastered the contraction, navigated the floor sequence, and can improvise without freezing—but something's missing. Your dancing is competent, but it's not yet yours. The gap between intermediate and advanced contemporary dance isn't technical perfection; it's the courage to make choices that might fail. Here's how to cross it.
1. Deconstruct Your Technique—Then Question It
Strong technique is non-negotiable, but contemporary dance demands more than ballet fundamentals. Study Cunningham's crystalline clarity, Graham's volcanic power, and Release technique's efficient ease. Then develop the discernment to abandon all three when the choreography demands something raw, awkward, or deliberately unbeautiful.
Practice this: Take a familiar phrase and perform it three ways—first with maximum precision, then with 50% less muscular tension, finally with one "wrong" choice (a collapsed spine, a wandering focus, a held breath). Notice what each reveals.
2. Build a Movement Vocabulary Beyond the Studio
"Take modern or jazz" undersells contemporary's eclectic appetite. Intermediate dancers need exposure to movement systems that rewire their relationship with their bodies:
- Gaga for sensation-based improvisation and availability
- Capoeira or Brazilian dance forms for grounded fluidity and rhythmic complexity
- Somatic practices (Feldenkrais, Body-Mind Centering) for granular body awareness
- Contact improvisation for responsive partnering and weight-sharing intelligence
The goal isn't proficiency in each—it's cross-pollination. Your contemporary technique will absorb what it needs.
3. Improvise With Constraints, Not Just Freedom
Improvisation isn't about doing whatever you want. The most compelling contemporary improvisation responds to deliberate limitations. Structure your practice in phases:
| Phase | Focus | Example Prompt |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Silence | Move from internal impulse only; no external rhythm |
| 2 | Text scores | Respond to spoken word, poetry, or your own vocalization |
| 3 | Task-based directives | "Only curved pathways," "initiate every movement from the elbow," "maintain eye contact with the floor" |
| 4 | Relational improvisation | One dancer proposes, another responds; no pre-planned unison |
Risk-taking becomes possible when failure is built into the structure.
4. Study Your Own Footage—Relentlessly
Performance quality isn't fixed in acting classes. It's built through unflinching self-observation. Record yourself weekly and analyze with specific questions:
- Where do I check out mentally? (The 30-second mark? During slow sections?)
- Where do I perform "dancer face"—generic intensity instead of genuine response?
- Where does something authentically unpredictable occur, and what preceded it?
Contemporary audiences can spot manufactured emotion. Your task is to remove the barriers between your internal experience and its external expression.
5. Train for Contemporary-Specific Demands
Generic wellness advice misses what your body actually does. Prioritize:
- Shoulder girdle stability for weight-bearing floor work and inversions
- Hip flexor length and strength for extended leg holds and développés à la seconde
- Spinal articulation sequencing for safe, fluid transitions to and from the floor
- Breath support for sustained movement and vocal integration
Cross-train with Pilates for core control, yoga for joint mobility, and resistance training for the explosive power contemporary choreography increasingly demands.
6. Perform Outside the Proscenium
Competition circuits rarely serve contemporary dance's values. Seek experiences that stretch your adaptability:
- Site-specific work: Parking structures, botanical gardens, abandoned buildings
- Dance film: Learn to calibrate movement for camera proximity and frame
- Peer showings and works-in-progress: Low-stakes environments for genuine experimentation
- Installation or durational performance: Test your endurance and relationship with audience proximity
Each context teaches something the mirrored studio cannot.
7. Analyze, Don't Just Consume
Passive inspiration creates derivative dancers. Active analysis builds artists. When watching professional work:
- Chart one choreographer's use of stillness—duration, placement, what precedes and follows
- Map another's relationship to gravity: resisting, succumbing, playing between the two
- Note how a third handles transitions—are they erased, emphasized, or transformed into primary material?
Bring these observations to class. Try someone else's strategy with your own material. This is how influence becomes education rather than imitation.
The Intermediate Crossroads
The intermediate level is a dangerous place—competent enough to be complacent, skilled enough to stop questioning. The dancers who advance are those who treat every class as a laboratory, every performance as research
