A one week residency. Contact improvisation with Nancy Stark Smith, Nita Little, Curt Siddal, and Danny Lepkoff. The name is a reference to Grand Union, the post-modern dance/performance group in New York which included Paxton, Yvonne Rainer and Barbara Dilley, where Paxton first developed the form that would be called Contact Improvisation. This workshop was very important for a group of dancers that were working with Linda Rubin’s company, Synergy, in the studio at the Western Front. In that group was Peter Bingham, now artistic director of EDAM (currently resident dance company in the Western Front studio) and still very much informed by Contact Improvisation. I was also in that group and continue to work and teach in the studio. – Jane Ellison