How It Works

CI Treasure Hunt has four things in it and a handful of places where they get announced. This page explains both, then answers the questions that come up most often.

The four parts of the site

Events. The homepage is the calendar. Every contact improvisation festival, intensive, retreat, training and weekend workshop we know about, sorted by date, filterable by country and by type. Each event has its own page with dates, prices, teachers, venue, and a link straight to the organizer. Past events stay online with an "ended" marker instead of disappearing.

Communities. A world map of local CI groups: jam series, weekly classes, collectives, teacher networks. This is where to look for the thing the calendar deliberately does not carry, your local Tuesday jam. Each entry links to whatever the group actually uses, usually a Telegram, WhatsApp or Facebook group.

Venues. The studios, halls and retreat centers events happen in, with photos, addresses and everything that has been held there. Useful when you know you loved the space and want to know what is coming up there next.

Teachers. Profiles for teachers, organizers and musicians, linked to the events they are part of. Teachers can claim their own profile and edit it.

Where new events get announced

You do not have to come back to the site to find out what is new. Pick whichever of these fits how you already use your phone.

Inside the Telegram group, new events are sorted by length and region, so you can look into what interests you. Events of four days or more go to the festivals topic. Everything shorter goes to a regional topic: Europe, Middle East and Africa; the Americas; or Asia and the Pacific.

The Facebook groups work differently from the Telegram ones. Nobody announces events into them on the site's behalf. Organizers post their own events there, and those posts are one of the ways events find their way onto this site in the first place. They split by event length for the same reason the Telegram topics do: the international group is for long formats of four days and up, and the regional group is where two and three day weekend workshops as well as all longer events in that region belong, so that a weekend workshop in one city is not filling the feed of someone on another continent.

Frequently asked questions

Using the site

Do I need an account? No. Browsing events, communities, venues and teacher profiles needs no account and no sign-in. An account only matters if you want to submit an event, claim a teacher profile, or manage listings you are part of.

Is it free? Yes. Free to browse, free to submit an event, free to claim your profile. There is no advertising on the site.

Why is my weekly jam not listed? The calendar carries events of two days and up. Single jams, one-day workshops and weekly classes are not in it, deliberately: a recurring local jam changes venue, skips holidays and switches to a summer schedule, and a directory kept from the outside is always weeks behind the truth on it. Local groups do that job better. What we list instead is the group itself, in Communities, so you can find your jam by finding the people who run it. If your community is missing there, send it to hello@citreasurehunt.com and we will add it.

Can I buy tickets here? No. We do not sell tickets, take payments, or handle registration. Every event page links to the organizer's own page, which is where you book. Prices shown here are what the organizer published and can go out of date; the organizer's page is the authority.

How current is the information? Events are added continuously and checked when something changes. That said, this is a hand-maintained directory, so if a date, price or venue looks wrong, the organizer's own page wins and a quick email gets it fixed here.

Is the site available in other languages? Not yet. Everything is written in English because the audience is international. Dates, places and prices are readable without much English. Dancers are of course invited to have their browser translate the website into their favorite or local language.

Signing in and profiles

How do I sign in? I never set a password. There is no password. You enter your email address on the sign-in page and we email you a link. Opening that link signs you in. If it does not arrive within a minute or two, check your spam folder. The link is single-use and expires, so if you come back to an old email, just request a new one.

Should I claim an existing profile or create a new one? If you already teach at, organize, or play music for an event listed here, there is probably already a profile with your name on it. Claim that one, so your history stays attached. If you search and find nothing, create a new profile. Both options are on your dashboard the first time you sign in.

How long does a claim take to be approved? Reviewing is done by hand by one person, so it depends on the week. Usually it is quick, and it can take a few days. You get an email when it is approved. New profiles work the same way: you can use your dashboard right away, but the profile does not appear in the public directory until it has been reviewed. If something is time-sensitive, say so in an email and it gets moved up.

Why can I not edit my name? The name field is locked on purpose. Teacher names appear next to each other on festival and event pages, and mixed capitalization or stylized spellings across hundreds of profiles reads as a data-quality bug instead of a deliberate choice. So all names use standard capitalization. If your name is genuinely wrong, misspelled, changed, or the wrong person entirely, email us and we will change it.

What can I edit on my profile? Your bio, your city and country, your website, your social links, and your photo. Text changes are live the moment you save them. Photos are the one exception: every uploaded photo is reviewed before it appears publicly, including replacements for a photo that was already approved. Until then your profile shows your previous photo, or none.

Do you use a photo of me without asking? No. Profile photos are never sourced for you. A profile created by us has no photo until you claim it and upload one yourself. Event and venue photos are different: those come from the organizer's own public announcement and are credited.

I want my profile taken down. If you have claimed it, you can hide it yourself: there is a deactivate option in your profile settings, and it takes effect immediately. Your profile page and your directory entry both go away. Your name stays on the events you are credited on, as plain text with no link, because that is the event's own record of who taught it.

If you never claimed the profile, or you want it gone entirely including from those event credits, use the Report button at the bottom of your profile page and pick "This is my profile, please remove it". You will be asked for an email address so we can confirm the request is yours and tell you when it is done. Emailing hello@citreasurehunt.com works just as well. No justification needed either way.

For organizers

How do I get my event listed? Two ways. Submit it yourself at citreasurehunt.com/events/new after signing in, or just email the details and links to hello@citreasurehunt.com and we will enter it by hand (at least for the beginning and as long as capactiy allows). Both cost nothing. Plenty of organizers use the second option and that is completely fine, although over time it would be nice if organizers add their own events.

What kinds of events do you list? Events where people come together to dance Contact Improvisation, and where the whole thing runs as one continuous stretch of days. Festivals, intensives, retreats, weekend workshops. The shortest format listed is two days.

Two things sit outside that. The first is the shape of the schedule. A course that meets for a few hours a week across several months is a different animal from an event people arrive at and stay inside from beginning to end, even when the total hours are high, and even when it is aimed at people coming from elsewhere. Weekly classes and ongoing jam series are listed through their local community instead, which is where people looking for them actually look.

The second is what is on offer. The dancing has to be the thing itself. Plenty of good CI work touches on somatics, emotional material and personal process, and that belongs here. Where the dance is mainly the vehicle for a program of guided personal or therapeutic process work, it sits outside what this calendar covers, whatever its length.

If you are not sure which side yours falls on, just ask.

How long until it is published? Usually quickly, sometimes a few days. A first submission is read by a person before it goes live, and we often fill in things you did not include: the venue, teacher profiles, a map location, price tiers. Once you have submitted an event or two and everything checked out, your later submissions publish immediately without waiting on review. If your event opens registration on a particular date and the timing matters, say so and it gets prioritized.

What makes a listing that gets clicked? A landscape image, dates and prices that match your own page, the teachers named, and a direct link to your registration page. Events without an image are not posted to the Telegram channel at all, so an image is the single highest-value thing to include.

Where will my event be announced? Publishing an event triggers announcements automatically. It goes to the Telegram channel with its photo, and into the Telegram group: the festivals topic if it runs four days or more, otherwise your region's workshop topic. Our Facebook groups are not part of that, they are places where you post your own event yourself, and you are very welcome to.

Can I tag CI Treasure Hunt as an Instagram collaborator? Yes, if your event runs four days or more. You make the post on your own account as usual and add @citreasurehunt as a collaborator. Once it is accepted, the same post appears on both accounts and reaches both audiences. Your followers see your festival, our followers see your festival, and nobody has to make a second post.

Two things to know before you send the invite. Collab invites are accepted for up to two posts per event, so pick the two that matter most. And they work best on posts that introduce the event itself: the announcement, the program, the teacher lineup. A post about one detail, a single teacher, or a last-minute schedule change is better kept on your own account, where the people already following your event are.

We usually do not work with Instagram stories, the timing is too critical and the outcome of a few hours visibility not worth the short-notice effort.

Can I edit my event after it is published? Yes, and your edits go live right away without waiting for anyone. Once your profile is linked to the event it appears on your dashboard with an edit button. If you would rather not deal with the form, email the change and we will make it.

My event was canceled. Tell us and the event page gets a visible canceled banner instead of being deleted, and a cancellation notice goes out to the same places the original announcement went. People who already saw it announced are the ones who need to know.

Do you also list my venue? If your event happens in a dance studio or venue that regularly hosts contact improvisation or related dance events, that space likely gets its own venue page, with your event linked from it. It is another way people find you. Feel free to suggest venues via email.

Can I get featured or promoted? There is no paid placement on the site today. Ordering is by date, not by who asked. If that ever changes, paid placement will be visibly marked as paid. See About for the full version of that answer.

Data and corrections

Where does your event data come from? Mostly from the organizer's own public announcement: their website, their festival page, their public post. Each listing is a summary that links back to the source. The rest is submitted directly by organizers.

Something is wrong on a page. Email hello@citreasurehunt.com. Corrections are welcome and they get made.

Why do some community links ask me to prove I am human? Some communities are reachable only through a private Telegram or WhatsApp invite link. Those are hidden behind a quick human check so that automated scrapers cannot harvest them, which is what the group admins who shared them asked for.

Do you sell my data? No. See the privacy policy for the full detail on what is collected and why.