Overview
Contact Improvisation's roots in Spain trace to Toni Gelabert, who saw Steve Paxton dance in New York in 1979 and organized the country's first CI workshop soon after. It took place in the early 1980s at La Fábrica, the Barcelona dance space he ran until 1990. In 1981 Anna Borredà opened Arlequi in a 17th-century farmhouse outside Banyoles; it hosted continuous CI intensives from 1984 onward, welcoming teachers including Nancy Stark Smith, and still runs courses today. Barcelona, Banyoles, and Mallorca formed the practice's original nucleus through the decade.
The practice spread beyond Catalonia through the 1990s, most durably in Madrid: a 1988 course at the Centro Dramático Nacional seeded continuous CI classes at the theatre studio Estudio3 throughout the decade, and in 2000 one of its students, Javier Melguizo, started the city's first regular CI jams. Andalusia and the Basque Country saw their own independent activity too. Barcelona's own jams, by contrast, had gone quiet; they were revived at the decade's end by SIAMB, a collective founded in 1999 by Miguel Strebel, África Navarro, Leo Castro, and Ramon Roig. Spain's teachers and organizers began meeting nationally in 2010, at the first EMOCIE gathering, held at Arlequi; it still convenes every two years.
Contact Improvisation is now practiced in nearly every region of Spain, more than a single page can list.
Catalonia's scene runs deep today. Barcelona's ENEstudio, a CI-dedicated studio running since 2014, offers a multi-year training program alongside its regular classes and jams, framed explicitly as feminist and queer-inclusive. Also in Barcelona, somatic educator Alba Raventós co-founded Ara en Moviment to weave dance, somatics, and festivals together, and Colectivo LNP brings textile art and collective ritual into the practice.
Madrid has its own CI school in Espacio FCI, founded in 2013 by Brazilian choreographer Cristiane Boullosa, who has danced in the city since 2001 and runs its training programs in both Madrid and Bilbao alongside weekly classes. A Friday jam anchors the city's open practice, and teachers include Ilda Freire, co-founder of Cuerpo Colectivo.
Félix Arjona directs CI Formación Andaluza (CIFA), a training program based in Seville. Granada's La Tombuctú hosts regular workshops and jams, and César Cienfuegos maintains a calendar tracking classes, jams and labs across Málaga, Cádiz, Granada and Seville.
A retreat circuit has grown up in the north. Galicia hosts BRINCA, a Contact Improvisation festival in Lugo built around queer perspectives and community-building since 2022. In the Asturian village of Ceceda, Mónica Boullosa and Kike Pamias run KDM Contact Impro and the annual MiRUA CAMP from Casa Mirua, their home and studio since 2017, and Atalanta hosts the Dive into the Dance gathering near Llanes. Cantabria and the Basque Country add their own retreat spaces, near Güemes and in the Karrantza valley.
Valencia's community, organized through Civalencia, gathers each summer for the Focus CI retreat in Castellón. In Extremadura, Carmen Alcalde has kept La Enramada, her home in Garganta la Olla, since 2017, hosting weekly classes and the annual Enramando retreat.
Off the mainland, Ibiza hosts a Contact Impro festival at Club Cala Azul, and Mallorca has two active local groups, including a Manacor-based jam. In the Canaries, Tenerife's La Laguna is home to El Proceso, a studio for somatic and CI practice, and Gran Canaria has its own circle of practitioners.
Sources:
(1) Brozas, M.P. & García, T. (2014). Los comienzos de la danza Contact Improvisation en España (1980-1990). Revista Internacional de Medicina y Ciencias de la Actividad Física y el Deporte, 14(53), 169-181.
(2) Brozas-Polo, M.P. (2016). Expansión geográfica y conceptual de la danza Contact Improvisation en España (1990-2000). Retos, 30, 30-35.
Last updated August 2026
