The What, Why & How of Rejection
in Contact Improvisation
Dumbo (Brooklyn NY)
Monday April 13th 6-8:30pm, 2026
$25-55
One of the biggest shadows in Contact Improvisation is the experience of REJECTION. Without the container of the length of a song, we often find ourselves wondering: Is this dance over? Is my partner still enjoying this? Am I? Rejection shapes how we enter, stay in, and exit each dance. And it influences the rhythm and texture of the dance itself, surfacing as doubt, second-guessing, or careful negotiating of space.
We’re told we can leave a dance at any time, no explanation necessary, however, many of us develop elaborate strategies to protect ourselves from rejection. If someone leaves us, we’re told not to take it personally. Yet, there are many reasons why we might want to end a dance and sometimes it does have to do with the other person, or least with what they are doing or how they are behaving. This knowledge, delicate though it may be, can offer us a valuable mirror to our own patterns and choices.
In this workshop, we lean toward discomfort rather than away from it. Through warm-ups, facilitated conversation, authentic relating exercises, simple role-play, and dancing with verbal reflection, we will explore the what, how, and why of rejection and notice what emerges when we name it and its motivations alongside our dance.
Participants should have some CI experience, however beginners are warmly welcomed. What’s most needed is curiosity and a willingness to play and be honest.
Price & Registration: The workshop is priced on a sliding scale between $25-55. Participants who would like to attend but cannot pay at that range are also encouraged to reach out ([email protected]) as the workshop can accommodate a limited number of reduced tuition participants.
Maximum Number of Participants: 35
Location: The venue is in Dumbo (Brooklyn NY). Exact location will be shared after registration a few days prior to the event.
NOTE ON EMOTIONAL REGULATION: This workshop will involve the exploration of diverse emotional landscapes that unfold within and among our psyches. Many of the practices we explore are designed to cultivate vulnerability, with its pleasures and hardships, and might be compared to the way one's deepest romantic relationships sometimes surface one's most challenging psychological material. Conflict and hurt may arise that might conventionally be quieted or minimized. It is not uncommon for participants to encounter triggers of psychological wounds within these practices, and this should be considered a possibility. The facilitator will use techniques to contain and care for what arises, but will not be able to provide ongoing care for emotional fallout. We invite you to be watchful of one's own safety and opt out in little and big ways as needed, and to have emotional processing methods in place (such as therapy, meditation, journaling, processing with friends, etc) that can help you learn with and from what happens at the intensive. Additionally, we ask that you have some inner settledness and calm available so we can play deeply together. If at this moment in your life you find you are highly activated by something you cannot set down, it may be best not to participate at this time. We understand that therapy can be very expensive and trusted therapists are hard to find, and there might be some temptation to come to this group for that kind of care, but it is not designed for that kind of individual attention.
About the Deep Play Institute The Deep Play Institute is a nonprofit organization committed to exploring life’s deepest questions through transformative play. DPI’s facilitators – therapists, artists, coaches, and philosophers – aim to use play to bring people into an experiential questioning of what it means to exist. Each program that DPI runs is a unique container, creatively constructed and inspired by practices that include: Gestalt therapy, Process Work, Psychodrama, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Tavistock Group Relations, Relational Psychoanalysis, Authentic Relating, Nonviolent Communication, Circling, coaching, performance art, contact improvisation, experimental theater, LARPs, surrealism, existential games, and various schools of meditation.
We’re told we can leave a dance at any time, no explanation necessary, however, many of us develop elaborate strategies to protect ourselves from rejection. If someone leaves us, we’re told not to take it personally. Yet, there are many reasons why we might want to end a dance and sometimes it does have to do with the other person, or least with what they are doing or how they are behaving. This knowledge, delicate though it may be, can offer us a valuable mirror to our own patterns and choices.
In this workshop, we lean toward discomfort rather than away from it. Through warm-ups, facilitated conversation, authentic relating exercises, simple role-play, and dancing with verbal reflection, we will explore the what, how, and why of rejection and notice what emerges when we name it and its motivations alongside our dance.
Participants should have some CI experience, however beginners are warmly welcomed. What’s most needed is curiosity and a willingness to play and be honest.
Price & Registration: The workshop is priced on a sliding scale between $25-55. Participants who would like to attend but cannot pay at that range are also encouraged to reach out ([email protected]) as the workshop can accommodate a limited number of reduced tuition participants.
Maximum Number of Participants: 35
Location: The venue is in Dumbo (Brooklyn NY). Exact location will be shared after registration a few days prior to the event.
NOTE ON EMOTIONAL REGULATION: This workshop will involve the exploration of diverse emotional landscapes that unfold within and among our psyches. Many of the practices we explore are designed to cultivate vulnerability, with its pleasures and hardships, and might be compared to the way one's deepest romantic relationships sometimes surface one's most challenging psychological material. Conflict and hurt may arise that might conventionally be quieted or minimized. It is not uncommon for participants to encounter triggers of psychological wounds within these practices, and this should be considered a possibility. The facilitator will use techniques to contain and care for what arises, but will not be able to provide ongoing care for emotional fallout. We invite you to be watchful of one's own safety and opt out in little and big ways as needed, and to have emotional processing methods in place (such as therapy, meditation, journaling, processing with friends, etc) that can help you learn with and from what happens at the intensive. Additionally, we ask that you have some inner settledness and calm available so we can play deeply together. If at this moment in your life you find you are highly activated by something you cannot set down, it may be best not to participate at this time. We understand that therapy can be very expensive and trusted therapists are hard to find, and there might be some temptation to come to this group for that kind of care, but it is not designed for that kind of individual attention.
About the Deep Play Institute The Deep Play Institute is a nonprofit organization committed to exploring life’s deepest questions through transformative play. DPI’s facilitators – therapists, artists, coaches, and philosophers – aim to use play to bring people into an experiential questioning of what it means to exist. Each program that DPI runs is a unique container, creatively constructed and inspired by practices that include: Gestalt therapy, Process Work, Psychodrama, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Tavistock Group Relations, Relational Psychoanalysis, Authentic Relating, Nonviolent Communication, Circling, coaching, performance art, contact improvisation, experimental theater, LARPs, surrealism, existential games, and various schools of meditation.
ABOUT THE FACILITATORS
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Aaron Finbloom identifies as an ideological polytheist devoted to worshipping the Gods of: play, truth, authenticity, imagination, transformation and beauty. His life work is to creatively expand, collage and integrate healing & fine arts practices through conversation scores, relational games, live action role play, performance art and dance. He is the co-founder of The School of Making Thinking (SMT) and the director of The Deep Play Institute (DPI). Aaron has training in Circling, Psychodrama, Buddhist Meditation and Processwork and holds a PhD in relational practice from Concordia University in Montreal. His projects have been featured internationally at venues such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Gallery 151 in New York, Maschinenhaus Kulturbrauerei in Berlin, UNAM in Mexico City, Performance Works Northwest in Portland, and MainLine Theatre in Montreal. He currently teaches philosophy at the City College of New York. finblooming.com
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Gabrielle Revlock is an NYC-based artist and educator whose work blends movement, social practice, and relational experimentation. Her participatory projects—The Apocalypse Singles Club, Anonymous Apologies, and Restorative Contact—create playful and meaningful pathways for connection. She has been a practitioner of Contact Improvisation (CI) for over 20 years and teaches locally and abroad, emphasizing mutual support and innovation. Her writing on CI’s therapeutic applications appears in Resistance and Support: Contact Improvisation at 50 (Oxford University Press, 2024) and she is a co-producer of the 2026 NYC Contact improvisation Festival on Governors Island. More at GabrielleRevlock.com
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