Welcome to our new Moment's Notice blog!

Moment’s Notice is a monthly performance series devoted to improvised music, dance and theater. It offers an intimate, casual, consistent venue for experiencing improvisation as an alternative and experimental form of performing art.

Most shows feature four to six separate performances, with a balance between solos and groups and a mix of music, dance, and theater. Performers often cross boundaries between styles and genres. For example, recent shows combined dance with action painting, live and/or projected video, etc. Some make music using home-made instruments or found objects. Others invite audience participation.

The thread that ties together all Moment’s Notice performances is improvisation. Performers might arrive with a general idea or “score”, but each performance includes an element of chance -- the fresh authenticity of improvisation.

When we can (i.e., when there is enough left over to cover expenses) Moment’s Notice shares box office income with performers. We’d like to see – and help create – a world in which all artists are paid for their work. Even in the United States, in times such as these. Even those working in new, risky, or unconventional forms.

Moment’s Notice was started six years ago by Katarina Eriksson, a dancer, and Cassie Terman, an improviser of physical theater. After Cassie moved to New York, Lysa Castro began co-producing and co-curating. Lysa is a performer and instructor of BodyTales and Authentic Movement. Kim Criswell (another physical theater improviser) began helping Lysa produce and curate the series in August, 2006, while Katarina took a sabbatical to perform in Europe. Now, Kim and Katarina are the series’ producers and curators.

Katarina Eriksson has been involved with improvisational dance since 1989, collaborating with artists such as Julyen Hamilton, Ray Chung and Cathie Caraker, and teaching CI and other improvisational forms to children, adults, and professional dancers and actors since 1991. Katarina's traditional dance background includes The Gothenburg State Theater and Opera, Sweden.

Katarina's focus in her teaching and performance work is communication, play, and the challenges and joys of collective instantaneous composition. On January 12, 19 & 26 she will be teaching the pre-jam Contact Improvisation classes in Berkeley (1.30pm-3.30pm at 8th Street Studio, 2525 8th St @ Dwight).

Long, long ago, Kim Criswell danced with the Komenka Ethnic Dance Ensemble in New Orleans and the Khadra International Folk Ballet in San Francisco. Now, she collaborates with the Imaginary Friends physical theater improv trio (Abhay Ghiara & Krista Gullickson), Action Theater maestro Owen Walker, and others. Kim is in the final weeks of completing her MA in Transformative Arts at JFK University, and she occasionally offers workshops in Action Theater™: The Improvisation of Presence.