An emergent Underscore: a conversation with Nancy Stark Smith embodied techne series on dance-tech.tv In this conversation Nancy Stark Smith explains with details the Underscore as framework for exploration and reserach for movement improvisational practices. She defines it and goes on to elaborate about the phases and the Global Underscore. Interview realized in London, July 10th 2012. BIO: Nancy Stark Smith first trained as an athlete and gymnast, leading her to study and perform modern and postmodern dance in the early 1970s, greatly influenced by the dance/theater improvisation group the Grand Union and the Judson Dance Theater breakthroughs of the 1960s in NYC. She graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in dance and writing. In 1972, she danced in the first performances of Contact Improvisation in NYC and has since been central to its development as a dancer, teacher, performer, organizer, and writer/publisher, working extensively over the years with Steve Paxton and others. She travels throughout the world teaching and performing contact and other improvised dance work at festivals, schools, and art centers, working with many favorite dance partners and performance makers including Ray Chung, Karen Nelson, Andrew Harwood, Julyen Hamilton, and musician Mike Vargas. Throughout all her activities, she continues to explore the bodymind states that are generated while dancing, the life cycle of form as it manifests in improvisation, and how any of this research can be communicated in performance and in print. She lives in western Massachusetts, in the northeast of the U.S.A. nancystarksmith.com