Contemporary Dance Classes in Exeter
Contemporary Exeter
Contemporary — Exeter
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Class Details
Location: Exeter City Centre
Day: TBC
Time: TBC
Age Group: 17 – 75
Teacher: —
Class Structure
Beginners Class — 60 Minutes
Grounding & Breath
Settling onto the floor for spinal articulations and long, easy breaths, waking the joints and listening for how weight and gravity want to carry you.
Release & Suspension
Working through release technique, the pull of contraction and the lift of suspension, plus the falling-and-recovering loop that lends contemporary its grounded yet flowing feel.
Travelling the Room
Crossing the space with spirals, shifts in level, gentle elevations and routes down to the ground and back, threading standing and floor-bound dancing together.
Phrase & Intention
Taking on a short set phrase and shading it with dynamics, intention and real feeling so the steps say something rather than simply mark time.
Improvise & Settle
A guided improvisation task to draw the hour together, then unhurried stretching and a quiet moment to let everything land before you head off.
About Contemporary Dance Classes in Exeter
Of all the dance styles, contemporary is perhaps the most open and personal — it leaves rigid shapes behind and works instead with breath, the pull of weight and the momentum your own body generates. Our weekly contemporary classes in Exeter lean on release technique, floorwork, contraction and suspension and a generous helping of improvisation, all in pursuit of movement that can hold feeling and carry a story. Performed in bare feet or socks, each class steadily builds a movement language that is as much about honesty as it is about athleticism.
Exeter has a lively performance streak — from the Northcott Theatre to a busy student scene at the University of Exeter — yet a steady weekly contemporary class for adults beyond the campus has been a tricky thing to track down. Ours are getting under way at a studio in Exeter city centre, a short walk from the Cathedral and Gandy Street, pulling in curious movers from across the city and out to Exmouth, Topsham, Crediton and Dawlish. It is fast becoming a favourite with first-timers and with adults rediscovering dance after a long break — wherever you are starting from, the class begins with you.
There is no need for flexibility, prior training or a certain kind of body — all it takes is a curiosity about how you move. Your teacher takes you through every idea with as much anatomical attention as creative latitude, so your technique and your expression develop in step. Dress in soft layers you can stretch and roll in, and arrive in bare feet or socks. Have a browse through all 20 of our dance classes in Exeter, or round up a group for a one-off hen party dance class.
Enquire About Contemporary
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What Contemporary Hands You
Move From Feeling
Contemporary gives you room to move from how you feel rather than towards a fixed pose. The craft is there underneath, but what matters is honest, personal expression with your own fingerprints on it.
Power From the Floor
All the rolling, sinking and lifting back up forges genuine core strength, looser joints and a sense of where your body is in space that an ordinary gym session rarely reaches.
An Hour to Reset
Phrases driven by breath, plus open improvisation, quiet a racing head — the class becomes a pressure valve where you drop back into your body and walk out lighter than you walked in.
Say Something
Above all else, the work trains you to perform — to play with dynamics, live inside a still moment and let a movement land with weight, be it for an audience or just for your own sake.
Your Contemporary Dance Journey
From those earliest rolls through the spine to dancing with honest feeling — here is roughly how things progress.
Meeting the Floor
Getting Started
Slow rolls along the spine, transfers of weight and your first journeys down to the floor and back up again. Learning how an out-breath can set a movement going, and how giving in to gravity and releasing tension go together.
What to Bring
Comfortable layers with a bit of stretch so you can roll freely, and either bare feet or socks that grip. Tie longer hair up and skip the trainers so nothing drags when you slide.
Stocking the Toolkit
Developing Technique
Contraction and suspension, the give and take of fall and recovery, spirals and phrases that travel. Beginning to sense how it is momentum and swing, rather than effort, that move you through the space.
First Improvisations
Easygoing improvisation prompts — moving to a picture, a single word or a scrap of sound — that grow the confidence to choose movement with no fixed plan in front of you.
Finding Your Voice
Longer Phrases
Joining floorwork, upright technique and gentle jumps into sequences that carry, then exploring range — quick to unhurried, weighted to feather-light, contained to open.
Movement That Speaks
Lending each gesture intent and emotion so a phrase carries like a story, and having your first go at assembling your own material with a few choreographic devices.
Into Performance
Performing & Creating
Assured enough now to interpret, improvise and perform, with the means to put together phrases of your own and an optional low-key sharing to show what you have made.
What Comes Next
Lay ballet underneath for technical grounding, try a contact improvisation workshop, or look for performance work with Devon movement collectives.
Contemporary Dance FAQ
The things first-timers most often check with us before stepping into a contemporary class.
Can I take up contemporary in Exeter without any dance training? +
Of course. Each class is shaped for a spread of abilities, and we take every idea apart — an unfurling of the spine, a contraction, an easy sink to the floor — into bite-sized pieces you can repeat. First-timers slot in happily, and the class draws a good few adults stepping back into movement after years on the sidelines.
What clothing works best for contemporary floorwork? +
Reach for soft, close layers that travel with you as you roll — leggings or joggers with a fitted top are spot on. The style is danced in bare feet or socks so you can grip and slip across the floor, so tuck the trainers away and tie longer hair back out of the way.
What does a contemporary dance class in Exeter cost? +
Just turning up once will run you £10 as a drop-in, with no paperwork and no joining fee. If you would sooner commit, four weeks together comes to £32 — that lands each session at £8. Nothing is locked in, no membership or contract, so you drop in as and when the timetable works for you.
Is contemporary dance tough going physically? +
There is no denying it works the body, but it always picks up where you are. The travelling phrases, the suspensions and the time spent on the ground grow your stamina and core little by little, and every exercise comes with a gentler option so nobody has to push past what feels right.
Where in Exeter do the contemporary classes run? +
Our weekly sessions take place at a studio in Exeter city centre, a short stroll from the Cathedral, Princesshay and Gandy Street. More sessions are being lined up around the area, so drop us a line if you would like one a little closer to home.
Do I need to be flexible before I join? +
Not in the slightest — flexibility is something the practice draws out over time, not a hurdle to clear at the door. Contemporary cares far more about how you use your own range with breath and intent than how far you can fold, and your mobility opens up of its own accord the more you dance.
What goes on in a typical contemporary class? +
Things open with a gentle warm-up down on the floor and plenty of breath, then we head into release work and the contraction-and-suspension material before journeying across the room with spirals and rises and dips in level. We finish on either a fixed phrase or a led improvisation, leaving you space to shape movement and put a little of yourself into it.
Release technique and floorwork — what are they exactly? +
Think of release technique as giving up the tension you carry by default, so breath and gravity do the driving rather than brute muscle. Floorwork applies the very same idea at ground level — you roll, glide and rise back up through the floor, letting one move pour into the next instead of feeling braced or stiff.
Will I be expected to improvise in front of others? +
Only as far as you are comfortable. We ease improvisation in through low-key tasks — responding to a picture, a word or a snatch of music — and nobody is ever pushed into the spotlight. Plenty of dancers come to treasure it as the highlight of the whole session.
Are private contemporary lessons on offer in Exeter? +
Absolutely. One-to-one and small-group contemporary tuition can be set up on request, which suits anyone wanting to dig into release technique, develop a solo or prepare for an audition. Drop us a line with what you have in mind and we will tailor the sessions to it.
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