Exploring Cooperation

Contact Improvisation is a wonderful opportunity to learn to coordinate more deeply with others and with yourself. Very much in the spirit of the dances, jams themselves are improvisational, with little regulation. All this typically works fine because the practice works through cooperation than through control.

Communication is never perfect, however, and sometimes people miss recognizing or honoring the boundaries of others. It is impossible to completely prevent that from happening without sacrificing the key elements of discovery and growth. However, some clear guidelines can help everyone understand what they can do to keep such mistakes from spoiling a good situation.

Clear Communication

As with any shared freedom, CI cooperation depends on each of us being able to recognize and respect our own limits and the limits of others - the personal boundaries.

People cannot abide by boundaries that they do not see.

While exploring and expanding your frontiers, you must strive to be clear with yourself and with others when you reach your limits.

Safety as well as success depends on everyone recognizing and clearly expressing their limits. This is especially so in a practice that frequently involves reevaluating and adjusting those limits.

Cooperation depends on respecting one another's boundaries.

In order for everyone to seek what suits them - pace, depth of connection, daring maneuvers, etc - everyone must be attentive for and respect the limits expressed by their partners, verbally and non-verbally. Safety as well as good connection depends on that sensitivity.

People can offer material for others to explore, but they must not try to control the other's choice to accept or refuse those offers. Each of us is in the best position to steer our own explorations.

Genuine opportunities to connect include the option to not connect, within and beyond the dancing.

In order for everyone to have the opportunity to choose the dances they accept, everyone must be ready to accept being refused a dance. Even followup to discuss why you were refused must be an option which may also be refused.

As with any shared freedom, the freedom to enjoy CI depends on each of us being able to recognize and respect our own boundaries and the boundaries of others, even while reevaluating and adjusting them. The freedom to explore and expand our creative frontiers together depends on respect for this principle by everybody participating.

What is "Clear"?

Sometimes you find effortless understanding with someone, and sometimes it doesn't come as easily. If a gesture does not successfully convey your message, you may have to explicitly speak it. Sometimes communication legitimately needs to be repeated. People may forget what you said, or understand incompletely, so you may have to repeat yourself, at the risk of seeming harsh. Sometimes, you will be unable to get your message across and will have to remove yourself from a dance (or similarly, conversation, outing, etc.)

What To Do When One-on-one Communication and Exiting Does Not Work.

Occasionally even the best communication is not enough. If you feel that you have been clear about your limits but they are not being honored, and you are being pursued even after removing yourself and asking to be left alone, you can ask for mediation. Request consultation from jam organizers, workshop teachers, or anyone you trust, asking them to help convey to the other person to leave you alone. Everyone should do their best to communicate clearly and reasonably, and avoid unnecessary condemnation.

Though they should know better, it's possible that a teacher or facilitator is the one refusing to disengage. If there is no one that you trust available for consultation and mediation, it's your responsibility to leave an unsafe situation. Once you have left, you can find another facilitator to help you address the issue.

Fundamentally

Contact improv, at its core, is about collaboration, not control. To work well it fundamentally depends on participants respecting each other's boundaries. Much like a lot of life.

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• For more on this topic:

  Martin Keogh has a very fine essay on his website that discusses many of the interpersonal boundary dynamics which people have grappled with in CI.