(preliminary)

in the most basic description, contact improvisation partners follow a shared point of contact to discover their dance. i believe that the more that partners allow themselves to follow the form - which hinges on following the course of their partner and themselves - the more chance the dance has to be immediate and engaging.

doing stuff with another person is one of the most intricate things you can do in daily life. it's also one of the things most suited to your skills and appetites as a human being (see frontier hypothesis).

typical games have a greater number of more explicit rules, spelling out the play by narrowing the choices: "roll the ball down the alley", "take turns", "if you swing and fail to hit the ball three times, you're out", etc. this makes it simpler for players to find their way in, but limits the range of play. in particular, it limits the involvement of the players in inventing the rules as they go, reducing some of the most interesting aspects of personal involvement, including spontaneity and invention.

the trick is to find a form that fosters a shared focus while admitting invention and spontaneity in the moment. following the shared point of contact is extremely simple and non-prescriptive. there is plenty of opportunity for personal expression, but as in any form, that opportunity depends on a kind of commitment to the form - in this case, to collaborating, by following, rather than taking over and controlling. what is sacrificed by taking over is the richness of the mutual dynamic. (see CI Sharing Balance for exploration of that dynamic.)

second, any time you have a lot of factors involved, adding factors - by forcing some intention - is either going to conflict and disrupt or be consonant. if the choice contrasts with where things are actually going, it competes and makes it a more difficult to collaborate on anything but resolving the competing demands. in order to be consonant with what's already happening, it almost has to come out of the kind of listening and responsiveness that results from mutual following. the balance between consance by following and consanance by initiative is part of the art of ci dance.

it's revealing that a person can do contact improv solo. you can find rich dynamics in following the activity of your own body, engaging with gravity, momentum, and the intricate dynamics of your musculo-skeletal self. that microcosm is present in multiples when engaging with a partner - following the contact point involves following your own internal activities, as manifest in the point, as much as those of your partner. the magic is in being engaged, diversely, together, and that is what ci fosters.

Ribbon's Dream