what is contact improvisation?

contact improvisation is a way of moving, organized around a shared point of contact with a partner, to coordinate with people like parts of your body coordinate with one another.

ci offers terrific opportunities to explore immediate, mutual action - action according to your situation in the moment. in contrast to other partner dance forms, it is not organized around fitting yourself to some formal patterns. this leads to some big differences from other forms in the way you learn and practice this one.

in most partner dance, you follow patterns - of sequence, posture, rhythm, social protocols, and so on. in ci, partners mutually follow shifting points of contact, discovering ways to coordinate with each other and themselves around these points. the movement possibilities are vast, yet there are characteristic movement qualities that emerge because they better enable the cooperation. learning to find what works by mutually following the emerging dance, rather than controlling it, is the essence of the practice.

(for more on this premise, see Contact Improv As A Way Of Moving and steve paxton's description of the small dance/stand.)

there are many technical skills you can develop to support this way of moving, but ultimately they are best used in service to the specifics of the current dance, rather than to similarities with other dances. the techniques are to be adopted and adapted only when they serve the moment, rather than fitting the moment to the techniques.

any ci dancer can engage with surprising depth, however experienced they happen to be. responding in the moment is key, as is respecting one's own capacities and limitations in the moment: "starting from where you are", wherever and whenever. this attitude is crucial for beginner and experienced ci practitioners, alike. in the open tableau of improvisation, learning to do what fits and not do what gets in the way is a lifelong practice. this is so in many disciplines, and quite rewarding in this one, if you can be open to it.

for a sample of some ci adepts in action, see an excerpt from fall after newton, a documentary about ci from the people most central to its' early development, including steve paxton, contact improv's originator, and nancy stark and lisa nelson, who have collaborated centrally with steve in the form's development and helped carry the torch.

i also have a video of a performance a friend and i did several years ago. one thing i hope it conveys, in particular, is the way that correspondence can happen without sacrificing your own path, and across distance as well as in immediate contact.

here are several pictures from a spacious, very fun trio with some friends after a sunday dc jam in jan, 2009.

what i like

for me, contact improvisation is:

• overall, an often delicious, moving antidote to the static of daily life
• a win-win collaborative game - an opportunty to engage in a very immediate, visceral way with others, doing something together that we can enjoy and even love
  • it's an all-too-rare opportunity for all-out engagement - of wit, reflexes, attention, strength, sensing, caring, mischief, passion, knowledge, stamina, you name it.
  • at the same time, ci is an all-too-rare opportunity for shared meditation
• an opportunity to realize and expand my kinesthetic appetites - my abilities and desires to move
  • it's my favorite cardiovascular and weight-bearing exercise (cultivate your very own dancer's body!-)

where i struggle

• the practice depends on other people (but not totally - solo is equally important)
• it doesn't always click
• when it isn't clicking it can be hard to tell why
• it can be hard to face the things that people do that get in the way of cooperating
• especially, it can be hard to face the elusive things that i do that get in the way of cooperating

in the long run, ironically, the opportunity to grapple with these challenges, and and to explore what i learn through them, is as valuable as anything in the practice. even the moments of challenges and struggle can enjoyable. as with much substantial learning, though, the pleasure of the challenges is sometimes only in retrospect... :-)

there's something i want to add about "it doesn't always click".

it's tempting to focus on and seek out the capable dancers who help you get to your frontiers, wherever those frontiers are. the often less obvious question is what can be discovered and fostered in every dance, regardless of your or your partner's experience, etc.

this question underlies the path to developing the skills to find and foster dances you like. (it's analogous, in many ways, to the skill of finding and fostering conversations you like.) it can take time, and requires investigation into and development of one's own way of doing things, which can be personally challenging in fundamental ways. ultimately, though, it's an essential route to more enjoyable dances, plain and simple.

the basics

in contact improv's basic description, partners follow a shared point of contact to discover their dance.

the mutual following amplifies small movements - shifts, drifts, pulses, adjustments, releases, regrouping, etc. - that perpetually happen in living bodies, and that reflect the due course of the bodies. by investing their center of gravity into the contact point, partners share a common center, and share the dynamic process of changing balance (see CI Sharing Balance).

that the partners are each following is crucial, so the qualities of the dance increasingly reflect how the dancers respond to and play in the moment. the partners cooperatively navigate the demands and opportunities of gravity, trajectory, rhythm, tone, attitude, without individually controlling any of the aspects, but influencing them all. the subtle material - that small dance described in the previous paragraph - gives lots of feedback from which the partners can discover how they engage in and avoid cooperating.

one essential dyanamic in ci includes both following your own path and following that of your partner. pursuing either focus to the exclusion of the other either - inward vs outward - interferes with growing a fully engaged, connected dance. in balancing the inward and outward focuses, contact improvisors learn a way of moving as a whole, organized around their own and their shared center of mass - a way of really going where you are going, with space/time/ability to do so in connection with others.

while distinct from moving separately, it's fundamentally not disconnected from moving separately. maturity in the practice leads to a blending of your own path and that of your partner - an integration, so that responding to your own impulses incorporates the situation of your partner, and vice versa. moving together this way, partners perpetually have new, shared, and personally engaging territory to explore.

each time is different than any combination with other partners, or even with the same partners at other moments.

at it's fullest, the twists and turns of a CI dance are deeply engaging and often delightfully surprising.

what to wear?

people new to ci sometimes ask about what to wear. the essential thing is to minimize restriction of movement while providing some protection from abrasion. you want stuff that doesn't get in the way of rolling and stretching, and at the same time isn't so slick that people slide off you when you're supporting them. cotton tends to be the magic ingredient.

most commonly, people wear loose-fitting cotton athletic clothes, like t-shirts and (light) sweat pants or pajama bottoms/"lounge" pants. covering your torso and legs is good so your skin doesn't get caught while sliding on the floor. you particularly want to avoid obtrusive fasteners like buckles and rivets, because they'll poke you and others while you're rolling around.

on the other hand, tight-fitting athletic clothes, like ballet tights and lycra sports fashion, tend to be too slippery for supporting other people, and paradoxically, not as good as cotton for sliding around on the floor.

some dancers use specialized clothes like loose dance pants - drawstring linen pants, and so on - but that's not necessary. you can do contact improv in just about anything - but providing some protection from friction with minimal restriction of movement is best.

the one item of specialized clothing commonly used by frequent contact improvisers is "chinese knee pads", to cushion the knees while dancing. the ones most frequent contact improvisers prefer are available online from the contact quarterly. i'm a fairly rare exception that prefers to go without knee pads, except perhaps when doing long-term intensives - and then i tend to prefer the stretchable open-patella knee supports available from neighborhood drug stores.

links

some introductory CI info around the web:

• contactimprov.net and contactquarterly.com are some central sites for the ci community.
• wikipedia has a nice ci description.
• this washington post article for an intrepid reporter's perspective, upon being introduced to contact improv at our local dc jam.
• here's a really nice june 2004 dance magazine article about ci
• DC Contact Improv Jams has ci resources for local dancers

some principles

on observation, CI dances can seem to admit almost any improvisational activity, but i don't believe that is quite so. in my dancing and my teaching i've found it useful to focus on qualities of contact improv as a way of moving. i'm trying to describe this, detailing a series of exercises i delivered in four classes in october, 2009, and including what went in to developing them.

Contact Improv As A Way Of Moving

i've found great benefit in identifying and organizing my contact improv lessons around the movement qualities key to contact improv as a way of moving. this has helped me find solid ground to deliver more coherent and effective lessons. i describe here what i mean by that, and how it played out in a small series of four 1.5 hour classes.

some prior musings:

CI Sharing Balance

contact improvisation is an exploration of the question, "How can we share changing balance, playing together with what happens along the way?"

CI Beyond Sharing Balance

in practice, a lot happens in ci dances. here i explore some of my favorite aspects.

CI Basics was a haphazard start at collecting basic exercises. Contact Improv As A Way Of Moving includes many of the elements in a more thorough way.

jams

ci is most often practiced at jams. like jazz jams, where musicians get together to improvisationally explore the passages of their form, at contact improv jams practitioners gather and explore where the contact point, the sensibilities that the dancers bring to it, and the unique combinations of the moment, take them. see Fostering Contact Improv for some more about this, and DC Contact Improv Jams for information about our local ci resources...

ci is an opportunity to explore and expand the edge of your physical abilities, in the company of others on their own journeys. as with any shared freedom, the right to explore and enjoy ci depends on all participants behaving responsibly, in particular recognizing and respecting their own limits and the limits of others. see CI Respecting Boundaries for a description of what is needed and why.

workshops

i've been invited to teach workshops occasionally. as i was about to do a workshop in atlanta, georgia (July 6-8, 2007 - advertised at least for a while at http://www.atlantacontact.org/), i decided my notes for the classes were coherent enough to put them online: CI Atlanta Workshop 2007

Ribbon's Dream