what is contact improvisation?

as above:

contact improvisation is a way of moving, coordinating with other people like the parts of your body coordinate with each other.

ci partners coordinate structurally, organizing around shared balance and thorough attention, to flow together. it offers a terrific opportunity for immediate, mutual action - action according to your situation in the moment, rather than through fitting yourself to some idealized form. (see steve paxton's description of the small dance/stand.)

most partner dance forms offer vital cooperative movement, but contact improv approaches it in a different way. in most partner dance, you follow patterns including sequence, posture, rhythm, social protocols, and so on. in contrast, ci partners mutually follow shifting points of contact, discovering ways to coordinate around these points in the course of each dance.

(for more, see Contact Improv As A Way Of Moving.)

there are many opportunities for physical cooperation. in ci, the specific techniques are for the sake of discovering each distinct dance, and to be adopted and adapted only when they serve the moment, rather than fitting the moment to the techniques.

any ci dancer has the opportunity to engage in a dance with surprising depth, however experienced they happen to be. key is presence - responding in the present moment, and also respecting one's own capacity and limits for engaging in the moment - "starting from where you are". this attitude is useful for beginner and experienced ci practitioners, alike - and valuable for many other practices, as well.

for a sample of ci 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.

i also have a video of a performance a friend and i did several years ago. one important thing i hope it conveys, if you're patient, is the way that correspondance 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 delectable 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, 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 important, too)
• 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 what i learn through them, is as valuable as anything in the practice, and even these challenges can enjoyable. as with much substantial learning, though, the pleasure of the challenges is sometimes retrospective... :-)

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 tension in ci is between following your own path and following that of your partner. too much of either sacrifices the opportunity to grow a fully engaged, connected dance. in balancing the inwards and outwards focuses, contact improvisors learn a way of moving as a whole, organized around their own and their shared center of mass - a way of going where you are really going, with space/time/ability to connect 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 aiming to try ci for the first time sometimes ask 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. in particular, you 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 frequent 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