Views
In CI Sharing Balance i describe a focus on this question to foster finding contact improv dances:
"How can we share changing balance, playing together with what happens along the way?"
instead of prescribing techniques or rules, this concentrates on a shared focus. that focus complements the basic physical ci recipe (following a point of contact), and helps me find my way into dancing.
i've discoverd a lot in ci dances, and in their pursuit. here are some that i most value.
engagement, exploration, and safety
balance is vital. in contact improvisation we yield independent control of balance. by sharing center of gravity and sharing balance, the consequences of our actions are immediately shared - we share the boat that rocks. this interdependence has very different dynamics than our customary, more independent mode. this shared realm is rich and engaging.
sharing balance requires unusual skills. it entails its own language of movement, with a layer of partnership on top of the already involving dynamics of balance and momentum. there is so much material that even very experienced dancers don't have to wander far to find new and exciting territory, if they keep their attention open [diverse-attention].
there are frontiers to be explored in every direction. staying too much within the limits of one's own, familiar territory limits discovery, while abandoning discretion can overreach, to beyond what's tenable. somewhere in the balance, for each person, are their frontiers of discovery [frontier-hypothesis].
such frontiers are personal, according to each person's experience, abilities, interests, and so on. it is not something dictated from outside - one partner cannot prescribe the other's frontier. therefore, partners engage best by leaving room for one another's discretion, exploring together the combination of their choices.
this is a kind of etiquette of necessity, so that the intuition and judgment of each partner can be fully realized in the collaboration. it is how safety is maintained and mutually supported, while exploring and expanding frontiers.
it is through the partner's commitment to sharing balance that they share control, in a manifestly moment-to-moment way. as with solo coordination, it is through coping with moment-to-moment necessity that we calibrate and learn in our bodies to navigate safely, and ultimately, develop adeptness. so it is with the coordination contact improvisers develop in sharing balance - a gradual learning to cooperate as a sort of collaborative organism.
(connection through shared balance is an essential element of most, if not all, collaborative recreation - other forms of dance, sports, martial arts, etc. i believe that it's more directly the focus in ci than it is in most practices.)
like other elements of this practice, the commitment to share balance is continually fluid, reassessed and renegotiated moment to moment, within and between the dancers.
clenching
preliminary notes:
clenching tends to increase brittleness and reduce adeptness.
people who lack or have an impaired clench response - eg, infants and drunks, respectively - are less likely than others to be injured by substantial falls. being oblivious, or lacking training, they are less likely to clench and present themselves as rigid and brittle on impact. (i'm not advocating alcohol, by the way. you may be less likely to be injured by each accident, but the increased likelihood of having an accident more than makes up for it...-)
the consequences of clenching go beyond the physical response - clenching is an unwillingness to handle surprise. it gets in the way by refusal to engage the situation. it also gets in the way of developing familiarity that would improve navigation the next time. in this way, clenching becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of ineffectiveness.
even in more structured forms, like formal dance, sports, and martial arts, i believe the particular techniques are less important than the acquired experience - the situational familiarity and feedback of consequences in going through the motions and mock confrontations. this is the genius of practice. and, i believe, learning the value of not clenching - of suitable release - is a chief virtue of such practices.
the opposite of clenching, release, recurs as in theme often in contact improvisation, postmodern dance in general, and beyond. alexander technique, feldencrais, http://www.skinnerreleasing.com/articles.html . opening, to the moment, rather than refusing to engage. opening, to cooperation and support, to engage with another. opening, to the unknown, to be willing to explore, and grow. (but, not mindless of consequences [epitaph].)
physical skills
contact improv is usually conveyed with physical exercises and skills that indicate essential ingredients of the practice. (i've begun to list some exercises and skills in CI Basics.) many interesting questions arise in this approach.
for instance, is some particular range of skills necessary for ci? do skills help foster dances, or can they get in the way? what skills are and what skills are not crucial?
in my experience, the answers to these questions depend on the dance. to turn that around, every dance can take on many shapes, and the ability to find the what suits your and your partner's skills and appetites and mood and all the specifics that the dancers bring is, itself, an art worth cultivating. (the section improvisation - finding form, below, says more about this.)
for example, of all things, i'm partial to falling as an element of dancing. (that's not an unusual quirk in ci dancers.) falling together is an "edge case" of sharing dynamic balance, and generally involves compelling, exciting moments. and yet, some equally memorable, viscerally involving dance experiences have involved hardly any movement at all. it was the level of shared focus and connection that made those dances so memorable. and it was as much not-doing as doing that enabled them to be deeply realized. where exactly is the supporting technique? sometimes it is clear, sometimes it is not.
(this brings up another question - would those dances, with a connection obvious and fascinating to the dancers, be noticeably interesting to outside observers? in some cases they reportedly were, in some cases nobody noticed except those of us directly involved. do different criteria for the role of skills and technique obtain for performance than for unobserved practice? where is the overlap, and where are the differences?)
there may be quick and easy answers to these questions, but i don't have them. they are revealing, however, of the framing of the practice - some things we take for granted, and some things we can (and may sometimes need to) question.
one lesson i draw from it all is that curiosity continues to be essential as my experience grows.
personal attitude can inform physical skills, as is the case for many activities. things like curiosity, and the ability to remain present in the moment in the face of surprise and uncertainty, and the ability to fluidly interweave personal discretion while yielding to the moment - each of these is often as crucial to discovering a dance that suits you and your partner as is any physical adeptness . like physical skills, these discernments are developed in practice, and the repertoire of "classic" ci exercises reflects that.
Finding Engagement
my ultimate concern is with what helps me connect and find dances that fit both me and my partner. skills can help lead the way to connection between the dancers, and help develop and navigate the dynamics - yet, it is the dynamics of cooperating, and ultimately the connection itself, on which the dance thrives, and that doesn't always depend on, or result from, physical skills.
the process of finding engagement is as central as its exploration
i've found it valuable, in my practice and teaching, to recognize that finding my way into a dance is as central to the art as exploration of the connection once i get there. (this is also recognition that connection, as just about everything else in the practice, is a fluid thing, increasing or decreasing from moment to moment.)
personal presence in the moment is a rich and inexhaustible endeavor. the process of finding one's way there with another, and the process of exploring that terrain together, are each engaging and challenging in themselves. it helps me to recognize this because i can wind up spend as much or more time searching for connection as i do playing in connection. maybe that's just me.
it's tempting to try to avoid the gaps of the search by instead depending on technique and/or routines which have worked before. using previous actions this way is trying to "play the same way twice", foregoing the opportunities of the only permanent rule in calvin ball, in pursuit of surprise and discovery (below).
conversely, recognizing and exploring the art of the search is part of discovering presence in the moment, and can inform and support one's ability to dance as much as anything else.
solo is as important as partnering
though contact improv is overtly focused on the aspects of "contact" between partners, solo presence is an important part of the practice. ci dancers are constantly negotiating the balance not just of their physical selves, but also their independence from and inter-dependence with their partners.
the dynamics of balance can be a vital ingredient of solo practice [solo-balance] as it can be in partnering. through it you connect with and build on your own disposition in the moment, just as you do when sharing balance with a partner. independence vs inter-dependence with your partner is also a dynamic balance. at any moment you can overshoot in either direction. relinquishing too much of your solo sacrifices a dimension of your personal involvement, and presents your partner with too little of your personal substance to engage with. holding on too tightly to your solo, on the other hand, can preclude responsiveness to your partner, also limiting connection.
in general, developing solo presence and appetite - the ability to find movement that suits you with conviction in the moment - broadens and tunes your options for navigating each dance. you're more free to develop each connection to the degree that suits you, avoiding the need to force connection in order to sustain your personal momentum.
that ability also helps to navigate a contact improv jam - a free-wheeling event where people explore ci dances. the more options that the participants have for dancing - including dancing solo and in larger ensembles, as well as the more common duets - the more chance that the jammers' collective presence can coalesce, and provide the basis for a vibrant, vital event. (this is one of the realms where nancy stark smith's work-in-progress, the underscore, strikes an enlightening balance.)
ultimately, any impulse within oneself is influenced by the surrounding situation, and in turn, action on such informed impulses influences the situation. there is a kind of sensitive inter-responsiveness which attends to both. this attunement deepens engagement, not just in contact improvisation but in most creative endeavors.
collaborative improvisation
improvisation - calvin ball and infinite games
in the popular serial comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, the game calvin ball embodies the playfulness of improvisation in an amazing way. calvin and his stuffed-tiger companion, hobbes, earnestly play a game with rules that they invent as they proceed:
- The only permanent rule in Calvin ball is that you can't play the same way twice.
the wikipedia characterization of calvin ball fits collaborative improvisation well:
- Calvin ball is essentially a game of wits and creativity, rather than purely physical feats...
in a parody of regimented, competitive games, calvin competes fiercely, yet scoring is just another element of play - continually invented and quite useless in the traditional sense. who's winning, in itself, clearly is not the aim of the game. continuing the play is the thing.
in his book, Finite and Infinite Games - A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility [infinite], James Carse describes this kind of playfulness:
- Seriousness always has to do with an established script, an ordering of affairs completed somewhere outside our range of influence. We are playful when we engage others at the level of choice, when there is no telling in advance where our relationship with them will come out - when, in fact, no one has an outcome to be imposed on the relationship, apart from the decision to continue it.
- a finite game is played for the purpose of winning. an infinite game is played for the purpose of continuing the play.
- Surprise causes finite play to end; it is the reason for infinite play to continue.
playfulness is a central ingredient of "infinite games". carse's descriptions illuminate a prime opportunity of collaborative improvisation, like contact improv:
- Because infinite players prepare themselves to be surprised by the future, they play in complete openness. It is not an openness as in candor, but an openness as in vulnerability. It is not a matter of exposing one's unchanging identity, the true self that has always been, but a way of exposing one's ceaseless growth, the dynamic self that is yet to be. The infinite player does not expect to only be amused by surprise, but to be transformed by it, for surprise does not alter some abstract past, but one's own personal past.
this is about the essential connection between surprise and discovery in any creative endeavor. as isaac asimov puts it:
- The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..."
:-)
improvisation - finding form
preliminary notes:
jaglom's favorite orson wells' quote: the enemy of art is the absence of limitations.
just as a picture is affected by its frame, any structure is delineated by rules. too many rules and you lack enough freedom to play, to explore and experiment. too few rules and you lose the ability to cohere.
what about post modern pictures, that trespass the boundaries of a frame? the contrast with a boundary is still being invoked, but the frame "around" the picture is the tradition of framing, rather than physical boundaries.
art and craft arise in the arrangements of materials. the materials can be physical or notional media - pastels on paper, movements in space, written and spoken juxtapositions of thoughts, feelings, concepts, situations. the materials are also the conventions and expectations around the use of the media. every medium has limitations and nuances. whether you use the medium according to expectations, but with a particular new take in nuance or interpretation, or create a new way of applying or changing the rules, your distinctions are visible - to you and others - by contrast with what is familiar.
too like what has come before, and you offer only dry repetition, not art. too divergent and you depart from frames of reference by which what you've done can be seen, and appreciated with the sensibilities developed through experience. (though calvin ball is always changing, it constantly refers to, and uses (in novel ways:), the plethora of materials that are conventional game rules.) the great artists opens vast new realms from innovative use of familiar materials.
in collaborative art, partners depend on common ground to base their mutuality. the need not stay in the familiar, but are most vitally engaged when they grow the new out of something they can recognize, together.
all are elements of contact improvisation
embodying presence in the moment and proportionately trusting to share it, learning to non-verbally communicate and connect with immediacy and commitment, navigating and balancing the dynamics of embodied collaboration in all their intricacy, all these are rich realms explored in contact improvisation, and all are enlightening in their discovery.
Footnotes
| [diverse-attention] | focusing too heavily on some particular set of skills, eg mechanical skills like lifting, rolling, etc, can limit attention to the myriad dynamics of communication, rhythm, pacing, expression, and so on, that can be available in every dance, regardless of the dancer's physical skill. finding focus on material of sufficient interest to each of the partners is often more useful for fostering a vital dance than focusing exclusively on some limited set. |
| [frontier-hypothesis] | i take some liberties with a cognitive psychology model based in research into tendencies of infant's attention [kagan1978], and called The Optimal Discrepancy Hypothesis of Attention in Infants. i believe it supports the notion that we enjoy being at the frontiers of our developed skills. too far short of that and we're not using and developing what we like and have cultivated, and where we have the benefits of cumulative investment. too far beyond and we risk exceeding what we are able to handle. there's a sweet spot, somewhere in between. |
| [epitaph] | Opening, but not mindless of consequences!-) Tombstone:
-__
;" \/Y%%\\
, (WY~ \\/VYllX\/ ),
|Y\/llY\ /Ylll|\/X\/
| /vYl`V \/YlYUY\|
\/ |YY\/ VYYY\/
________ \ |Y\/ V \/llV\/
/ \ V_\_\/ \/\ll_|/
| That Which | \ / \/
| Does Not | || _V
| Kill You | ||/
| Makes You | ||
| Stronger | _JL_
|____________|
|
| [kagan1978] | Kagan, Kearsley, Zelazo (1978, 1980) Infancy; Harvard Press |
| [solo-balance] | the dynamics of shared balance can also be explored in solo movement, at the edge of one's own balance. it's fun to explore, and enlightening. |
| [infinite] | Finite and Infinite Games - A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility by James P. Carse, Ballantine Books, ISBN 0345341848 |
(ongoing)
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