what is contact improvisation?

as i say above:

contact improvisation is a way to move with other people, cooperating in the same way that the parts of your body cooperate with one another when you're moving yourself.

ci partners coordinate structurally, organizing around shared balance and attention to fill out movement gaps, for continuous, varying mutual flow. it offers unusually broad opportunities for practicing immediate action - action according to your situation in the moment, rather than aiming to fit yourself to some idealized form. (steve paxton's description of the small dance/stand illuminates "action according to your situation in the moment".)

partner dance in general often involves similarly vital cooperative movement. however, in most partner dance you typically follow set patterns, rhythmic counts, etc. in contact improv, partners instead follow shifting points of contact, discovering ways to coordinate with one another in the course of each dance. these ways can be deeply immediate and diverse.

along the way, dancers get acquainted with the vast territory of collaborative movement. there are many opportunities to notice techniques for physical cooperation, including specific physical patterns and abstract principles. 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 respect for 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, of course, 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, some of the form's seminal developers.

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.

what i like

for me, contact improvisation is:

• overall, an often delectable antidote to the static of daily life
• 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!-)
• 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,
  • it's an all-too-rare opportunity for diverse shared meditation

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 these challenges, and what i learn through them, is as valuable as anything about the practice. as with much substantial learning, though, that pleasure is sometimes only in retrospect... :-)

there's something i want to say 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 each 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 a 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 of weight bearing surfaces 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.

most commonly, people wear loose-fitting cotton athletic clothes, like t-shirts and (light) sweat pants or pajama bottoms/"lounge" pants. on the other hand, tight-fitting athletic clothes, like ballet tights and lycra sports clothes, tend to be too slippery for supporting other people, and paradoxically not as good as cotton for sliding around on the floor.

you in particular want to avoid obtrusive fasteners like buckles and rivets, because they'll poke you and others while you're rolling around.

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 (and nothing) - but providing some protection from friction with minimal restriction of movement is best.

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 experience, the principles that foster the delicious shared engagement, and how to find your way into it, are often not obvious, and sometimes even different than they appear. i have a focus that helps me find my way, which i describe in:

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.

(i would eventually like to write about something along the lines of "starting from where you are and going where you are going". CI Sharing The Moment has some additional thoughts, not yet incorporated in the other sections.)

yielding to collaboration is all well and good, but it's not very specific. to counter that, i've started a catalog of basic CI exercises in CI Basics. i only list the exercises, so far, haven't yet gotten around to describing them individually.

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...

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