About
Contact Improvisation
“Let your body call you back into yourself, into your most deeply embodied self. Land, dive, soar. Find the crumbs that lead back home.”
― Cheryl Pallant, Contact Improvisation: An Introduction to a Vitalizing Dance Form
The definition...
"Contact Improvisation is an evolving system of movement initiated in 1972 by American choreographer Steve Paxton. The improvised dance form is based on the communication between two moving bodies that are in physical contact and their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern their motion—gravity, momentum, inertia. The body, in order to open to these sensations, learns to release excess muscular tension and abandon a certain quality of willfulness to experience the natural flow of movement. Practice includes rolling, falling, being upside down, following a physical point of contact, supporting and giving weight to a partner.
Contact improvisations are spontaneous physical dialogues that range from stillness to highly energetic exchanges. Alertness is developed in order to work in an energetic state of physical disorientation, trusting in one's basic survival instincts. It is a free play with balance, self-correcting the wrong moves and reinforcing the right ones, bringing forth a physical/emotional truth about a shared moment of movement that leaves the participants informed, centered, and enlivened."
(Early definition by Steve Paxton and others, 1970s, from CQ Vol. 5:1, Fall 1979)
In short, Contact Improvisation is “a social dance form based on the research of the movement possibilities of two people sharing weight” (Joerghasmann). This definition highlights the three main aspects of Contact Improvisation, including
“social dance”, “physical contact” and “improvisation”.
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Contact Improvisation is a social dance form practicing in a jam: The jam as a space for people to come and practice together makes CI not just a dancing/healing technique/method but a potential dance form, deserving of its own genre.
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Contact Improvisation revolves around two connected layers: physical contact & improvisation
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‘Contact’ stands for the technique around the practiced usage of physical touch. This first layer with the great emphasis on the research of people and objects based solely on kinaesthetic possibilities gives a uniqueness to the form.
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‘Improvisation’ stands for the technique of communication and negotiation of the dance partners. This second layer makes Contact Improvisation so easy to connect to many other disciplines and life in general, emphasizing more on the randomness and genuine impulses of people.
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The history...
Contact Improvisation (CI) was first presented as a series of performances conceived and directed by American choreographer Steve Paxton in June 1972 at the John Weber Gallery in New York City. Paxton invited about 17 students and colleagues to participate in the two-week project.
With a background in tumbling and martial arts, Steve Paxton was a key figure in the groundbreaking performances of the Judson Dance Theater in mid-1960s New York City, which challenged preconceived notions about dance and created new avenues for the art form, including what types of movement could be classified as dance and how dances are created. In the 1960s, Paxton experimented with radical choreography, exploring solo and ensemble improvisation, most famously with Grand Union (1971–1976), a dance theater collective. Paxton initially suggested Contact Improvisation when he was employed for the Grand Union.
During Grand Union's month-long visit to Oberlin College in Ohio in 1972, Paxton wrote a work called Magnesium for a group of men that examined the boundaries between direction and disorientation. Later, he invited Nancy Stark Smith, Curt Siddall, Daniel Lepkoff, David Woodberry, Nita Little, Laura Chapman, and others to join him in continuing the development of Magnesium in New York. The performance was performed for five hours at the John Weber Gallery following a week of rehearsal. A fortune cookie with the words "Come to John Weber Gallery - contact improvisations" written inside served as an advertisement for the piece.
The characteristics...
Core values and compromises of Contact Improvisation
01
An art form
“Contact” implies coming into touch, while ‘improvisation” means randomness, with people following their internal impulses and listening to both their partners and the space to come up with their next actions. Thus, while Contact Improvisation is an art form, it differs significantly from disciplines like dance or modern dance that emphasize the aspect of performance and visuals. Contact Improvisation is oriented towards emotion, sensation, exploration, and creativity, aiming to unleash freedom both physically and mentally.
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Objects, People & Emotions
The essential elements of Contact Improvisation entail making physical contact with one another as well as with a variety of surroundings and items, including tables, chairs, walls, floors, wood, stone, dirt, and water. At a deeper level, participants can sense tactile exchanges through their motions, exchanging sentiments and energy with others and transcending into emotional or psychological states.
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Physics & Movement research
In contrast to acrobatics, contact improvisation does not always follow a certain form, alignment, or trick. Experimenting with particular movements, such as rolling, twisting, tumbling, being upside down, following a point of contact, bearing the weight of another body, and allowing one's own body to be supported by a dance partner, can also be considered practice. There are certain similarities between the exercises and aikido, in that both partner work and safe training are crucial components.
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Core values
Improvisation involves the concepts and practices of freedom, responsibility, and decision-making. This dynamic process of decision-making involves the dancer's own experience. Simultaneously, in improvisation, realizing movement and anticipating the other convey an embodied comprehension of the other. Contact improvisation is a transient, ever-changing, delicate, and vulnerable experience that is related to place, time, and people. It is a continuous reflection on decisions made via dancing.
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Jamming & Retreat
Worldwide contact improvisation workshops, festivals, and "jams" are taking place. Dancers engage contact improvisation in leaderless practice settings with whoever shows up, be it friends or strangers, young or old, experienced or inexperienced. A few hours are spent in a studio once a week on certain jams. Extended retreat jams may last many days, occasionally hosted at hot spring resorts or other retreat settings where dancers can practice in the studio/lodge at any time of day, or rejuvenate with a steam or soak in the mineral waters.