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a formless form
i love the combination of deep cooperation and liberty that happens in contact improv. like any kind of partner dance, this cooperation depends on connecting through the form's particular way of moving - a shared sense of what fits in the moment, by which partners connect and coordinate. unlike other partner forms, ci's way of moving is not to be found in set patterns. what, then, is meant by "contact improv's way of moving", and how does one find it?
pursuit of this question has shed light on my dancing and teaching.
if not by following patterns, how do people explore contact improv's way of moving?
ci's way of moving is found in exploration of a kind of challenge: moving with a partner, mutually following shared points of contact. the way of moving is that which the partners discover works best when everybody is following - not controlling - the contact point. when this is practiced, partners learn to discover their path together.
in most other kinds of partner dance, dancers learn the form by exploring how to move in that form's patterns - step sequences, rhythms, postures, formal roles, etc. their shared path is never completely set, but they have well-defined shapes within which they feel-out what works well, and expand from there. while the patterns are not the way of moving, they do delineate pathways - forms - within which you discover your own version of that way.
in contrast, contact improv practice is not delineated by patterns. instead, the pathways are those you discover that enable you to follow the contact point - maintaining the connection while navigating the pragmatics of your own path, rolling on the ground, giving and receiving support, falling and sliding and soaring with your partners. you learn what works well and what does not by exploring, while your partners are doing their own version of the same. gradually, you gravitate to that which best supports connection with the least unnecessary restriction, and it becomes part of the common ground for cooperating.
two fundamental contact improvisation principles
while ci movement options include almost anything you can do, there are particular movement qualities that tend to emerge because they enable more immediate, thorough cooperation. that's what informs contact improv's way of moving. i consistently notice two principles inherent in these movement qualities when my dances are going well:
- i discover my dances by following my partner and myself, at each moment.
this is a kind of participation where following and leading are blended.
"following myself" means "going where i'm going". this includes my own physical pragmatics - momentum, kinematics, balance, all that stuff - and also includes but is not solely dictated by my relationship with my partner.
- i move organized around my center and our shared center
in many partner dance forms, the depth of involvement comes with a commitment to sharing centers - where each partner's balance depends to some degree on the other's, and they navigate changing balance together.
in order to share my center, my movements have to be organized with respect to it. the more that i can do that, the more of a coherent, integral presence i offer for my partners to engage with, and vice versa. as we share our centers, my moving comes to be organized around the shared center, and so i coordinate with my partner - and vice versa.
(these principles feel very useful and healthy, and i love that learning them is part of this practice.)
what does it mean to move from my center?
moving from center means involving my whole body.
walking is one fundamental example of this. when one of my legs takes my weight, i organize myself so my center is supported through that leg directly into the ground. as i progress and shift my balance from leg to leg, my entire body shifts around this changing connection with the ground, with everything coordinating in response to it. i can do other things meanwhile - but they're affected by and affect this whole-body activity.
similarly, when connecting with a ci partner, the more we are able to involve our centers in the connection, the more fully we engage with each other, and so, with the dance.
even when our dancing trajectories take us out of physical contact, we can continue to correspond with our whole bodies - with our centers, our balance - and so continue to share the ongoing, immersive dynamics of navigating changing balance together.
how do i move from my center?
as with walking, moving from your center means involving my balance. your balance involves your entire body, and is an overriding commitment - coordination of your body is organized around it. (with good purpose - ignore your balance at your peril.)
the idea of committing your balance to some movement is in contrast to more peripheral commitment.
when getting acquainted with ci, it can be useful to explore connecting with your torso rather than your limbs, since it's easier to avoid commitment when using your limbs. you can commit your balance through your limbs as well as avoiding doing so, though. the issue is learning how to viably make and maintain such a commitment. that comes with practice.
(see CI Sharing Balance for more exploration of these notions.)
sharing the moment
by engaging with both my own center and that of my partner, i combine my dance with theirs. when it's working fully, neither of us sacrifices our individual situations for the partnership, but rather, we connect those situations where possible.
such a connection tends to continuously change. at any moment our weight is increasingly or decreasingly shared and shifting. our paths increasingly or decreasingly coincide. at any moment, we have to be ready to operate more or less in-tandem than the moment before. the changes in dynamics are, themselves, essential elements of our engagement.
navigating all these dynamics together leads to a delicious interresponsiveness, approaching the immediacy and depth of connection that happens between the parts of a individual person's moving body [interresponsiveness].
balance sharing is key to many partner dance forms, typically in cooperating to navigate the form's patterns. contact improv is not described by patterns, however - no standard three-quarter time or dosie-doe's, no prescribed postures or set breaks, pivots, and turns, etc, etc. [lifts] instead, ci partners coordinate discovery of their entire path, as well as navigation of it, through shared points of contact.
skills and techniques aren't the way of moving
it's important to emphasize the distinction between the way of moving and the skills and techniques that useful in the course of it.
in ci there are many useful mechanical skills and techniques, for purposes like organizing your movement around center, fluid weight support, falling into rolling, and so on. these techniques can help support and point to the underlying movement qualities, but they are not the way of moving. mistaking them for it can get in the way of discovering what fits in the moment, and hence interfere with shared discovery of your dance with your partners.
the skills and techniques are tools, to be adopted and adapted when they serve the moment, rather than fitting the moment to the techniques.
the collaborative dynamics of learning ci
while the core principles are few, becoming adept with them and with the way of moving takes time. experience with it intrinsically involves cooperating, which is something to participate in rather than control. instead,
- i deepen my acquaintence with the way of moving incrementally, by:
- filling in the gaps - finding what's relevant by paying close attention to what is happening, rather than concentrating on making things happen.
- courting surprise - widening my attention, to notice in what's present more than just what i expect.
- overall, releasing rather than controlling - avoiding unnecessary restriction or forcing.
once you get a feel for ci's interresponsiveness, you can explore it in solo movement - the dynamics can be found in a dialog with one's own center, without a partner. just the challenge of asking what collaborative dynamics means in solo moving - organizing your movement with respect to your center, and going where you are going as that changes every moment - can be illuminating, and help in discovery of the way of moving.
the class series
series of four 1.5 hour classes, conducted in october 2009. (we used nancy havlik's group rehearsal space at the md youth ballet, while the group was on hiatus.) participants were around 15 to 20 people of diverse age, ethnicity, dance experience, and ci experience, from brand new to many years. 1.5 hrs for each class is fairly brief period in which to achieve any depth, but that may have worked in our favor, requiring planning and time economy.
the target i aimed for was something connected with "going where you're going". i haven't found a concise way to describe the nuance that isn't mystifying, and even misleading. more thorough descriptions, on the other hand, are too complicated - not immediate enough to be useful.
so, instead of explaining the quality, i used a simple movement exercise that demonstrates how it is useful in practice. while the exercise is fairly plain and direct, it depends on some more elementary skills. it is these layers of skills that motivates the exercise series which i describe below.
(most of the exercises i use are more or less variants of things i've learned from other teachers - in many cases, from nancy stark smith. in thanks, i try to mention who originally exposed me to each. conversely, i indicate the few cases where i think i originated the exercise design.)
class 1
going where you're going / following through
this is the motivating goal of this series, in the form of an exercise that involves an opportunity for a sudden ride that depends on the partner offering the opportunity for that ride by continuing to "go where they are going".
[...]
class 2
[...]
class 3
[...]
class 4
[...]
perspective
organizing my lessons around contact improv as a way of moving clarifies my lessons and offers useful orientation for me and my students to find confidence and adeptness in the practice.
while it's helpful to aim for a particular aspect, it may be inevitable that the lessons involve a mixture of elements, some less immediately germane than others. ("Tug on anything in nature and you will find it connected to everything else." --John Muir.) Ultimately, the lessons across the tracks are interconnected, and inform one another.
going further:
- more exercises that specifically illuminate moving organized around your center
- more exercises that specifically illuminate mutual following
- more exercises that combine the two, and how they inevitably are enmeshed
- looking at ci from particular perspectives: play, meditation, sport, art, inter-personal relationship, personal growth.
footnotes
| [curiosity] | courting surprise, releasing rather than controlling, and the like are nicely hinted at by some pithy contact improv mottos, including nancy stark smith's "replace ambition with curiosity" and steve paxton's "tension masks sensation". |
| [interresponsiveness] | there's a sweet spot in the balance of responding to one's inner activity and responding to the interaction with one's partners. when partners are all in the sweet spot - responding to external without excluding internal, and vice versa - the dynamics of the mutual responsiveness becomes a partner, itself. this interresponsiveness feels very like what happens between the various parts of oneself when operating as an well-coordinated organism, and is how dances come to have a feeling of being alive, as a unified organism. |
| [lifts] | some may point out characteristic lifts typical of many ci duets. these lifts are just some of the places that duets can go, and not at all a necessary part of every dance. in fact, the interresponsiveness of center sharing can happen with very little weight, and some of the most compelling dances i've seen or been involved in included no lifts. on the other hand, some, equally compelling dances involved a lot of lifts. they're just not what makes ci ci, and expecting that they're essential can get in the way of doing what fits the partnership in the moment. |
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