Today’s practical provided an introduction to Contact Improvisation and an awareness of moving our bodies in the space in a non-dancing way. My only previous knowledge of Contact Improvisation was from Steve Paxton’s Drafting Interior Techniques which discusses the development of the movement first-hand as it evolved from the 1970s to the present day. Paxton describes Contact Improvisation as an “imaginary person with no physical, sensorial or social inhibitions” which not only put into perspective that this technique is solely focused on the body moving for the sake of moving, but also challenges the social and cultural expectations within dance. For example because I am of a lighter weight than others, I should be the one that is always lifted when in reality I have the strength to carry others as well. During the session I kept in mind that Contact Improvisation was based on an “accidental” experience, which allowed my movement to become a lot freer and experimental as my body moved in tune with this flowing stream of unconscious decisions I was making.

“We were perhaps examining a basic mode of communication between the reflexes of people in physical contact as they moved”

To begin with we began on the floor, pressing, pushing and rolling. Personally I feel comfortable on a lower level and felt at ease travelling across the floor. I tried to expand outside of my comfort zone by coming up onto my knees and extending my arms into the space instead of just rolling and using my feet and back to push myself around the space. At first I was a little self-conscious, but then I took a moment to pause and lay on the floor to allow myself to focus solely on what I was doing and not what was happening around me. Being present is important in Contact Improvisation, according to Heitkamp, as the focus is on perceiving what is happening at that very moment and letting it happen instead of constructing or planning ahead. So when I thought I was planning what my next movement would be, taking a moment to pause allowed me to focus internally and let go of any moment vocabulary I previously had.

We then got into pairs, with one person continuing to press, push and roll around the space and the other following their movement but lightly touching their partner’s body with their hands. This exercise related to Heitkamp’s Moving from the Skin: An Exploratorium, in which he states that the most important element in Contact Improvisation is the communication by touch “both by touching and being touched”. It made me realise that Contact Improvisation isn’t just about lifting your partner but about what you communicate to one another through the use of touch whether that’s with a hand or with another body part.

“A wide range of information is exchanged through the skin”

When touching my partner, I felt I was simply following her movement, mapping where she had changed direction or changed level. It seemed as if my partner was communicating/talking to me and I was responding only briefly by touching her body part. However when I was being touched, I felt more in control and dominant as she followed my every move as I continuously pushed and rolled through the space. Through this, I understood Heitkamp’s idea of creating a dialogue between partners and the idea of responding to your partner’s continuous changing reflexes, which altogether creates a basic mode of communication.

Finally we experimented with tone, in which both partner’s could become the person being touched or the person touching without previous agreement on who was who however each individual must know what role they are taking throughout. At the beginning our movement was slow-paced and dynamically gentle and soft but as we started to become comfortable with changing roles, we began to increase the tone. During this, our duo became faster-paced and dynamically rough and manipulative as we focused on our partner’s sensation of weight, momentum and touch. The faster paced movement meant the touch became heavier and more dominant as we began to move one another around the space instead of just placing a reassuring hand on their body. We also began to experiment with touch using different body parts, such as the back or the knee, increasing the pace and creating heavier movement as we manipulated and fought for dominance over one another. This in turn increased the sound of the movement as we came in contact with the floor and one another forcefully.

 

Jam

Firstly I wasn’t sure what to expect from this session, as I had never experienced a Contact Improvisation jam before, however I was pleasantly surprised by how much I was able to experiment with movement and with the people I worked with.

Like our session previously, I began by rolling, pressing and pushing through the space before coming into contact with anyone. As we moved in the darkness, I felt incredibly comfortable and less self-conscious, which allowed me to increase my dominance in the space and the extent to which I manipulated other people. I also felt I could trust everyone in the room to not only respond to my movement but also the ensure my safety in the space, for example there was one point where I rested my head on Robyn’s shoulder as our only point of contact whilst she led my around the room. I’m really excited to see where the Contact Improvisation jam’s will take me in the future and what potential it has to offer.

 

Questions

• How will experimenting with touch change the way I move?
• How will the use of tone inform my decisions?
• What will Contact Improvisation add to my movement vocabulary?
• Will I continue to break away from my comfort zone?

 

Citations

Heitkamp, D. (2003). Moving from the Skin: An Exploratorium. In: Contact Quarterly/ Contact Improvisation Sourcebook II. 28(2)256-264.

Paxton, S. Drafting Interior Techniques. In: Stark-Smith, N.  A Subjective History of Contact Improvisation. In: Albright, A. C., & Gere, D. (2003). Taken by surprise: A dance improvisation reader. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press, 175-184.