CI was invented by Steve Paxton and was a new idea about the way dancers can relate to themselves and one another, and there is an extensive amount of literature on the subject if you know where to look, so I won't bore you with the details. The basic idea is to use our senses to find a connection with the people around us and to make contact with them and use that contact to construct movement around. That contact need not be physical, or even with another person - it could be with the floor, a lamp, or a thought. But the connection is the basis of the dance, rather than the way dance usually works (we have a move, and it conveys a thought or emotion or idea). This is, of course, my interpretation of CI, and everyone has their own. But I wanted to share this paper with you, because I figured it might provoke some thoughts, and since I already wrote it - hey, free blog entry with no extra work - why not?
Introspection Via Interaction
When I enrolled in contact improvisation, I had a goal in mind. It was a simple goal, and a worthy one: I wanted to become a better dancer. I wanted, through this class, to learn how to navigate multiple bodies in contact smoothy and with elegance so that in the future, when and if I was involved in a piece that required contact, or unusual lifts, I would be confident in my abilities not to get myself or anyone around me injured. I think, that over the course of these ten weeks, I have come closer to this goal. I feel much more secure in myself when I am working with another person, and much less afraid of contact. But it would be incredibly short sighted to claim that this was all that I learned this term. The real lessons were so much deeper, and in fact, had very little to do with dance, at least directly. The more I worked with other people, the better in touch I became with myself. When I say “in touch with myself” I don’t mean that I am more aware of my limbs in space, or more aware of my bodily orientation - I learned that from martial arts when I was very young. When I say “in touch with myself” I mean that I am more aware of the movement quality, and of the small little details that show up in your body when you put it in difficult positions. When someone rolls over you, you feel their weight, feel their stomach pressing against yours and you feel their heartbeat in their chest beating against your own. It is the most unique, intimate and pure experience I have ever experienced outside of a sexual context, and it is so much more than two people touching. When I feel a heartbeat against my own, I am made more aware of my own heartbeat. When I feel a hand interlaced with mine, I can feel the blood in my own fingertips. When someone is climbing on me and their hand positions itself on my waist in order to stabilize themselves, I am made aware that I breathe not through my chest, at least not entirely, but through my abdomen as well. When I work with someone, any contact we have, be it physical, emotional, or visual, it not only shows me what they are using to touch me with, but it also allows me to become more closely connected with whatever I am using to touch him or her, be it a finger, a feeling, or a gaze.
During the suspension exercise, over the course of several weeks doing it, and getting used to it and learning how to efficiently move from one person to the next, I realized I was going about it all wrong. As a math major, and circus performer, efficiency of movement and thought is the primary goal in my life. There was a day, in a group of six, where we were lifting each other into the air and I was upside down, laying on someone’s back, hand on someone’s shoulder and someone grabbed my foot. It served no purpose whatsoever - I was stable, I was lifted, and this hand on my foot did nothing - didn’t even attempt to do anything. It didn’t pull, it didn’t move, it didn’t push - it just held. My initial reaction was to ask myself why a person would do that - grab my foot with no intention of doing anything remotely useful for the exercise. But they kept holding on to my foot, even when I flipped over whose ever back I was on, that hand remained on my foot. My feet met earth, and the hand remained, and in order to do this, the woman who has grasped my foot had to be bent over. So I picked her up and she rolled around on me and then moved on to someone else. This small foot grab had a lot of messages to convey. It served no purpose for the moment it was placed, but when it remained and was given a chance, a moment came where it served not only a purpose, but in fact facilitated the continuance of the movement. Contact Improv, it seems, is not like any other kind of movement (which, in retrospect should have been a “duh” moment - it was invented by a person, meaning it did not exist before that invention - of course it wasn’t like any kind of movement in existence, or it would not have needed inventing) because it is a very amorphous form. Any small contact can grow into a larger, more important one. There is no movement without purpose, and there is no movement with purpose - all movement in contact improvisation can be viewed as potential energy. A contact is made and in that moment, it does nothing, but it is the series of choices made by the mover(s) that determine if the contact will remain a potential, and possibly an unused potential, or if it will evolve to become a greater movement.
Both of these concepts, that again in retrospect seem obvious (but that is true of any great lesson - the thing that makes it great is the simplicity of it) both became clear to me on the last day of the class when we had our jam circle. I walked out into the circle and put myself on the ground. I started to roll and to twist and to move and find new ways to touch the ground. I could feel the vibrations of the people around me as they stepped on the floor. I could feel my heartbeat in my fingertips and in my stomach and in my feet. Every touch I made with the floor was a potential, waiting to be explored, some of them were - some were not. Then Patsy put herself quietly down next to me. She didn’t touch me - but she put her hand next to mine is space, and we spent the next few minutes doing nothing more than intertwining our hands. We didn’t look at each other, we didn’t touch with anything but our hands, but in that time, I felt more connected with her and with myself than with any of the people with whom I have been intimate. It seems, that when you open yourself up to feeling not only another person through touch, but feeling yourself through that touch and knowing yourself better, it opens the gates that we as members of such a closed and individualistic society so often find shut, and allows for a personal connection previously unknown.
Contact Improvisation made me a better dancer. I learned some new lifts, I learned some new turns, some new ways to balance myself on a person, some new ways to see and be aware of the bodies around me. I accomplished the goal I set out for myself ten weeks ago. But I am a better mover (not just dancer) because I can move and when I touch things (as touch is unavoidable as long as we have gravity) I feel myself the same if not more than the thing I am touching. Newton third law applies: for every action there is an equal and opposing reaction - for everything that I touch, it touches me, and it astonishes me how much we do not notice that. Every contact is a two way phenomenon. I don’t touch you - we touch.
