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{{Short description|Form of improvised dancing}} |
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{{Infobox Martial art |
{{Infobox Martial art |
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| imagecaption = [[Steve Paxton]] and [[Nancy Stark Smith]], in a contact improvisation performance (1980). Photograph by Stephen Petegorsky |
| imagecaption = [[Steve Paxton]] and [[Nancy Stark Smith]], in a contact improvisation performance (1980). Photograph by Stephen Petegorsky |
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| country = [[United States]] |
| country = [[United States]] |
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| creator = [[Steve Paxton]] |
| creator = [[Steve Paxton]] |
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| famous pract = [[Steve Paxton]], [[Nancy Stark Smith]] |
| famous pract = [[Steve Paxton]], [[Nancy Stark Smith]], [[Lisa Nelson]] |
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| parenthood = [[modern dance]], [[postmodern dance]],<ref name="Banes 1987">{{cite book|last=Banes|first=Sally|title=Terpischore in sneakers: postmodern dance|year=1987|publisher=Wesleyan University Press|location=Middleton, CT}}</ref> [[martial arts]] ([[Aikido]]), [[Somatics|somatic practices]] ([[Release Technique]] |
| parenthood = [[modern dance]], [[postmodern dance]],<ref name="Banes 1987">{{cite book|last=Banes|first=Sally|title=Terpischore in sneakers: postmodern dance|year=1987|publisher=Wesleyan University Press|location=Middleton, CT}}</ref> [[martial arts]] ([[Aikido]]), [[Somatics|somatic practices]] ([[Release Technique]]) |
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| ancestor arts = |
| ancestor arts = |
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| descendant arts = Underscore ([[Nancy Stark Smith]]), Material for the Spine ([[Steve Paxton]]) |
| descendant arts = Underscore ([[Nancy Stark Smith]]), Material for the Spine ([[Steve Paxton]]) |
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'''Contact improvisation''' is a |
'''Contact improvisation''' is a practiceofmovement research, where improvisation and momentum, relation with gravity and with others are the main focus. This form has been developing internationally since 1972 and it started from the exploration, research and inquiries of Steve Paxton. It involves the exploration of one's body in relation to others and the space of presence they visit, by using the fundamentals of sharing weight, touch, and movement awareness. It has evolved into a broad global community around "jams" characterized by their welcoming attitude towards newcomers to dance, as well as seasoned practitioners, and its fundaments relate with dancing without being guided by music, instead, the dancers learn to listen to the sounds that the dance itself brings. |
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American dancer and choreographer [[Steve Paxton]] originated contact improvisation, drawing from his past training in [[aikido]], a martial art form, to explore and push |
American dancer and choreographer [[Steve Paxton]] originated contact improvisation, drawing from his past training in [[aikido]], a martial art form, to explore and push physical relationship with gravity with his colleagues and students to develop this new practice. Contact Improvisation plays with the artistry of falling off balance, counterbalance, finding the shelves of the body, learning the mechanics of the body in order to handle someone else's weight or be lifted, breathing techniques, and can involve the art of getting to know your movements through the physical point in contact. |
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Steve Paxton, along with other pioneers [[Nancy Stark Smith]], Danny Lepkoff, [[Lisa Nelson]], Karen Nelson, Nita Little, Andrew Harwood, Peter Bingham, and Ray Chung, thus participated in creating an "art-sport," oscillating between different emphases depending on the moments and personalities who practice it: |
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* experimental dance (practice-based research organized in dance laboratories)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Landscape of the Now: A Topography of Movement Improvisation|last=Spain|first=Kent De|date=2014-07-02|publisher=OUP USA|isbn=9780199988266|language= |
* experimental dance (practice-based research organized in dance laboratories)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Landscape of the Now: A Topography of Movement Improvisation|last=Spain|first=Kent De|date=2014-07-02|publisher=OUP USA|isbn=9780199988266|language=en}}</ref><ref name=":6" /> |
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* theatrical form (improvised performances and lectures-demonstrations)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Dance As a Theatre Art: Source Readings in Dance History from 1581 to the Present |
* theatrical form (improvised performances and lectures-demonstrations)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Dance As a Theatre Art: Source Readings in Dance History from 1581 to the Present|date=1992-12-01|publisher=Princeton Book Company|isbn=9780871271730|editor-last=Cohen|editor-first=Selma Jeanne|edition=2nd|pages=[https://archive.org/details/danceastheatrear00selm/page/222 222]|language=en|editor-last2=Matheson|editor-first2=Katy|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/danceastheatrear00selm/page/222}}</ref> |
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* educational tool (classical training for professional and non-professional dancers in improvisation and in partnering)<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Moment of Movement: Dance Improvisation|last1=Blom|first1=Lynne Anne|last2=Chaplin|first2=L. Tarin|date=1988-12-15|publisher=University of Pittsburgh Press|isbn=9780822954057|edition=1st|location=Pittsburgh, Pa.|language= |
* educational tool (classical training for professional and non-professional dancers in improvisation and in partnering)<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Moment of Movement: Dance Improvisation|last1=Blom|first1=Lynne Anne|last2=Chaplin|first2=L. Tarin|date=1988-12-15|publisher=University of Pittsburgh Press|isbn=9780822954057|edition=1st|location=Pittsburgh, Pa.|language=en}}</ref> |
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* social dancing (through informal gatherings known as "jams")<ref name=":0" /> |
* social dancing (through informal gatherings known as "jams")<ref name=":0" /> |
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* awareness practice<ref name="Village 2002">{{cite news|url=http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-12-03/news/on-balance/|title=On balance|last=Kamenetz|first=Anya|date=3 December 2002| |
* awareness practice<ref name="Village 2002">{{cite news|url=http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-12-03/news/on-balance/|title=On balance|last=Kamenetz|first=Anya|date=3 December 2002|access-date=5 November 2013|newspaper=The Village Voice}}</ref> |
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Formally, contact improvisation is a movement improvisation that is explored with another being. According to one of its first practitioners, |
Formally, contact improvisation is a movement improvisation that is explored with another being. According to one of its first practitioners, Nancy Stark Smith, it "resembles other familiar duet forms, such as the embrace, wrestling, surfing, martial arts, and the [[Jitterbug]], encompassing a wide range of movement from stillness to highly athletic."<ref name=":5">Nancy Stark Smith et David Koteen (2013), ''Caught Falling. The Confluence of Contact Improvisation, Nancy Stark Smith, and Other Moving Ideas'', Contact Editions, p. xii</ref> |
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Various definitions establish in their own ways what was at stake in a contact improvisation duo. |
Various definitions establish in their own ways what was at stake in a contact improvisation duo. Steve Paxton proposed the following in 1979: <blockquote>The exigencies of the form dictate a mode of movement which is relaxed, constantly aware and prepared, and onflowing. As a basic focus, the dancers remain in physical touch, mutually supportive and innovative, meditating upon the physical laws relating to their masses: gravity, momentum, inertia, and friction. They do not strive to achieve results, but rather, to meet the constantly changing physical reality with appropriate placement and energy.<ref>Steve Paxton, "A Definition", ''Contact Quarterly'', Winter 1979, p. 26.</ref></blockquote> |
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==History of contact improvisation== |
==History of contact improvisation== |
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=== From ''Magnesium'' to ''Contact Improvisations'' === |
=== From ''Magnesium'' to ''Contact Improvisations'' === |
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Contact improvisation was developed in the [[United States]] in the 1970s by a group of dancers and athletes gathered for the first time under the impetus of choreographer and dancer |
Contact improvisation was developed in the [[United States]] in the 1970s by a group of dancers and athletes gathered for the first time under the impetus of choreographer and dancer Steve Paxton.<ref name=":0" /> |
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In January 1972, Steve Paxton was in residence at [[Oberlin College]] on a tour with [[Grand Union (dance group)|Grand Union]], a collective where he collaborated among others with [[Yvonne Rainer]] and [[Trisha Brown]]. |
In January 1972, Steve Paxton was in residence at [[Oberlin College]] on a tour with [[Grand Union (dance group)|Grand Union]], a collective where he collaborated among others with [[Yvonne Rainer]] and [[Trisha Brown]]. For several weeks, he offered Oberlin students two sets of practices: |
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# every morning at dawn, a "soft class" involving an exploration that he soon called the "small dance," a form of meditation that is practiced standing, where attention is paid to postural adjustments and micro-weight transfers;<ref>Steve Paxton, " |
# every morning at dawn, a "soft class" involving an exploration that he soon called the "small dance," a form of meditation that is practiced standing, where attention is paid to postural adjustments and micro-weight transfers;<ref>Steve Paxton, "Why Standing?", ''Contact Quarterly'', 2015</ref> |
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# and later in the day, rehearsals for a performance that he transmitted to a group of young men and whose score is to explore the extremes of movement and disorientation, from standing still to falling, rolling, colliding, and jumping in the air. For these rehearsals, Steve Paxton relied on his training in modern dance (he had danced in the companies of [[José Limón]] and [[Merce Cunningham]]), in [[aikido]] and in [[gymnastics]]. |
# and later in the day, rehearsals for a performance that he transmitted to a group of young men and whose score is to explore the extremes of movement and disorientation, from standing still to falling, rolling, colliding, and jumping in the air. For these rehearsals, Steve Paxton relied on his training in modern dance (he had danced in the companies of [[José Limón]] and [[Merce Cunningham]]), in [[aikido]] and in [[gymnastics]]. |
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The meeting of these practices gives rise to ''Magnesium'',<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://contactquarterly.com/contact-editions/index.php#book=videoda-contact-improvisation-archive-(dvd)|title=Contact Editions dance and somatics books & dvds|website=contactquarterly.com|access-date=2017-03-08}}</ref> a twenty-minute long piece where dancers perform on gym mats, jump and bump into each other, manipulate and cling to one another. "In this performance, dancers usually use their bodies as a whole, all parts are simultaneously unbalanced or thrown against another body or in the air."<ref name=":0">Novack, Cynthia Jean., ''Sharing the dance'', Univ. Of Wisconsin Press, <abbr>1</abbr> January 1990 ( {{ISBN|0299124444}}, {{OCLC|925081573}}, [https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=fr&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=fr&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/925081573&usg=ALkJrhhzN2cJYtQlxmnmGFkKRFSb7UZeSg read online] ), chapters 2 and 3.</ref> After about fifteen minutes, the dancers stop and start a "Small Dance" that concludes the performance. |
The meeting of these practices gives rise to ''Magnesium'',<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://contactquarterly.com/contact-editions/index.php#book=videoda-contact-improvisation-archive-(dvd)|title=Contact Editions dance and somatics books & dvds|website=contactquarterly.com|access-date=2017-03-08}}</ref> a twenty-minute long piece where dancers perform on gym mats, jump and bump into each other, manipulate and cling to one another. "In this performance, dancers usually use their bodies as a whole, all parts are simultaneously unbalanced or thrown against another body or in the air."<ref name=":0">Novack, Cynthia Jean., ''Sharing the dance'', Univ. Of Wisconsin Press, <abbr>1</abbr> January 1990 ( {{ISBN|0299124444}}, {{OCLC|925081573}}, [https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=fr&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=fr&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/925081573&usg=ALkJrhhzN2cJYtQlxmnmGFkKRFSb7UZeSg read online] ), chapters 2 and 3.</ref> After about fifteen minutes, the dancers stop and start a "Small Dance" that concludes the performance. |
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In the Spring of 1972, Steve Paxton received a grant from Change, Inc which allowed him to invite dancers to work on the form he was evolving. He invited some colleagues from the [[Judson Dance Theater]] years like [[Barbara Dilley]] and Nancy Topf, [[release technique]] pioneer [[Mary Fulkerson]], as well as students met during his teaching tours, including |
In the Spring of 1972, Steve Paxton received a grant from Change, Inc which allowed him to invite dancers to work on the form he was evolving. He invited some colleagues from the [[Judson Dance Theater]] years like [[Barbara Dilley]] and Nancy Topf, [[release technique]] pioneer [[Mary Fulkerson]], as well as students met during his teaching tours, including Nancy Stark Smith and Curt Siddall (from Oberlin College), Danny Lepkoff and David Woodberry (from the [[University of Rochester]], where Mary Fulkerson was a teacher) and Nita Little (from [[Bennington College]]).<ref name=":0" /> |
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At the end of this week of residency, the group presented a performance which Steve Paxton named ''Contact Improvisations''. They presented it in the form of a permanent afternoon practice for five days, at the John Weber Gallery in Manhattan, which at the same time showcased a film by [[George Manupelli]], ''Dr. Chicago'', and where spectators could come and go as the practice continues.<ref name=":4" /> |
At the end of this week of residency, the group presented a performance which Steve Paxton named ''Contact Improvisations''. They presented it in the form of a permanent afternoon practice for five days, at the John Weber Gallery in Manhattan, which at the same time showcased a film by [[George Manupelli]], ''Dr. Chicago'', and where spectators could come and go as the practice continues.<ref name=":4" /> |
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Following the first performance of ''Contact Improvisations'' in New York in 1972, the participants scattered to different parts of the [[United States]] but soon began to teach the practice.{{r|Kourlas}} The syncopated, risky, raw and awkward style of the first performances gave place rather quickly to a variety of aesthetics within the form. |
Following the first performance of ''Contact Improvisations'' in New York in 1972, the participants scattered to different parts of the [[United States]] but soon began to teach the practice.{{r|Kourlas}} The syncopated, risky, raw and awkward style of the first performances gave place rather quickly to a variety of aesthetics within the form. |
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One of those aesthetics was the development of smooth, continuous, controlled flow of quality in the late 1970s and early 1980s, running parallel with the opposite trend of interest in conflict and unexpected responses, including previously avoided eye contact and direct hand contact.<ref>Novack, 1990 op cit p. 156-8.</ref> Says |
One of those aesthetics was the development of smooth, continuous, controlled flow of quality in the late 1970s and early 1980s, running parallel with the opposite trend of interest in conflict and unexpected responses, including previously avoided eye contact and direct hand contact.<ref>Novack, 1990 op cit p. 156-8.</ref> Says Nancy Stark Smith, |
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<blockquote>Within the study of Contact Improvisation, the experience of flow was soon recognized and highlighted in our dancing. It became one of my favorite practices and I proceeded to "do flow" for many years-challenging it, testing it: could we flow through ''this'' pass? Could we squeak through ''that'' one, and keep going?<ref>Nancy Stark Smith, "Back in time", Contact Quarterly, vol.11/1, Winter 86, p. 3</ref></blockquote> |
<blockquote>Within the study of Contact Improvisation, the experience of flow was soon recognized and highlighted in our dancing. It became one of my favorite practices and I proceeded to "do flow" for many years-challenging it, testing it: could we flow through ''this'' pass? Could we squeak through ''that'' one, and keep going?<ref>Nancy Stark Smith, "Back in time", Contact Quarterly, vol.11/1, Winter 86, p. 3</ref></blockquote> |
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==== Languaging and observing ==== |
==== Languaging and observing ==== |
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In 1975, the dancers working with Steve Paxton considered trademarking the term contact improvisation in order to control the teaching and practice of the dance form, consequently for reasons of safety. This idea was rejected in favor of establishing a forum for communication: this became the ''Contact Newsletter'' founded by |
In 1975, the dancers working with Steve Paxton considered trademarking the term contact improvisation in order to control the teaching and practice of the dance form, consequently for reasons of safety. This idea was rejected in favor of establishing a forum for communication: this became the ''Contact Newsletter'' founded by Nancy Stark Smith, which evolved into the bi-annual journal [https://contactquarterly.com/ ''Contact Quarterly'']<ref>{{cite journal|last=Smith|first=Nancy|title=A question of copyright - some history|journal=Contact Quarterly: A Vehicle for Moving Ideas|year=1998|volume=23|issue=1|page=35}}</ref> which continues to be published online by the non-profit Contact Collaborations (incorporated in 1978) after a final print edition came out in January 2020.<ref name=":2">{{cite web|title=About Us|url=http://www.contactquarterly.com/about/cq_aboutus.php|publisher=Contact Collaborations|access-date=2 November 2013}}</ref>{{r|Kourlas}} The journal, now co-edited by Nancy Stark Smith and Lisa Nelson, brings together different reflections of contact improvisation teachers and practitioners and cements an international community by equipping it with a communication organ, as well as hosting several other orders of reflections, including writings by [[contemporary dance]]rs and [[Somatics|somatic practitioners]]. According to the magazine's statement,<blockquote>''Contact Quarterly'' is the longest living, independent, artist-made, not-for-profit, reader-supported magazine devoted to the dancer's voice. Founded in 1975, ''Contact Quarterly'' (CQ) began as a forum for discussion of the emerging dance form Contact Improvisation. Serving as a meeting ground for a worldwide network of contact improvisers, ''CQ''quickly grew to include writings and interviews on postmodern and contemporary experimental dance, somatic movement practices, improvisational dance, mixed-abilities dance, teaching methods, creative process, and performance.<ref name=":2" /></blockquote>While the development of contact improvisation has benefited greatly from Nancy Stark Smith and Lisa Nelson's editorial work to support the writings of dancers in their exploration of the form, it also owes much to the cameras of Steve Christiansen and then Lisa Nelson, who documented many moments of the work (especially in performance) and allow the contactors to observe themselves with meticulousness.[[File:CIJam.jpg|thumb|left|Contact Improvisation jam in Montpellier, France (2004]] |
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==== Development of art-sport ==== |
==== Development of art-sport ==== |
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Since the mid-1970s, regular jams are present in most major cities in North America (New York City, Boston, San Francisco, and Montreal). Other multi-day residential spaces (such as the Breitenbush Jam, which has existed since 1981) have been in existence since the late 1970s. Remembers dancer Mark Pritchard, |
Since the mid-1970s, regular jams are present in most major cities in North America (New York City, Boston, San Francisco, and Montreal). Other multi-day residential spaces (such as the Breitenbush Jam, which has existed since 1981) have been in existence since the late 1970s. Remembers dancer Mark Pritchard, |
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[[File:Earthdancestudio-outsideview.jpg|thumb|Earthdance artist-run residency center in western [[Massachusetts]]]] |
[[File:Earthdancestudio-outsideview.jpg|thumb|Earthdance artist-run residency center in western [[Massachusetts]]]] |
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The 1979 Country Jam was a first of its kind in the Contact world: over fifty people from the western United States and Canada came together for twelve days of non-structured existence, life and dance: neither a workshop, a conference or a seminar, but an improvisational gathering, with the sole aim of creating a space for dancing and living in flux... Our days were without structure, except for meals: at the beginning, we planned to keep 90-minute slots for the courses, but the idea was quickly abandoned thanks to a system based on Supply and demand, in which each could suggest a topic to be dealt with and offer to lead a class.<ref>Mark Pritchard, "Country Jam", ''Contact Quarterly'', <abbr>vol.</abbr> 5 (1), 1979, <abbr>P.</abbr> 36</ref> These residential events (workshops, festivals, long jams) represent a parallel economy that invited the creation of dedicated spaces of practice, the model of which was provided very early by Earthdance, a residential center built in 1986 by a Boston community of dancers.<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.earthdance.net/resources/articles/1996/09/earthdance-survives-changing-vision-changing-times|title=Earthdance survives changing vision, changing times|date=1996|work=Daily Hampshire Gazette}}</ref> |
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=== In Europe === |
=== In Europe === |
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In Europe, contact improvisation was presented for the first time in 1973 (from June 25 to 28th) in an art gallery in Rome, L'Attico run by Fabio Sargentini.<ref>{{Cite book|title=L'attico di Fabio Sargentini. 1966-1978. Catalogo della mostra| |
In Europe, contact improvisation was presented for the first time in 1973 (from June 25 to 28th) in an art gallery in Rome, L'Attico run by Fabio Sargentini.<ref>{{Cite book|title=L'attico di Fabio Sargentini. 1966-1978. Catalogo della mostra| year=2010 |publisher=Mondadori Electa|isbn=9788837079574|pages=128|language=it, en}}</ref> In the 1970s and 1980s, Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson were regularly invited to the [[Dartington College of Arts]] in Great Britain (where early contacter Mary Fulkerson was part of the dance faculty) and the School for New Dance Development in [[Amsterdam]], which served as transmission belts for contact improvisation in Europe. |
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Nancy Stark Smith was key to the organization of the first European Contact Improvisation Teachers Exchange. Subsequent exchanges have been organized since 1985 and hosted each year by a different European country.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.ecite.org/|title=ECITE.org|website=www.ecite.org|access-date=2017-03-29}}</ref> |
Nancy Stark Smith was key to the organization of the first European Contact Improvisation Teachers Exchange. Subsequent exchanges have been organized since 1985 and hosted each year by a different European country.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.ecite.org/|title=ECITE.org|website=www.ecite.org|access-date=2017-03-29}}</ref> |
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=== In the world === |
=== In the world === |
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The network of social practices or amateurs of contact improvisation has spread to all the continents except Antarctica,<ref name=":2" /> with a particularly intense presence in the Americas, Western and Eastern Europe, Finland, Russia, Israel, Japan, Australia, India, China and Malaysia, as evidenced by the regularity of the jams, festivals and weekly courses taught in these countries. |
The network of social practices or amateurs of contact improvisation has spread to all the continents except Antarctica,<ref name=":2" /> with a particularly intense presence in the Americas, Western and Eastern Europe, Finland, Russia, Israel, Japan, Taïwan, Australia, India, China and Malaysia, as evidenced by the regularity of the jams, festivals and weekly courses taught in these countries. |
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==Spaces of practice == |
==Spaces of practice == |
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=== Universities === |
=== Universities === |
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In June 1980, Elizabeth Zimmer, organizer and director of the American Dance Guild, put together the conference Improvisation: Dance Considered as Art-Sport.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/sharingdancecont00nova|url-access=registration|quote=improvisation dance as art sport.|title=Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture|last=Novack|first=Cynthia J.|date=1990-08-15|publisher=Univ of Wisconsin Press|isbn=9780299124441 |
In June 1980, Elizabeth Zimmer, organizer and director of the American Dance Guild, put together the conference Improvisation: Dance Considered as Art-Sport.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/sharingdancecont00nova|url-access=registration|quote=improvisation dance as art sport.|title=Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture|last=Novack|first=Cynthia J.|date=1990-08-15|publisher=Univ of Wisconsin Press|isbn=9780299124441|pages=[https://archive.org/details/sharingdancecont00nova/page/99 99]|language=en}}</ref> The conference was mainly dedicated to contact improvisation, which had been referred to as an "art-sport" a few years earlier by [[Simone Forti]], and introduced contact improvisation in the American academic world. Contact improvisation is now taught in a majority of American universities offering a choreographic curriculum ([[New York University]], Oberlin College, [[Bennington College]], [[Smith College]], [[Ohio State University]]) as well as in many contemporary dance festivals ([[Jacob's Pillow Dance|Jacob's Pillow]], [[Bates Dance Festival]]). |
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[[File:Contact Improvisation Trio Dojo Florence.jpg|thumb|left|A contact improvisation trio (2017)]] |
[[File:Contact Improvisation Trio Dojo Florence.jpg|thumb|left|A contact improvisation trio (2017)]] |
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=== Jams === |
=== Jams === |
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In the mid-1970s, the term "jam" appeared to describe, like [[Jam session|jazz jam sessions]] and [[Milonga (dance)|milongas in tango]], |
In the mid-1970s, the term "jam" appeared to describe, like [[Jam session|jazz jam sessions]] and [[Milonga (dance)|milongas in tango]], an opportunity for free practice where dancers who do not know each other can meet and negotiate together their dance or observe the practice of their partners.<blockquote>Every week in dozens of cities that make up an international network, members of this Contact Improvisation "community of experience" meet for a few hours in a dance studio for a jam. This hybrid practice seems to me to work halfway between a bodily meditation, a psycho-kinesthetic therapy, a sports training, and a dance improvised session.<ref>Deva Davina, "Some notes of a contacter ethnographer", ''Nouvelles de danse'', <abbr>Vol.</abbr> 38-39, Bruxelles, 1999, <abbr>p.</abbr> 101</ref></blockquote> |
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Jams also occur at multi-day residential courses led by a dancer or a group of dancers at conferences or festivals, where the days can alternate between free practices, courses by guest artists, and debates regularly bring practitioners together. |
Jams also occur at multi-day residential courses led by a dancer or a group of dancers at conferences or festivals, where the days can alternate between free practices, courses by guest artists, and debates regularly bring practitioners together. |
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==== Inclusion ==== |
==== Inclusion ==== |
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Some have argued that this relaxed space of practice favoured contact improvisation's inclusivity towards disabled movers:<blockquote>Unlike a structured workshop or a performance, the Contact jam setting allows for open-ended dancing, a mode particularly conducive to dancers with different abilities. For one thing, it a lot easier to rest or stop and talk with your partner... More than any other genre of dance, Contact Improvisation has nurtured and embraced dancing that can integrate multiple abilities and limitations. In fact, many of the most renowned nondisabled Contact practitioners (including |
Some have argued that this relaxed space of practice favoured contact improvisation's inclusivity towards disabled movers:<blockquote>Unlike a structured workshop or a performance, the Contact jam setting allows for open-ended dancing, a mode particularly conducive to dancers with different abilities. For one thing, itis a lot easier to rest or stop and talk with your partner... More than any other genre of dance, Contact Improvisation has nurtured and embraced dancing that can integrate multiple abilities and limitations. In fact, many of the most renowned nondisabled Contact practitioners (including Steve Paxton), spend a lot of time teaching, facilitating and dancing with disabled communities.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OYbHhwUpxAMC&q=contact+jam&pg=PA210|title=Taken by Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader|last1=Albright|first1=Ann Cooper|last2=Gere|first2=David|date=2003-10-24|publisher=Wesleyan University Press|isbn=9780819566485|pages=210|language=en}}</ref></blockquote> |
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==== Sexual harassment ==== |
==== Sexual harassment ==== |
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Women have expressed feeling uncomfortable on the dance floor and in the community, especially with men who overstep intimacy, bringing unwanted sexual energy into the connection.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Yardley |first1=Brooks |title=Respecting Boundaries/Coexisting Genders: A Zine about Women's Experiences of Feeling Unsafe in Contact Improv |journal=Contact Improvisation Newsletter |volume= 42.2 |issue=Summer/Fall 2017 |url=https://contactquarterly.com/contact-improvisation/newsletter/index.php#view=respecting-boundaries-coexisting-genders | |
Women have expressed feeling uncomfortable on the dance floor and in the community, especially with men who overstep intimacy, bringing unwanted sexual energy into the connection.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Yardley |first1=Brooks |title=Respecting Boundaries/Coexisting Genders: A Zine about Women's Experiences of Feeling Unsafe in Contact Improv |journal=Contact Improvisation Newsletter |volume= 42.2 |issue=Summer/Fall 2017 |url=https://contactquarterly.com/contact-improvisation/newsletter/index.php#view=respecting-boundaries-coexisting-genders |access-date=14 October 2019}}</ref> As a result, some people organized #MeToo disruptions of jams.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Harrist |first1=Cookie |title=#MeToo DISRUPTION at the 2018 West Coast Contact Improvisation Jam |journal=Contact Quarterly |volume= 44.1 |issue=Winter/Spring 2019 |pages=50 |url=https://contactquarterly.com/cq/article-gallery/view/how-the-first-rule-brought-metoo-to-contact-improvisation.pdf |access-date=14 October 2019}}</ref> To address sexual harassment issues, many jams are establishing jam guidelines and instigating other measures.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Pierce |first1=Benjamin |title=A Compendium of Contact Improvisation Jam Guidelines and related material from around the world |url=https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Os8c2ukZRS5cnJhJv0SuBX5MrpGKAMZk6U3i-Pbfezk/edit#heading=h.axpp7s2sk9zp |access-date=14 October 2019}}</ref> |
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== Improvisation structures == |
== Improvisation structures == |
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Contact Improvisation involves technical aspects or "moves" that support the duets and create a recognizable style of movements: shoulder and hip lifts, head-to-head improvisation, table-top position (being on all fours, supporting the weight of the partner on the back), surfing (rolling on the floor, being "surfed by" the partner), and aikido rolls.<ref name=":3" /> |
Contact Improvisation involves technical aspects or "moves" that support the duets and create a recognizable style of movements: shoulder and hip lifts, head-to-head improvisation, table-top position (being on all fours, supporting the weight of the partner on the back), surfing (rolling on the floor, being "surfed by" the partner), and aikido rolls.<ref name=":3" /> |
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But these are conceived of as the means to an end, which can be described as the dialogue of sensations of weight and touch between partners:<blockquote>The body in [contact improvisation] is accordingly not merely a physical body whose weight and momentum are subject to natural laws of gravity and motion, but a responsive, experiencing body. Here it must be emphasized that despite the use of the term “inward focus” in Novack’s account, the cultivation of kinaesthetic awareness cannot be equated with an “introspective” preoccupation with private sensations; rather, the accent lies on sensing-through the responsive body, combining both “internal awareness” and “responsiveness to another”.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Behnke|first=Elizabeth A.|date=2003-01-01|title=Contact Improvisation and the Lived World|url=https://philpapers.org/rec/BEHCIA|journal=Studia Phaenomenologica|volume=3|issue=Special|pages=39–61|doi=10.7761/SP.3.S1.39}}</ref></blockquote> |
But these are conceived of as the means to an end, which can be described as the dialogue of sensations of weight and touch between partners:<blockquote>The body in [contact improvisation] is accordingly not merely a physical body whose weight and momentum are subject to natural laws of gravity and motion, but a responsive, experiencing body. Here it must be emphasized that despite the use of the term “inward focus” in Novack’s account, the cultivation of kinaesthetic awareness cannot be equated with an “introspective” preoccupation with private sensations; rather, the accent lies on sensing-through the responsive body, combining both “internal awareness” and “responsiveness to another”.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Behnke|first=Elizabeth A.|date=2003-01-01|title=Contact Improvisation and the Lived World|url=https://philpapers.org/rec/BEHCIA|journal=Studia Phaenomenologica|volume=3|issue=Special|pages=39–61|doi=10.7761/SP.3.S1.39}}</ref></blockquote>Steve Paxton insisted on this aspect with the concept of "interior techniques" involving in the dance practice a training of perception,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.ahk.nl/fileadmin/download/theaterschool/talk/talk-training-perception.pdf|title=Training perception|last=Steve Paxton|date=2006}}</ref> resting on investigations based on the sciences of the senses (physiology, experimental and [[ecological psychology]], anatomy, and behaviour sciences).<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Turner|first=Robert|date=2010-08-25|title=Steve Paxton's "Interior Techniques": Contact Improvisation and Political Power|journal=TDR/The Drama Review|volume=54|issue=3|pages=123–135|doi=10.1162/DRAM_a_00007|s2cid=57568114|issn=1054-2043}}</ref> |
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Lisa Nelson, in that regard, occupied a special place in the effervescence of the development of contact improvisation. Taking distance from the dance, she watched a lot through the eye of the camera and pursued personal research on the collaboration between the senses, in particular on the organization of [[Proprioception|kinaesthesia]] in relation to the way in which vision works (a practice later known as the "Tuning Scores"). As Patricia Kuypers remarked, "her staggered gaze nourished the maturation of the [contact improvisation], developing analysis of the perceptual system and revealing specific questions about how improvisation works."<ref name=":1" /> |
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=== Round robin === |
=== Round robin === |
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Central to the poetics of the form is a desire to create a non-hierarchical way of developing the movement, based on the simple exchange of weight and touch between partners improvising together.<ref name=":0" /> This stance has been argued to reflect the counter-cultural context in which contact improvisation was developed (aftermath of the 1960s [[Vietnam War]] and [[Hippie|Hippie movement]]).<ref name=":4">{{Cite web|url=http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Experiment_Called_Contact_Improvisation|title=The Experiment Called Contact Improvisation - FoundSF|last=Hennessy|first=Keith|website=www.foundsf.org|language=en|access-date=2017-03-09}}</ref> |
Central to the poetics of the form is a desire to create a non-hierarchical way of developing the movement, based on the simple exchange of weight and touch between partners improvising together.<ref name=":0" /> This stance has been argued to reflect the counter-cultural context in which contact improvisation was developed (aftermath of the 1960s [[Vietnam War]] and [[Hippie|Hippie movement]]).<ref name=":4">{{Cite web|url=http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Experiment_Called_Contact_Improvisation|title=The Experiment Called Contact Improvisation - FoundSF|last=Hennessy|first=Keith|website=www.foundsf.org|language=en|access-date=2017-03-09}}</ref> |
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=== |
=== Underscore === |
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In the 1990s, |
In the 1990s, Nancy Stark Smith, one of the most active propagators of contact improvisation and editor of ''[[Contact Quarterly]]'', developed a practice out of her teachings called "the underscore."{{r|Kourlas}}<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://nancystarksmith.com/underscore/|title=Underscore|last=NSS|website=Nancy Stark Smith|language=en-US|access-date=2019-05-10}}</ref> It consisted of a score serving as a descriptive and prescriptive base for the practice of group improvisations.<ref name=":5" /> In this practice, vocabulary is tailored to fit the specific experiences of dancers and benefits from Nancy Stark Smith enmeshment with contact improvisation.<blockquote>As a teacher of contact improvisation, she had observed that particular warm-up exercises and movement activities were helpful in bringing dancers to a state of body-mind preparedness for engaging in a Contact duet. The Underscore is a scored collection of those exercises and activities, complete with pictographs<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AYpHAQAAQBAJ&q=nancy+stark+smith+glyphs&pg=PA88|title=Engaging Bodies: The Politics and Poetics of Corporeality|last=Albright|first=Ann Cooper|date=2013-11-20|publisher=Wesleyan University Press|isbn=9780819574121|pages=88|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=http://nancystarksmith.com/files/beg._phases-glyphs_of_underscore_caught_pg91.pdf|title=Caught Falling|last1=Smith|first1=Nancy Start|last2=Koteen|first2=David|last3=Smith|first3=Nancy Stark|date=2008-01-01|publisher=Contact Quarterly|isbn=9780937645093|location=Northampton, MA|pages=91 sq|language=en|access-date=2017-03-29|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140617065108/http://nancystarksmith.com/files/beg._phases-glyphs_of_underscore_caught_pg91.pdf|archive-date=2014-06-17|url-status=dead}}</ref> that represent each phase and subphase of its progression.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Composing while Dancing: An Improviser's Companion|last=Buckwalter|first=Melinda|date=2010-12-16|publisher=University of Wisconsin Press|isbn=9780299248147|edition=1|pages=67|language=en}}</ref></blockquote>Some moments of the practice clearly refer to activities explored in the practice of contact improvisation: |
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* "Bonding with the earth" thus refers (in part) to the experience of the "Small Dance" |
* "Bonding with the earth" thus refers (in part) to the experience of the "Small Dance" |
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* "Engagement" to the commitment that can be involved in a contact improvisation duet |
* "Engagement" to the commitment that can be involved in a contact improvisation duet |
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* "Skinesphere", the space beneath the skin<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=weYxAgAAQBAJ& |
* "Skinesphere", the space beneath the skin<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=weYxAgAAQBAJ&q=skinesphere&pg=PA262|title=The Place of Dance: A Somatic Guide to Dancing and Dance Making|last=Olsen|first=Andrea|date=2014-01-10|publisher=Wesleyan University Press|isbn=9780819574060|pages=76|language=en}}</ref> (as opposed to the kinesphere, which is the space surrounding the body<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lc5KCgAAQBAJ&q=skinesphere&pg=PA150|title=Knowledge in Motion: Perspectives of Artistic and Scientific Research in Dance|last1=Gehm|first1=Sabine|last2=Husemann|first2=Pirkko|last3=Wilcke|first3=Katharina von|date=2017-03-29|publisher=transcript Verlag|isbn=9783839408094|pages=150|language=en}}</ref>), refers to the inward focus involved in some somatic preparations for the practice of contact improvisation. |
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==Contact improvisation and contemporary dance== |
==Contact improvisation and contemporary dance== |
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=== Similar simultaneous explorations === |
=== Similar simultaneous explorations === |
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[[File:Documenta 12 P6120038.JPG|thumb|Trisha Brown's ''Floor of the Forest'' (1964).|left]] |
[[File:Documenta 12 P6120038.JPG|thumb|Trisha Brown's ''Floor of the Forest'' (1964).|left]] |
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The explorations envisaged in the first moments of contact improvisation are not specific to the collective led by |
The explorations envisaged in the first moments of contact improvisation are not specific to the collective led by Steve Paxton. Many other forms of dance had also experimented with weight, touch and improvisation and examples abound in the 1960s of dancers who practice something similar, but not as systematic as contact improvisation, including [[Trisha Brown]], [[Grand Union (dance group)|Grand Union]], [[Daniel Nagrin]]'s Workgroup, [[Anna Halprin]] 's San Francisco Dancers' Workshop, [[Julian Beck]] and [[Judith Malina]]'s [[The Living Theatre|Living Theater]]<ref name=":0" /> or [[Carolee Schneemann|Carolee Schneeman]]'s ''Meat Joy'' (1964).<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://learner.org/courses/globalart/work/133/index.html|title=Art Through Time: A Global View - Meat Joy|website=learner.org|access-date=2017-03-08}}</ref> |
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[[Simone Forti]], for instance, developed ''Huddle'' in the 1960s. It was a dance in which six to seven dancers were invited to form together an agglutinated mass of which one by one they detached themselves to gradually reintegrate it, thus testing the tactile, olfactory and weight sensations.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://art.thehighline.org/project/simoneforti/|title=Huddle - High Line Art|website=art.thehighline.org|language=en|access-date=2017-03-08}}</ref> |
[[Simone Forti]], for instance, developed ''Huddle'' in the 1960s. It was a dance in which six to seven dancers were invited to form together an agglutinated mass of which one by one they detached themselves to gradually reintegrate it, thus testing the tactile, olfactory and weight sensations.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://art.thehighline.org/project/simoneforti/|title=Huddle - High Line Art|website=art.thehighline.org|language=en|access-date=2017-03-08}}</ref> |
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=== As a resource for movement === |
=== As a resource for movement === |
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[[File:SleepNoMoreMasks.jpg|thumb|''Sleep No More'' (2011) Photograph by Robin Roemer.]] |
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Many contemporary choreographers today use contact improvisation as a significant resource for movement. This is the case with choreographers [[Bill T. Jones]], [[Wim Vandekeybus]] and [[Antonija Livingstone]], or in the companies [[Punchdrunk]] (especially in their famous site-specific 2011 production [[Sleep No More (2011 play)|''Sleep No More'']]<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/arts/dance/sleep-no-more-is-theater-embedded-with-dancers.html|title='Sleep No More' Is Theater Embedded With Dancers|last=Kourlas|first=Gia|date=2011-09-06|work=The New York Times|access-date=2017-03-08|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>) and [[DV8 Physical Theatre|DV8 Physical Theater]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://prezi.com/91dq6_ezokdj/dv8-physical-theatre-company/|title=DV8- Physical Theatre Company|website=prezi.com|language=en|access-date=2017-03-08}}</ref> |
Many contemporary choreographers today use contact improvisation as a significant resource for movement. This is the case with choreographers [[Bill T. Jones]], [[Wim Vandekeybus]] and [[Antonija Livingstone]], or in the companies [[Punchdrunk]] (especially in their famous site-specific 2011 production [[Sleep No More (2011 play)|''Sleep No More'']]<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/arts/dance/sleep-no-more-is-theater-embedded-with-dancers.html|title='Sleep No More' Is Theater Embedded With Dancers|last=Kourlas|first=Gia|date=2011-09-06|work=The New York Times|access-date=2017-03-08|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>) and [[DV8 Physical Theatre|DV8 Physical Theater]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://prezi.com/91dq6_ezokdj/dv8-physical-theatre-company/|title=DV8- Physical Theatre Company|website=prezi.com|language=en|access-date=2017-03-08}}</ref> |
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References to contact improvisation vary: some are inspired by the qualities of the duet styles involving a specific use of touch, while others insist on the acrobatic dimension of contact improvisation and put forward situations of risk as means of reaching adrenalized states of performance.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Fifty contemporary choreographers|last1=Martha|first1=Bremser|last2=Lorna|first2=Sanders|date=2011-01-01|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781136828324|oclc=857382034}}</ref> Many also perpetuate the work of sensation put forward by contact improvisation while making way for an interrogation on the relations between the genders that contact improvisation tends rather to make disappear behind an equality advocated but not always enforced. Companies like DV8 and [[The Cholmondeleys]] have thus produced choreographies based on a similar anti-mechanistic approach to that of contact improvisation, coupling it with interrogations on gendered roles."<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rPSCAgAAQBAJ& |
References to contact improvisation vary: some are inspired by the qualities of the duet styles involving a specific use of touch, while others insist on the acrobatic dimension of contact improvisation and put forward situations of risk as means of reaching adrenalized states of performance.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Fifty contemporary choreographers|last1=Martha|first1=Bremser|last2=Lorna|first2=Sanders|date=2011-01-01|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781136828324|oclc=857382034}}</ref> Many also perpetuate the work of sensation put forward by contact improvisation while making way for an interrogation on the relations between the genders that contact improvisation tends rather to make disappear behind an equality advocated but not always enforced. Companies like DV8 and [[The Cholmondeleys]] have thus produced choreographies based on a similar anti-mechanistic approach to that of contact improvisation, coupling it with interrogations on gendered roles."<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rPSCAgAAQBAJ&q=dv8+keersmaeker+contact+improvisation&pg=PA181|title=The Routledge Companion to Feminism and Postfeminism|last=Gamble|first=Sarah|date=2004-11-23|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781134545629|language=en}}</ref> Similarly, a number of early contactors – such as Keith Hennesy, Ishmael Houston-Jones, [[Bill T. Jones]] and his partner Arnie Zane – participated in the struggles for [[LGBT rights in the United States|LGBT rights]] in the wake of the [[HIV/AIDS in the United States|AIDS crisis]] of the 1980s.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2017/02/our-own-aids-time-keith-hennessy-and-ishmael-houston-jones-in-conversation/|title=Our Own AIDS Time: Keith Hennessy and Ishmael Houston-Jones in Conversation|work=Open Space|access-date=2017-03-08|language=en-us}}</ref> |
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In Europe in particular, many improvisers were influenced by contact improvisation, especially from the 1980s. Examples of such dancers are João Fiadeiro from the Portuguese New Dance, British improvisers Julyen Hamilton,<ref>Julyen Hamilton, " Contact Improvisation was a question of my generation ," ''Nouvelles de danse'', <abbr>vol.</abbr> 38-39 1999, <abbr>P.</abbr> 198</ref> Kirstie Simson, and Charlie Morrissey, as well as North American artists who emigrated to Europe like Benoît Lachambre, [[Mark Tompkins (dancer)|Mark Tompkins]]<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.idamarktompkins.com/?q=en/teaching|title=Teaching and research|website=www.idamarktompkins.com|language=en|access-date=2017-03-08}}</ref> and [[Meg Stuart]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://newyorklivearts.org/artist/meg-stuartdamaged-goods-eira/|title=Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods & EIRA {{!}} New York Live Arts|website=New York Live Arts|access-date=2017-03-08}}</ref> |
In Europe in particular, many improvisers were influenced by contact improvisation, especially from the 1980s. Examples of such dancers are João Fiadeiro from the Portuguese New Dance, British improvisers Julyen Hamilton,<ref>Julyen Hamilton, " Contact Improvisation was a question of my generation ," ''Nouvelles de danse'', <abbr>vol.</abbr> 38-39 1999, <abbr>P.</abbr> 198</ref> Kirstie Simson, and Charlie Morrissey, as well as North American artists who emigrated to Europe like Benoît Lachambre, [[Mark Tompkins (dancer)|Mark Tompkins]]<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.idamarktompkins.com/?q=en/teaching|title=Teaching and research|website=www.idamarktompkins.com|language=en|access-date=2017-03-08}}</ref> and [[Meg Stuart]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://newyorklivearts.org/artist/meg-stuartdamaged-goods-eira/|title=Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods & EIRA {{!}} New York Live Arts|website=New York Live Arts|access-date=2017-03-08}}</ref> |
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[[Meg Stuart]] considers her lineage to be in the experimental approach to dance proposed in the early days of contact improvisation history:<blockquote>If I could go back in dance history I would put myself at Oberlin College in 1972, crashing into Steve Paxton and his students as we performed ''Magnesium''. I have always been passionate about Contact Improvisation. It is rare that something experimental and radical is proposed in a dance studio, and out of that research a language, a community, a world develops. Contact is not defined as "Paxton's technique", it's an open field, a living form.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Meg Stuart - Are We Here Yet?|last=Peeters|first=Meg Stuart Jeroen|date=2011-01-02|publisher=Presses Du Reel|isbn=9782840663546 |
[[Meg Stuart]] considers her lineage to be in the experimental approach to dance proposed in the early days of contact improvisation history:<blockquote>If I could go back in dance history I would put myself at Oberlin College in 1972, crashing into Steve Paxton and his students as we performed ''Magnesium''. I have always been passionate about Contact Improvisation. It is rare that something experimental and radical is proposed in a dance studio, and out of that research a language, a community, a world develops. Contact is not defined as "Paxton's technique", it's an open field, a living form.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Meg Stuart - Are We Here Yet?|last=Peeters|first=Meg Stuart Jeroen|date=2011-01-02|publisher=Presses Du Reel|isbn=9782840663546|pages=82|language=en}}</ref></blockquote> |
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==See also== |
==See also== |
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* [[Steve Paxton]] |
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* [[Nancy Stark Smith]] |
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* [[Lisa Nelson]] |
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* [[Grand Union (dance group)|Grand Union]] |
* [[Grand Union (dance group)|Grand Union]] |
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* [[dance improvisation]] |
* [[dance improvisation]] |
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| newspaper =New York Times |
| newspaper =New York Times |
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| location = New York, United States |
| location = New York, United States |
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| pages = |
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| language = |
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| publisher = |
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| date =27 May 2020 |
| date =27 May 2020 |
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| url =https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/arts/dance/nancy-stark-smith-dead.html |
| url =https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/arts/dance/nancy-stark-smith-dead.html |
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| access-date = 9 July 2020}}</ref> |
| access-date = 9 July 2020}}</ref> |
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}} |
}} |
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* Keith Hennessy (2008) [http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Experiment_Called_Contact_Improvisation The Experiment Called Contact Improvisation], ''Indance Magazine'' |
* Keith Hennessy (2008) [http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Experiment_Called_Contact_Improvisation The Experiment Called Contact Improvisation], ''Indance Magazine'' |
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* Ann Cooper Albright (2010) ''Encounters with Contact; Dancing Contact in College'' with Katie Barkley Kai Evans, Jan Trumbauer, David Brown and [https://osu.academia.edu/RachelWortman Rachel Wortman]. Oberlin College Theater and Dance {{ISBN|0-937645-13-3}} |
* Ann Cooper Albright (2010) ''Encounters with Contact; Dancing Contact in College'' with Katie Barkley Kai Evans, Jan Trumbauer, David Brown and [https://osu.academia.edu/RachelWortman Rachel Wortman]. Oberlin College Theater and Dance {{ISBN|0-937645-13-3}} |
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* |
* Nancy Stark Smith et David Koteen (2013), ''Caught Falling. The Confluence of Contact Improvisation, Nancy Stark Smith, and Other Moving Ideas'', Contact Editions |
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* Sarko Thomas and Misri (2014) ''[http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/jdsp/2014/00000006/00000002 <nowiki>Contact [and Improvisation]</nowiki>]'', ''Journal of dance and somatic practices'', |
* Sarko Thomas and Misri (2014) ''[http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/jdsp/2014/00000006/00000002 <nowiki>Contact [and Improvisation]</nowiki>]'', ''Journal of dance and somatic practices'', |
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* (2014) ''Videoda Contact Improvisation Archive'' [1972-1987], Contact Editions |
* (2014) ''Videoda Contact Improvisation Archive'' [1972-1987], Contact Editions |
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* (2014) " Five Ways In' Potolahi Productions. [https://researchingcontactimprovisation.com/ Research Web page] |
* (2014) " Five Ways In' Potolahi Productions. [https://researchingcontactimprovisation.com/ Research Web page] |
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==External links== |
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* [http://contactquarterly.com/ Contact Quarterly] |
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* [https://ciglobalcalendar.net/ Contact Improvisation Global Calendar - Find information about Contact Improvisation events worldwide (classes, jams, workshops, festivals and more)] |
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* [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Os8c2ukZRS5cnJhJv0SuBX5MrpGKAMZk6U3i-Pbfezk/edit#heading=h.axpp7s2sk9zp/ A Compendium of Contact Improvisation Jam Guidelines and related material from around the world] |
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* [http://contactimprov.com/worldjammap.html Contact Improvisation - World jam map] |
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{{Authority control}} |
{{Authority control}} |
Also known as | CI, Contact, Contact Improv |
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Country of origin | United States |
Creator | Steve Paxton |
Famous practitioners | Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, Lisa Nelson |
Parenthood | modern dance, postmodern dance,[1] martial arts (Aikido), somatic practices (Release Technique) |
Descendant arts | Underscore (Nancy Stark Smith), Material for the Spine (Steve Paxton) |
Contact improvisation is a practice of movement research, where improvisation and momentum, relation with gravity and with others are the main focus. This form has been developing internationally since 1972 and it started from the exploration, research and inquiries of Steve Paxton. It involves the exploration of one's body in relation to others and the space of presence they visit, by using the fundamentals of sharing weight, touch, and movement awareness. It has evolved into a broad global community around "jams" characterized by their welcoming attitude towards newcomers to dance, as well as seasoned practitioners, and its fundaments relate with dancing without being guided by music, instead, the dancers learn to listen to the sounds that the dance itself brings.
American dancer and choreographer Steve Paxton originated contact improvisation, drawing from his past training in aikido, a martial art form, to explore and push physical relationship with gravity with his colleagues and students to develop this new practice. Contact Improvisation plays with the artistry of falling off balance, counterbalance, finding the shelves of the body, learning the mechanics of the body in order to handle someone else's weight or be lifted, breathing techniques, and can involve the art of getting to know your movements through the physical point in contact.
Steve Paxton, along with other pioneers Nancy Stark Smith, Danny Lepkoff, Lisa Nelson, Karen Nelson, Nita Little, Andrew Harwood, Peter Bingham, and Ray Chung, thus participated in creating an "art-sport," oscillating between different emphases depending on the moments and personalities who practice it:
Formally, contact improvisation is a movement improvisation that is explored with another being. According to one of its first practitioners, Nancy Stark Smith, it "resembles other familiar duet forms, such as the embrace, wrestling, surfing, martial arts, and the Jitterbug, encompassing a wide range of movement from stillness to highly athletic."[8]
Various definitions establish in their own ways what was at stake in a contact improvisation duo. Steve Paxton proposed the following in 1979:
The exigencies of the form dictate a mode of movement which is relaxed, constantly aware and prepared, and onflowing. As a basic focus, the dancers remain in physical touch, mutually supportive and innovative, meditating upon the physical laws relating to their masses: gravity, momentum, inertia, and friction. They do not strive to achieve results, but rather, to meet the constantly changing physical reality with appropriate placement and energy.[9]
Contact improvisation was developed in the United States in the 1970s by a group of dancers and athletes gathered for the first time under the impetus of choreographer and dancer Steve Paxton.[6]
In January 1972, Steve Paxton was in residence at Oberlin College on a tour with Grand Union, a collective where he collaborated among others with Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown. For several weeks, he offered Oberlin students two sets of practices:
The meeting of these practices gives rise to Magnesium,[11] a twenty-minute long piece where dancers perform on gym mats, jump and bump into each other, manipulate and cling to one another. "In this performance, dancers usually use their bodies as a whole, all parts are simultaneously unbalanced or thrown against another body or in the air."[6] After about fifteen minutes, the dancers stop and start a "Small Dance" that concludes the performance.
In the Spring of 1972, Steve Paxton received a grant from Change, Inc which allowed him to invite dancers to work on the form he was evolving. He invited some colleagues from the Judson Dance Theater years like Barbara Dilley and Nancy Topf, release technique pioneer Mary Fulkerson, as well as students met during his teaching tours, including Nancy Stark Smith and Curt Siddall (from Oberlin College), Danny Lepkoff and David Woodberry (from the University of Rochester, where Mary Fulkerson was a teacher) and Nita Little (from Bennington College).[6]
At the end of this week of residency, the group presented a performance which Steve Paxton named Contact Improvisations. They presented it in the form of a permanent afternoon practice for five days, at the John Weber Gallery in Manhattan, which at the same time showcased a film by George Manupelli, Dr. Chicago, and where spectators could come and go as the practice continues.[12]
Following the first performance of Contact Improvisations in New York in 1972, the participants scattered to different parts of the United States but soon began to teach the practice.[13] The syncopated, risky, raw and awkward style of the first performances gave place rather quickly to a variety of aesthetics within the form.
One of those aesthetics was the development of smooth, continuous, controlled flow of quality in the late 1970s and early 1980s, running parallel with the opposite trend of interest in conflict and unexpected responses, including previously avoided eye contact and direct hand contact.[14] Says Nancy Stark Smith,
Within the study of Contact Improvisation, the experience of flow was soon recognized and highlighted in our dancing. It became one of my favorite practices and I proceeded to "do flow" for many years-challenging it, testing it: could we flow through this pass? Could we squeak through that one, and keep going?[15]
Regardless of those aesthetic choices, the central characteristic of contact improvisation remains a focus on bodily awareness and physical reflexes rather than consciously controlled movements.[16] One of the founders of the form, Daniel Lepkoff, comments that the “precedence of body experience first, and mindful cognition second, is an essential distinction between Contact Improvisation and other approaches to dance.”[17] Another source affirms that the practice of contact improvisation involves “mindfulness, sensing and collecting information”[18] as its core.
In 1975, the dancers working with Steve Paxton considered trademarking the term contact improvisation in order to control the teaching and practice of the dance form, consequently for reasons of safety. This idea was rejected in favor of establishing a forum for communication: this became the Contact Newsletter founded by Nancy Stark Smith, which evolved into the bi-annual journal Contact Quarterly[19] which continues to be published online by the non-profit Contact Collaborations (incorporated in 1978) after a final print edition came out in January 2020.[20][13] The journal, now co-edited by Nancy Stark Smith and Lisa Nelson, brings together different reflections of contact improvisation teachers and practitioners and cements an international community by equipping it with a communication organ, as well as hosting several other orders of reflections, including writings by contemporary dancers and somatic practitioners. According to the magazine's statement,
Contact Quarterly is the longest living, independent, artist-made, not-for-profit, reader-supported magazine devoted to the dancer's voice. Founded in 1975, Contact Quarterly (CQ) began as a forum for discussion of the emerging dance form Contact Improvisation. Serving as a meeting ground for a worldwide network of contact improvisers, CQquickly grew to include writings and interviews on postmodern and contemporary experimental dance, somatic movement practices, improvisational dance, mixed-abilities dance, teaching methods, creative process, and performance.[20]
While the development of contact improvisation has benefited greatly from Nancy Stark Smith and Lisa Nelson's editorial work to support the writings of dancers in their exploration of the form, it also owes much to the cameras of Steve Christiansen and then Lisa Nelson, who documented many moments of the work (especially in performance) and allow the contactors to observe themselves with meticulousness.
Since the mid-1970s, regular jams are present in most major cities in North America (New York City, Boston, San Francisco, and Montreal). Other multi-day residential spaces (such as the Breitenbush Jam, which has existed since 1981) have been in existence since the late 1970s. Remembers dancer Mark Pritchard,
The 1979 Country Jam was a first of its kind in the Contact world: over fifty people from the western United States and Canada came together for twelve days of non-structured existence, life and dance: neither a workshop, a conference or a seminar, but an improvisational gathering, with the sole aim of creating a space for dancing and living in flux... Our days were without structure, except for meals: at the beginning, we planned to keep 90-minute slots for the courses, but the idea was quickly abandoned thanks to a system based on Supply and demand, in which each could suggest a topic to be dealt with and offer to lead a class.[21] These residential events (workshops, festivals, long jams) represent a parallel economy that invited the creation of dedicated spaces of practice, the model of which was provided very early by Earthdance, a residential center built in 1986 by a Boston community of dancers.[22]
In Europe, contact improvisation was presented for the first time in 1973 (from June 25 to 28th) in an art gallery in Rome, L'Attico run by Fabio Sargentini.[23] In the 1970s and 1980s, Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson were regularly invited to the Dartington College of Arts in Great Britain (where early contacter Mary Fulkerson was part of the dance faculty) and the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, which served as transmission belts for contact improvisation in Europe.
Nancy Stark Smith was key to the organization of the first European Contact Improvisation Teachers Exchange. Subsequent exchanges have been organized since 1985 and hosted each year by a different European country.[24]
Belgian dancer and choreographer Patricia Kuypers noted in 1999 that, depending on the country and the individual, it has spread more or less rapidly in the world of dance or amateurs. In Belgium, where Steve Paxton had come since the 1980s, invited by the Klapstuk and the Kaaitheater, few professional dancers regularly practiced it, and apart from certain outbreaks of fever in successful jams, it can not be said that contact improvisation left any lasting trace among professional dancers, except in a choreographed form.[25]
In France, contact improvisation (sometimes called "danse-contact", as in French-speaking Canada) was introduced for the first time in 1978, where a contact improvisation course was given by Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson during the musical festivities of Sainte Beaume:
Didier Silhol, Mark Tompkins, Suzanne Cotto, Edith Veyron and Martine Muffat-Joly attended. Their enthusiasm brought them together, to explore together this new form of dance, to organize new courses by bringing back Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson and by inviting other teachers such as Nancy Stark Smith. In 1980, they created the association Danse Contact Improvisation and began to teach themselves, mostly in pairs.[26]
Contact improvisation is now practiced in most major cities of the French metropolis - Paris, Grenoble, Lyon, Marseille, Montpellier, Lille, Rennes all have at least one weekly jam - and is taught in many conservatories, including the National Conservatory of Music and Dance of Paris.
The network of social practices or amateurs of contact improvisation has spread to all the continents except Antarctica,[20] with a particularly intense presence in the Americas, Western and Eastern Europe, Finland, Russia, Israel, Japan, Taïwan, Australia, India, China and Malaysia, as evidenced by the regularity of the jams, festivals and weekly courses taught in these countries.
In June 1980, Elizabeth Zimmer, organizer and director of the American Dance Guild, put together the conference Improvisation: Dance Considered as Art-Sport.[27] The conference was mainly dedicated to contact improvisation, which had been referred to as an "art-sport" a few years earlier by Simone Forti, and introduced contact improvisation in the American academic world. Contact improvisation is now taught in a majority of American universities offering a choreographic curriculum (New York University, Oberlin College, Bennington College, Smith College, Ohio State University) as well as in many contemporary dance festivals (Jacob's Pillow, Bates Dance Festival).
In the mid-1970s, the term "jam" appeared to describe, like jazz jam sessions and milongas in tango, an opportunity for free practice where dancers who do not know each other can meet and negotiate together their dance or observe the practice of their partners.
Every week in dozens of cities that make up an international network, members of this Contact Improvisation "community of experience" meet for a few hours in a dance studio for a jam. This hybrid practice seems to me to work halfway between a bodily meditation, a psycho-kinesthetic therapy, a sports training, and a dance improvised session.[28]
Jams also occur at multi-day residential courses led by a dancer or a group of dancers at conferences or festivals, where the days can alternate between free practices, courses by guest artists, and debates regularly bring practitioners together.
Some have argued that this relaxed space of practice favoured contact improvisation's inclusivity towards disabled movers:
Unlike a structured workshop or a performance, the Contact jam setting allows for open-ended dancing, a mode particularly conducive to dancers with different abilities. For one thing, it is a lot easier to rest or stop and talk with your partner... More than any other genre of dance, Contact Improvisation has nurtured and embraced dancing that can integrate multiple abilities and limitations. In fact, many of the most renowned nondisabled Contact practitioners (including Steve Paxton), spend a lot of time teaching, facilitating and dancing with disabled communities.[29]
Women have expressed feeling uncomfortable on the dance floor and in the community, especially with men who overstep intimacy, bringing unwanted sexual energy into the connection.[30] As a result, some people organized #MeToo disruptions of jams.[31] To address sexual harassment issues, many jams are establishing jam guidelines and instigating other measures.[32]
Contact Improvisation involves technical aspects or "moves" that support the duets and create a recognizable style of movements: shoulder and hip lifts, head-to-head improvisation, table-top position (being on all fours, supporting the weight of the partner on the back), surfing (rolling on the floor, being "surfed by" the partner), and aikido rolls.[18]
But these are conceived of as the means to an end, which can be described as the dialogue of sensations of weight and touch between partners:
The body in [contact improvisation] is accordingly not merely a physical body whose weight and momentum are subject to natural laws of gravity and motion, but a responsive, experiencing body. Here it must be emphasized that despite the use of the term “inward focus” in Novack’s account, the cultivation of kinaesthetic awareness cannot be equated with an “introspective” preoccupation with private sensations; rather, the accent lies on sensing-through the responsive body, combining both “internal awareness” and “responsiveness to another”.[33]
Steve Paxton insisted on this aspect with the concept of "interior techniques" involving in the dance practice a training of perception,[34] resting on investigations based on the sciences of the senses (physiology, experimental and ecological psychology, anatomy, and behaviour sciences).[35]
Lisa Nelson, in that regard, occupied a special place in the effervescence of the development of contact improvisation. Taking distance from the dance, she watched a lot through the eye of the camera and pursued personal research on the collaboration between the senses, in particular on the organization of kinaesthesia in relation to the way in which vision works (a practice later known as the "Tuning Scores"). As Patricia Kuypers remarked, "her staggered gaze nourished the maturation of the [contact improvisation], developing analysis of the perceptual system and revealing specific questions about how improvisation works."[25]
The "round robin" is the most frequent structure of performances, this happens where small groups of dancers arrive in the center of a supporting circle of other dancers, who can at any time integrate the couples and replace one of the two dancers.[36] Dancers are dressed casually (sweat pants, T-shirts) and performances can happen in many venues, including theaters, bookstores, galleries. The duration of the concerts can go from 20 minutes to 6 hours.[3]
Central to the poetics of the form is a desire to create a non-hierarchical way of developing the movement, based on the simple exchange of weight and touch between partners improvising together.[6] This stance has been argued to reflect the counter-cultural context in which contact improvisation was developed (aftermath of the 1960s Vietnam War and Hippie movement).[12]
In the 1990s, Nancy Stark Smith, one of the most active propagators of contact improvisation and editor of Contact Quarterly, developed a practice out of her teachings called "the underscore."[13][37] It consisted of a score serving as a descriptive and prescriptive base for the practice of group improvisations.[8] In this practice, vocabulary is tailored to fit the specific experiences of dancers and benefits from Nancy Stark Smith enmeshment with contact improvisation.
As a teacher of contact improvisation, she had observed that particular warm-up exercises and movement activities were helpful in bringing dancers to a state of body-mind preparedness for engaging in a Contact duet. The Underscore is a scored collection of those exercises and activities, complete with pictographs[38][39] that represent each phase and subphase of its progression.[40]
Some moments of the practice clearly refer to activities explored in the practice of contact improvisation:
The explorations envisaged in the first moments of contact improvisation are not specific to the collective led by Steve Paxton. Many other forms of dance had also experimented with weight, touch and improvisation and examples abound in the 1960s of dancers who practice something similar, but not as systematic as contact improvisation, including Trisha Brown, Grand Union, Daniel Nagrin's Workgroup, Anna Halprin 's San Francisco Dancers' Workshop, Julian Beck and Judith Malina's Living Theater[6]orCarolee Schneeman's Meat Joy (1964).[43]
Simone Forti, for instance, developed Huddle in the 1960s. It was a dance in which six to seven dancers were invited to form together an agglutinated mass of which one by one they detached themselves to gradually reintegrate it, thus testing the tactile, olfactory and weight sensations.[44]
Many contemporary choreographers today use contact improvisation as a significant resource for movement. This is the case with choreographers Bill T. Jones, Wim Vandekeybus and Antonija Livingstone, or in the companies Punchdrunk (especially in their famous site-specific 2011 production Sleep No More[45]) and DV8 Physical Theater.[46]
References to contact improvisation vary: some are inspired by the qualities of the duet styles involving a specific use of touch, while others insist on the acrobatic dimension of contact improvisation and put forward situations of risk as means of reaching adrenalized states of performance.[47] Many also perpetuate the work of sensation put forward by contact improvisation while making way for an interrogation on the relations between the genders that contact improvisation tends rather to make disappear behind an equality advocated but not always enforced. Companies like DV8 and The Cholmondeleys have thus produced choreographies based on a similar anti-mechanistic approach to that of contact improvisation, coupling it with interrogations on gendered roles."[48] Similarly, a number of early contactors – such as Keith Hennesy, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Bill T. Jones and his partner Arnie Zane – participated in the struggles for LGBT rights in the wake of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.[49]
In Europe in particular, many improvisers were influenced by contact improvisation, especially from the 1980s. Examples of such dancers are João Fiadeiro from the Portuguese New Dance, British improvisers Julyen Hamilton,[50] Kirstie Simson, and Charlie Morrissey, as well as North American artists who emigrated to Europe like Benoît Lachambre, Mark Tompkins[51] and Meg Stuart.[52]
Meg Stuart considers her lineage to be in the experimental approach to dance proposed in the early days of contact improvisation history:
If I could go back in dance history I would put myself at Oberlin College in 1972, crashing into Steve Paxton and his students as we performed Magnesium. I have always been passionate about Contact Improvisation. It is rare that something experimental and radical is proposed in a dance studio, and out of that research a language, a community, a world develops. Contact is not defined as "Paxton's technique", it's an open field, a living form.[53]
improvisation dance as art sport.
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