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About Contact Improvisation Definitions History Development & Application Documentation & Writing Practicing CI Links to Resources Definitions There are many ways of defining the dance form Contact Improvisation. Here are two:
Head-to-head, [Left to right] Cathie Caraker and David Beadle.
Contact improvisations are spontaneous physical dialogues that range from stillness to highly energetic exchanges. Alertness is developed in order to work in an energetic state of physical disorientation, trusting in one's basic survival instincts. It is a free play with balance, self-correcting the wrong moves and reinforcing the right ones, bringing forth a physical/emotional truth about a shared moment of movement that leaves the participants informed, centered, and enlivened. Contact Improvisation is an open-ended exploration of the kinaesthetic possibilities of bodies moving through contact. Sometimes wild and athletic, sometimes quiet and meditative, it is a form open to all bodies and enquiring minds. Contact Improvisation (CI) is a framework for an improvised duet dance. Since it is essentially a dance of investigation of weight, touch, and communication, it adheres to no single definition or pedagogical certification program. All practitioners ultimately participate in the defining, disseminating, and development of the form through their own practice and discovery.
Definitions History Development & Application Documentation & Writing Practicing CI Links to Resources History
Steve Paxton and David Woodberry, 1976. photo � Uldis Ohaks.
Contact Improvisation (CI) was first presented as a series of performances conceived and directed by American choreographer Steve Paxton in June 1972 at the John Weber Gallery in New York City. Paxton invited about 17 students and colleagues to participate in the two-week project. These dancers included Tim Butler, Laura Chapman, Barbara Dilley, Leon Felder, Mary Fulkerson, Tom Hast, Daniel Lepkoff, Nita Little, Alice Lusterman, Mark Peterson, Curt Siddall, Emily Siege, Nancy Stark Smith, Nancy Topf, and David Woodberry. Several of them continue to practice the dance form today. Video of these initial performances can be seen in two documentaries narrated by Paxton, Chute (1979) and Fall After Newton (1987), produced by Videoda.
Steve Paxton, a dancer with a background in tumbling and martial arts, was a member of several modern dance companies in New York in the 1960s, including that of the revolutionary choreographer Merce Cunningham and his longtime collaborator, composer John Cage, a major innovator in musical and artistic thinking.
Paxton was a prime mover in the groundbreaking performances of the Judson Dance Theater
in the mid-1960s in NYC, challenging assumptions about dance and opening up new
possibilities for the art form, including what kinds of movement could be considered
dance and how dances are made. Paxton's radical choreographic propositions in the
sixties included his exploration of improvisation—both solo and in groups, most
notably with the dance theater collective, Grand Union (1971–1976), which included
Yvonne Rainer, Barbara Lloyd (Dilley), Nancy Lewis, David Gordon, Douglas Dunn, and
Trisha Brown. It was during his time with the Grand Union that Paxton first proposed
Contact Improvisation.
Development & Application
CI36 at Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA.
From its early days on the East and then West coasts of the United States, Contact Improvisation (CI) has spread to studios, schools, and art centers around the world. Thousands of people practice, perform, and teach Contact on all continents except Antarctica. CI is enjoyed by movers of all kinds—professionally trained dancers, recreational movers, athletes, disabled dancers, old, young. Dancers apply their work with CI to choreography, to dance training, to working with children, seniors, disabled populations, therapy, visual art, music, education, environmental work, and social activism. Many do it just for pleasure and personal development. Contact Improvisation's influence can be seen throughout modern and postmodern dance choreography, performance, and dance training worldwide, especially in relationship to partnering and use of weight. Contact Improvisation celebrated its 36th birthday in June 2008 with a large gathering at Juniata College in central Pennsylvania. CI36 (co-hosted by Contact Quarterly dance journal and Juniata College) was linked to over a hundred "satellite events" celebrating Contact all over the world, including Australia, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Japan, China, Russia, Siberia, and throughout Europe, the U.S., and Canada. Contact Improvisation continues to develop and spread to new cities, countries, types of dancers, and areas of application. The work embraces those new to the form as well as those who have been devoted to its study and practice for decades.
Documentation & Writing
Contact Quarterly cover; Volume 23 No. 1,
In 1975, the Contact Newsletter was started among the handful of dancers engaged in Contact Improvisation as a way to stay in touch with each other and the developments of the work. In 1976, the Newsletter became Contact Quarterly, dance and improvisation journal, a vehicle for moving ideas, which for three and a half decades has served as a meeting point for contact improvisers worldwide. Through letters, articles, photos, interviews, and a newsletter, CQ provides a connection to information, dialogue, and documentation of the developments of CI and related dance, movement, and somatic practices. The journal continues today both in print and online. The bounty of materials about CI that CQ has generated over the years is available through its back issues and its Contact Improvisation Sourcebooks—collections of the significant writings about CI from the journal's inception in 1975 until 2007. The CI Sourcebooks and other books and DVDs about Contact and new dance are available through CQ's book project, Contact Editions. (For more publications on Contact, see Links to Resources.)
Practicing CI
Breitenbush Jam, March 2006. photo � David Sommerville
What is a Contact jam? Contact Improvisation jams are leaderless practice environments in which dancers practice the dance form with whoever gathers—friends or strangers, old, young, experienced, novice. Some jams take place in a studio for a few hours once a week. Longer retreat jams might last several days, sometimes held in hot springs resorts or other retreat locations where dancers can practice at any hour of the day in the studio/lodge or take a rejuvenating soak or steam in the mineral waters. A few of these ongoing, special jams are: Breitenbush CI Jam (Oregon); CA Contact Jam at Harbin Hot Springs; Berner Jam (Switzerland); East Coast Jam (Virginia); Earthdance's New Year's Jam and Fourth of July Jam (Massachusetts); ACIC Convergence (Australia); Montreal Jam (Canada); May Jam (Boston).
(Selected text in About Contact Improvisation was adapted from Caught Falling, by David Koteen and Nancy Stark Smith, distributed by Contact Editions.)
Links to CI Resources
Contact Improvisation Sourcebook II:
To locate opportunities to study and practice Contact Improvisation, go to CQ's international CI Contacts List and contact someone in your area.
Feel free to contact Contact Quarterly
directly for more information and resources at:
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