Why Contact Improvisation?

Practicing Contact Improvisation gives me pleasure, physical delight, deep connections to myself, my dance partners and potentially to the whole group, that is sharing a space. It gives me insights into basic principles of life and inspires me far beyond the dance. It gives me food to grow and the very real experience of being alive.

I find Contact Improvisation surprisingly holistic. All movement forms that look for the potential of the human body while respecting its limits will leave beneficial traces in this dance form. Contact Improvisation is a highly integrative practice. The desire of research is an inherent part, from its historical beginning in the early 70s onwards up to now. Contact Improvisation relies on healthy communication in every moment and can nurture this aspect also in practices outside the dance.

And what is Contact Improvisation?

I call it a social dance form that arose from a performance experiment with Steve Paxton in 1972. Contact Improvisation is based on the research of how two people can move together while being in physical touch, sharing weight. It is a movement technique, that benefits from empathic listening, generosity and clarity. It is an improvisational form, where we practice to let go off expectations, allow repetition and receive the new as a refreshing byproduct. Its main practice happens in Jams, a frame with very basic rules, where a general compositional awareness can create a sense of dancing together as a whole group.

Quotes from my blog posts

The risky stuff

“Technical work should lead us in gentle ways to the edge of our comfort zone to be in dialogue with the emerging fears in order to expand trust. And that is usually slow and subtle work.”

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Doing what I want!?

“If I haven’t questioned a rule I haven’t really understood it.”

“We can try to control everything, but at the end improvisation is based on the permission to fail.”

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What is CI?

“Contact Improvisation has no pope or any kind of committee to give clear directions for the whole community. Instead CI has some diversifying elements as a regular and integral part of its practice. How wonderfully courageous!”

 

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Sexual energy in CI

“The absence of sexual intentions is one reason why we can open up so much in Contact Improvisation and Body Work. And it is also a reason, why unclear and abusive intentions can be so hurtful and dangerous.”

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Irritationen

“Ignoranz, Bequemlichkeit oder Angst sind vermutlich die üblichen Motivationen Irritationen nicht zu würdigen und damit Lebendigkeit zu minimieren.”

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Aesthetics of CI

“Contact Improvisation had a very different starting point or attitude to our ‘flow-culture’. It was much more about survival in unknown territory.”

 

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Hands-on work

If I don’t know how an exercise is supposed to work I need to try out, I need to dare to get it wrong. Hesitation kills presence.”

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Contact Grundlagen

“Es geht ums Erleben, Wahrnehmen und schliesslich Geniessen dessen, was sich auftut, wenn die Angst nachlässt. Was für Momente, wo erstes Vertrauen in der Verwirrung und der Angst auftaucht!

Dort können wir verweilen, spielen, kommunizieren.”

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To do or not to do?

‘Giving inner directions’ or using images includes that my body knows something that I don’t have conscious access to.

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Doing what I want!?

“Jams can feel like a celebration of human potential: the dance and human aliveness as an experience of community – without us really understanding how that is possible. I believe that this ability is a general human condition, a gift of a couple of million years of evolution of social intelligence.”

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The art of waiting

“Wir werden warten bis ein erstes ,ach ich weiss schon!’ einer satten Klarheit weicht. Kommunikation mit Zeitgewinn, Genussgewinn. Warten in einer Wachheit, die gelassen den entscheidenden Moment annimmt, die ohne zu zögern und ohne zu hetzen JA sagt.”

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Conact Grundlagen

“Im Kern der Technik liegt eine Herz und Kopf erfrischende Offenheit, eine Kombination aus Präzision und nicht-Wissen.”

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