Dancing Contact Improvisation
What is Contact Improvisation?
When someone asks me what Contact Improvisation is, I often find it difficult to explain. Instead, I always suggest they try it to truly understand its essence. Contact Improvisation originated in the United States with Steve Paxton in the early 1970s.
“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.”
My Journey with Contact Improvisation
I have been immersed in this practice for about six years now and have completely fallen in love with it. Contact Improvisation is not just about dance; it’s a profound way to connect and engage with others on a deeper level. Through jams and workshops, dancers explore the boundaries of movement, trust, and communication. There is also a strong sense of community that surrounds Contact Improvisation worldwide. Over the past couple of years, I have traveled around Asia and became deeply involved with TOWARDS, the Centre for the Practice and Research of Contact Improvisation in Thailand. I greatly appreciate their program and focus on the practice. They offer long-term CI residencies, which provide a more immersive learning and sharing experience than the typical CI festival, where you arrive, spend a few days, and then leave.
Current projects
Currently, I am working on editing “Immediate Resonance” a documentary that I created with Nikolai Denz during the TOWARDS – CI51 Thailand Contact Improvisation Conference 2023. At this conference, I had the opportunity to meet dancers from around the world, particularly from Asia. We interviewed several facilitators and CI dancers involved in the practice in Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, China, and Russia. I was fascinated by their approaches to CI, how it is accepted within their cultures, how they hold space, and the challenges they face.
Through these conversations, I gained insight into the diverse ways that Contact Improvisation is practiced and perceived across different cultures.
