How to get out of Dull Dances and a big thank you to Steve Paxton
I am writing this from the kitchen table of a dear friend in the south of Germany. I am housesitting here for two weeks, resting, recuperating, digesting, sorting and dwelling in the many memories and impressions of the last weeks, before I continue on my 7 week journey to Switzerland. I count myself privileged to have been invited to teach Intensives in a row this summer at Impulstanz Festival Vienna (16 years in a row by now...), at Tanztage Tempelhof and at Contact Festival Freiburg.
In the beginning of my summer festival rondo I was a guest at the Kontaktland Hungary tribute to Steve Paxton, visiting friends and collegues (artists that were all strongly influenced by Steve - K.J. Holmes, Andrew Harwood, Ray Chung, Eszter Gal, Eva Karczag and Kirstie Simson), celebrating the contribution of Steve to the dance world.
I find it important here to highlight the fact that Steve Paxton, who is considered to be the founder of Contact Improvisation, really was a) only one of the many who shared the research that came to be know as the form of CI and b) was so much more than CI. He was a fantastic performer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, a co-founder of the collectives Judson Dance Theater and Grand Union, which initated the birth of post modern dance, an advocate for dancing and performing with the blind and the inventor of Material for the Spine and much more.
Looking back at the sources of Contact Improvisation, the roots of post modern dance and the political and socio-economic setting in which it was created, I muse about the phenomena of the practice as I get to teach CI (or at least my version of it). At one point during my class at Impulstanz I reminded students that this is an open form. It was never codified, pressed into a trademark, because the founders (besides Steve notably Nancy Starks Smith, Nita Little, Curt Siddall, Danny Lepkoff, David Woodberry, Barbara Dilley, Mary Fulkerson,...) wanted the practice to stay alive. Also they did not want to become the "contact police". The reason why I share this with my students is to remind all of us, that we are co-creators of the form, at any point in our practice.
I have to make a disclaimer here because I have to say that I really, really love the fact that people are dancing and that so many people have access to all kinds of dance, like CI. And I also really, really get annoyed when I see people dancing (what I perceive to be) dances that are ongoing repetitions of movement patterns, that they either have studied from their favourite teachers or think that those "moves" are Contact or simply fall into a mode of "lift and support".
I get annoyed because I deeply believe that this form and more to say any dance improvisation is ongoing research and that means it requires a sense of inquiry, curiosity, sensibility, listening, reflection and dare I say maturity.
In the practice of improvisational dance and here I make no distinction wether it is Contact Improvisation, Authentic Movement, Continuum Movement, somatic investigations leading to movement or any new form that is being created on the spot, I feel it requires of us a presence, an awareness, an activity of the mind and body, that honestly I feel sometimes gets lost in the cyclical repetitions of CI dances especially at jams. I sense a dullness and lack of variety creeping in. The challenges of CI, of course, being that it is so physically engaging that we really need a lot of awareness in order to survive this spherical, risky business and yet somehow within that something sometimes gets lost, an aliveness, creative choice, composition, spark, you name it.
In my solo teachings and in my long term collaborations (in the last years mainly with Alicia Grayson and Eszter Gal, before that for many years with Martin Keogh and also Ray Chung), I focus on the "undoing" of these known patterns. The somatic practices of micro movements, working with (re)aligning our skeleton and becoming aware of support structures, like bones, fascia, domes/bowls and organs help to create internal references to support the solo dance and later to stay grounded in the somatic Self in the duet. Initial reduction of speed is helpful here to create new neuronal pathways and regulate the nervous system.
One of my favourite exercises is 80/20. As you engage in a Contact Improvisation dance 80 percent of your attention stays with yourself, and only 20 percent engage in the contact with your partner. One of the participants at the Contact Festival Freiburg Intensive said to me in her feedback, that in the beginning she had no clue on how to do that and after the five days she had a much better sense through the somatic practices we did, where to keep her focus while dancing. Staying alive in our bodies needs practice.
Maybe my annyoance runs so deep, because I was a professional dancer. As a teenager I was so passionate about dance, it changed my life completely once I started training jazz dance, modern dance and ballet. I would run home to my mother after my dance class and share with her every detail of the class, because I loved it so much. And then I started doing professional company work in Chicago and quickly this passion turned into frustration and pain. As a professional dancer I had to cut myself off of my feelings, rehearsing and performing under competetive and cruel conditions (and toxic mentorship) to the point where I no longer wanted to do what I loved the most. It took me many years to find "my kind of dance", what I now call Holistic Dance and the practices of CI, Authentic Movement, Somatics and Ecosomatics have shaped me and my work on that way.
As part of the tribute to Steve in Hungary on one of the discussions I asked these long term practitioners what else they practice besides Contact Improvisation and the list was very long: Aikido, meditation, composition and ensembling, shiatsu, engeneering, systems theory, BMC, singing and more. It reminded me that CI was a practice that came out of many practices: gymnastics, aikido, modern dance and meditation. So in many ways it has never been a practice just on its own. I think this is a really important point to make in terms of sustaining ourselves both physically, emotionally and creatively within the form. Bringing in inspiration from a multitude of perspectives will help us stay alive both in our bodies and in our mind and can prevent the falling into repetitive, dull patterns.
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