What is Contact Improv?
Contact improvisation (known as contact, contact improv, or CI for short) was born in 1972 in revolutionary response to the more structured forms of modern dance. It combines elements from the martial arts, social dance, sports, and the play of children. No dance experience is required to enjoy contact improv, and some even say that a dance background can hinder mastering contact’s basic skills of simple, intuitive movements.
When you first see people engaging in contact improv, you may see a combination of playful tumbling and jumping, sensuous rolling and wrestling, and acrobatic flight. The possibilities in contact mprov are as endless as the range of human movement between two (or more) dancers. Contact improv dances can be soft and slow or as fast and furious as the dancers choose, with each dancer taking non-verbal cues from the other.
roll on over
Contact improv is an exercise in unspoken communication, which has led some to describe the form as “having conversations through our bodies.” Based on the intimacy and athleticism of the form, contact improv has also been dubbed a “workout for the body and soul.”
Contact improv has enjoyed by people of all ages (from toddlers to septuagenarians), (dis)abilities, and cultures. As a community-based art form, contact improv has rooted itself in hundreds of cities around the world, from North America to South America, from Europe to Australia, and also in India, Israel, Japan and Russia.
happy flip
Click here for the wikipedia defnition of contact improv, as well as links to other sites of interest. For a more local definition of contact improv, our Phoenix jammers say:
“Contact is an improvisational form of modern dance, based on partnered movement. Basic principles include shared weight and leveraging your partner’s movements to facilitate your own. And since you don”t know in advance what your partner might do, contact is a present-moment puzzle that demands conscious attention. It’s not dependent on music, it isn’t beat or gender specific, there are no steps to learn. But it is athletic. It requires strength combined with fluidity, and the brain plays as significant a role as the body. Mostly it is great fun! It feels like playing felt when we were kids, turning somersaults and cartwheels with our friends in the yard.” – Deborah Whitehurst, contact improv evangelist and 1/2 of Studio Chafé
“I love contact improv for its movement, pure fun, and the impact it has on our emotional lives. The intense physical intimacy teaches us about trust and creating boundaries. We learn to stay in the moment to better sense our partner’s intent. We learn to gently extract ourselves from partnerships that no longer work. We learn to lose anxieties and expectations in the midst of an exhilarating duet. We learn to support another person without hurting ourselves. The lines between dance and life blur.” – Sandra M. Yee, freelance writer, health nut, and contact improv fanatic
