What is Dance Improvisation?

What is Contact Improvisation?● E-Lesson by Nina Dibb

Contact improvisation (CI) is a dance form/technique in which points of physical contact provide the starting point for exploration through movement improvisation.

Contact Improvisation is a form of dance improvisation and is one of the best-known and most characteristic forms of postmodern dance.

Let's go back to the beginning...

What is DANCE???

We think Math is important…

And it’s true!

“I think Math is important…but so is Dance!”

Ken Robinson

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Isn’t dance just astupid waste of time?

NO...It's the way to reclaim your body...

“The dance is the mother of all languages”.

Robin George Collingwood British philosopher and historian.

It's been around since before the birth of the

earliest human civilizations

● It has many faces (cultures, traditions)● It could be an ecstatic trance (e .g., rituals)● It is an aesthetic endeavor● The way of expressing yourself● It could be an extreme sport

But can we have them all in one?

Apparently, yes.The form is called...

Contact Improvisation

Contact Improvisation is a dance form, originated by American choreographer

Steve Paxton in 1972,

based on the communication between two or more moving bodies that are in physical contact and

their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern their motion

—gravity, momentum, inertia.Steve's recipe: Aikido + Modern Dance = Contact Improvisation

Contact Improvisations are spontaneous physical dialogues that range from stillness to highly energetic

exchangesThe body, in order to open to these sensations, must learn to release excess muscular tension and abandon a certain quality of willfulness to

experience the natural flow of movement. Practice includes rolling, falling, being upside down, following a physical point of contact, supporting and giving weight to a partner.

“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.”

Ray Chung , London, 2009

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.

Physics of Contact Improvisation:

● Yield to gravity● Use momentum● Be fluid as water and light as air● Grounded like a rock● Be sparkling like champagne

If you're dancing physics, you're dancing contact.— Steve Paxton

● After completing this lesson, you require to watch video at your own time:

What is contact improvisation? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzb9Hnjnd5g

Anyone can practice Contact Improvisation

● It's a performing art

● It's social dance

● It's practiced at JAMs

- with and without music

- in round-robins

- outdoors

- at small workshops

- at really big festivals

● It's a dance therapy (for older people, kids, injured and disabled people)

–

Resources:● http://www.contactquarterly.com/contact-improvisation/about/cq_ciAbout.php

● http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance

● http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_improvisation

● http://www.nellymazloummadri.org.gr/dance_quotes.htm

For more information and available workshops/events:

● http://www.contactimprov.net

Videos:

● http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkreiRt8GEY

● http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ltq6y06E8ew

● http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiKBt-Nubww

Northern Ireland company practicing CI:Echo Echo Dance Theatre

● http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi5z1h2tIVA

● http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb_e8wHH6DA