This is very slightly edited record of a…
bouncing off each other – an on-line relay
This blog originated from an on-line conversation which occurred between Shelley Marshall, a Melbourne based contact improviser, Simon Ellis, an improviser and choreographer, and Norbert Pape, a dancer based in Frankfurt a.M., Germany, between January 28th and February 23rd 2009. A short version was published in <proximity> in April 2009: http://www.slightly.net/proximity.
Writing was added non-chronologically – we slotted comments in wherever they seemed to fit, responding to something that was written earlier, but which later sparked a train of thought. As a result, the piece jumps around in time, and doesn’t always read smoothly.
Join the relay!!!
The discussion was copied into this blog in order to broaden the conversation to a wider group of participants. Read and comment as you wish. We’re looking forward to reading your what you have to say about Time, the Present and History in (Contact) Improvisation.
Key:
sdm: Shelley Marshall
ske: Simon Ellis
np: Norbert Pape
norbert,
norbert 4:23 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
np, 28 Jan 09 – While dancing, our senses inform us of a number of relationships: our relationship to gravity, to others, to the surrounding space, the relationship of body parts to each other.
I like to think of technique as rehearsing possible developments from specific sets of relationships. The emergence of these relationships while dancing triggers specific movement patterns. If this situation occurs, then this could happen.
This rehearsing shapes specific styles of dance (and improvisation), and in the case of contact improvisation, is fruitful for generating and sustaining momentum through a constant transfer of weight between partners.
While dancing with another person, I encounter her physiological body and, through her reactions, her body of knowledge. For reasons of safety, but also out of curiosity, first dances are about defining the other, reading her, finding out what is possible and safe.
By allowing the other (or the flow) to guide oneself through unknown pathways, there is a transfer of knowledge happening through dancing, which is certainly part of the fun of jamming.
Further, beyond technique (or is still part of the technique?), there is the relationship to the technique itself, choosing to say “no”, to use restrictions, to going against in order to go somewhere else.
Even further, or maybe first of all, there is the personal relationship to the other in the given context (studio, performance, public space, private space). This is the aspect of dancing that I find most interesting, and after years of training, most challenging. What do I want? What do I allow myself and the other to do?
Slowing down, allowing or even inducing stillness is a method I have enjoyed practicing. Taking time to smell, feel, look, listen in order to realize where we are, what is happening between us, what is happening to me, how I feel and what I think about it.
Making eye contact is another trick that helps turn the moving and sensing bodies into dancing humans.
shelley 4:23 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
sdm, 29 Jan 09 – We do not come to dances with only a ‘present’. We come to a dance with histories, with bodies created through those histories and movement patterns inscribed by them. This much we can take for granted. The question, as you point out, Norbert, is what we do with those histories and what techniques we use to draw upon both our histories and those of our dancing partners. The techniques you propose do not assume a fixed narrative, a fixed ‘me’ and fixed ‘you’.
How I feel, what I think about whilst dancing – the narrative that unfolds in any given dance – is what creates texture for me. I never know what narrative will unfold before it happens. The narrative texture may be drawn from my experiences, but it seems to go beyond them to create micro-worlds I haven’t inhabited before. I can guess movement patterns, recognize pathways previously traversed before they occur, but I cannot anticipate the narrative texture of those movements, either with a partner or improvising alone. Perhaps this is what creates a certain temporality in improvisation.
Partnering adds a further layer to this. The person I am dancing with is also engaging with these questions in some way – what is happening between us, what is happening to them, how they feel and what they think about it – with their own unfolding narrative about themselves in this dance. However, I can never know that narrative. I can, I hope, gain small tastes and glimpses, through touch, sensing composition and tone; through moments of communication through eye contact. But I cannot know what their narrative in this dance is. Ironically, it may be the limits of our knowledge and of what we can anticipate that creates a sense of ‘presence as becoming’ in improvisation.
shelley 4:24 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
sdm, 17th Feb – It is partly the fact of not knowing – suspending active wanting (to refer to Simon‘s later description of Kirstie Simson‘s exercise), but not suspending desire altogether – which helps us to create something new: novel worlds, novel textures – but also to find something that was always there but we hadn‘t experienced in quite the same way before. “A task of poetry is to make audible (tangible but not necessarily graspable) those dimensions of the real that cannot be heard as much as to imagine new reals that have never before existed“ (Charles Bernstein, A Poetics).
SE, 19 Feb 09: “In the poetry the inexpressible is sensed.”
Don Watson, Death Sentence, p.175
norbert 4:25 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
np, 1st Feb 09 – Watching people perform the “No” exercise
A touches B. B says “no“ and pushes A’s hand away. A and B alternate. To start with, “no“ is the only response allowed.
After a while, one can chose to allow the touch and follow the impulse or to say “no“ and interrupt the dance at any time.
The resulting dances have very specific rhythms, very engaged phrases framed by “no”, each phrase having a different texture, each new beginning different from the preceding one.
shelley 4:25 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
sdm – 10 Feb 09 – Linking this exercise with the idea of syntax, below, I have been wondering how we might depict contact improvisation as a verbal conversation. Watching and listening at jams, in particular, I have imagined that the transcript might read something like: ‘yes‘ or ‘oh . . . ok‘ and ‘yeah, and how about this as well?‘.
Perhaps this is one of the (and only one of many) things that gives contact improvisation the look of a constant. This seems to be related to the idea of ‘flow‘, in my mind.
simon 4:25 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
ske, 19 Feb 09. Here is some writing I did about flow, after an extended period of work in the Balkans with Bagryana Popov late in 2007. In it I am responding to an article by London independent dancer/improviser, Gill Clarke. I hope it doesn‘t muddy the conversation: http://skellis.net/research07/?p=133.
shelley 4:26 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
sdm 19 Feb 09: What sparked my interest in the ‘no‘ dance was the fact that the score makes you more aware of intention in the dance, bringing to bear the tension between ‘dancing without wanting‘ (having openness to what might happen, and what can happen) on the one hand, and the need to make a range of constant, interlinked movement and aesthetic choices on the other.
In your blog (link above) you refer to Csikszentmihalyi’s statement about ‘flow’ that:
“they stop being aware of themselves as separate from the actions they are performing”.
You say that this doesn’t sit quite right for you:
There is something in this work with Bagryana in which there is an interplay between my being aware of this ’separateness’ (my self in relation to the physical actions), and then playing with it in terms of the improvisational choices I am making. In this sense, the ’separateness’ becomes part of the ‘flow’ – perhaps an aesthetic choice?
I‘d like to see footage of the ‘no‘ dance.
norbert 4:26 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
np, 1st Feb 09 – Improvising, I step in the dark, discover the quality of moments as they unfurl. Is that specific to improvisation?
The moment before dancing choreography on stage, I usually panic due a sudden lapse of memory… I seldom have an overview of the future path, rather move through it from point to point, lingering in micro-worlds, often surprised by details I had never noticed before or unsuspected emotions or thoughts. The more refined the choreography is, the more time stretches while performing: every little detail…
On the other hand, Steve Paxton suggests Contact Improvisation is a constant. Watching endless Videos on Youtube, I must say that I am tempted to say I agree. And certainly, there is a recognizable style. Yet is a resolution of 480*360 sufficient for having an opinion?
How closely do I look?
shelley 4:27 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
sdm, 2nd Feb 09 – What do you think Steve Paxton means when he says that Contact Improvisation is a constant? Are you/Steve Paxton saying that there is a relationship between style and our relationship to time or our experience of temporality? (Putting aside the barriers of low resolution.) This would mean that we restrict, halt the mutability of time by maintaining a consistent style, I think.
norbert 4:27 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
Excerpt from a Discussion between Robert Fagen, Joanna Gewertz Harris, Steve Paxton, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (moderator), and Daniel N. Stern at the Philoctetes Center
Sheets-Johnstone: I don’t understand why you’re saying that [CI] seems to have come to a standstill. What do you mean?
Paxton: I think it’s a constant.
Sheets-Johnstone: What do you mean by a “constant”?
Paxton: It’s related to Dan’s work. Dan Stern did a lecture down in Soho in the early ‘70s, and I was working on contact—it didn’t even have a name at that point—but was beginning to think about touch and weight and all of that. And when Dan showed his work, which was extreme micro-movement in this attunement, so you could really see how the attunement was going, I realized that what I was working on was related to this innate event in all of our lives. How we attune, essentially, is the event that I’m talking about—and then how as adults we can tune to each other or, given permissions or rules or modulations, somehow, in the improvisational relationship between people. If those modulations are there then that’s what shows up. This was a highly developed group, you know? You didn’t see fumbling attempts in this particular performance. This was the tenth anniversary performance, so people had been going for ten years.
There are many movement styles, events—one could almost talk about “syntaxes,” maybe, that are absent in contact improvisation. Actually, I’ve been trying to do it—it will be burst apart at some point; it will be re-opened. I’ve been mining it for a while now myself, and making a technique to develop further. But the play definitely sets forth a statement of some sort, but I just don’t quite think we’re going to see mothers and children—deer mothers, deer children—developing different behaviors in the short term, whereas in the dance—in the choreographed dance— you can develop whatever behavior you—“
http://philoctetes.org/Past_Programs/Dance_Movement_and_Bodies_Forays_into_the_Nonlinguistic_and_the_Challenge_of_Languaging_Experience_Evening_II
norbert 4:27 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
np, 4th Feb 09 – We are mixing up different points of view, which I find really interesting: the perception of time of the dancer, the timing of the resulting movement material (phrasing), the perception of time of the spectator, and the view on contact improvisation (and its development) within a the greater context.
You, Shelley, mentioned our relationship to time. Say more: whose relationship and which time?
shelley 4:28 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
sdm, 5th Feb 09
….. there is no single time for everyone, one single universal time. This certainly is not undercut, it is even presupposed, by the physicist’s calculations. When he says that Peter’s time is expanded or contracted at the point where Paul is located, he is in no way expressing what is lived by Paul, who for his part perceives things from his point of view and has no reason whatsoever to experience the time elapsing within and around him than Peter experiences his. The physicist wrongly attributes to Paul the image of Peter forms Paul’s time. He absolutizes the view of Paul, with which he makes common cause. He assumes he is the whole world’s spectator . . . He speaks of a time which is not yet anyone’s time,, of a myth. (Bergson, quoted in Merleau-Ponty, 1964, 195-96, cited in Grosz, 1995, 92.
Assuming that there is nothing specific to improvisation about the experience of time, this quote from Bergson suggests that it is wrong to universalize from one person’s or one encounter with time, or to propose that what the spectator sees or experiences is the same as that which the dancer experiences.
Perhaps, then, whilst Steve Paxton sees a constant, the dancers he is watching are experiencing something different in their dance.
You have identified that we are jumbling up phrasing, syntax, timing and the experience of time. They are not the same, but, in my experience, phrasing and timing can shape the way I comprehend myself to be traversing through time. Improvisation and composition are not altogether different from the rest of life, but one of the things we are doing when we improvise or compose is that we play with timing and with space in a more concentrated way than in other parts of our lives. The implicit pact between dancers and audience members is that the audience will give the play of timing and the play with space their attention in a way which may be richer than the way in which they watch the rest of the day. The fact of being watched gives the dance something, also. However, the difference between this and the rest of our lives may only be that we give it more attention and play around with it more.
On the other hand, Steve Paxton is not the only person who has complained of the lack of novelty in contact improvisation. Is it the case that the particular exploration of physics that occurs in contact improvisation impacts upon this? Why can’t a range of syntaxes be developed in contact improvisation?
simon 4:28 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
ske, 7th Feb 09 – “A mind which knows its own change is by that very knowledge lifted above change. History, and the same is true of memory … is the mind’s triumph over time. In the … process of thought, the past lives in the present, not as a mere ‘trace’ or effect of itself on the physical organism, but as the object of the mind’s historical knowledge of itself in an eternal present.“ (Collingwood, R.G. Speculum Mentis or the Map of Knowledge 1924. Quoted in Memory: An Anthology edited by A.S.Byatt and Harriet Harvey Wood, London: 2007.)
I‘ve been thinking about repetition in improvisation. This is because I‘ve been working (for some time) with developing improvisations for quite specific dramaturgical framings and seeking ways of arriving at presence within these framings.
Recently I have been working in Melbourne with choreographer Helen Herbertson, and we began talking about the “repeat“ word. Helen would sometimes say (jokingly) “going back to“ – as a means of avoiding saying “Could you repeat that?“! Perhaps repeating an improvisation might mean settling on the energetic essences of the physical actions, whilst maintaining an engagement with the new in the improvisations. The trade-off is clear in this kind of work: to try and locate the past but risk never arriving back at what it was that first engaged us/me, or to acknowledge a more settled state of being that potentially reduces the quality of attention or engagement with the unknown.
The desire for me is to remain in the “first week“ (or the first instance), whilst accessing (forward in time) the accumulation of the weeks of work. This is clearly impossible, but the idea might provide flexibility in my attention and listening that quietly emboldens the promise of the past. Far from wanting to drop what has gone and simply move on, I am seeking to perform at the nexus of the known (but still unfamiliar and difficult to pin down) past and the surprising now.
Perhaps this is where the philosophy of Duration might be useful …
Henri Bergson’s Pure Duration is a form of temporal synthesis, the “horizon of inner life” (Guerlac 2006 p.81) in which quality, feeling and sensation are experienced.
“Pure Duration is the form taken by the succession of our inner states of consciousness when our self lets itself live, when it abstains from establishing a separation between the present state and anterior states” (Bergson 1996 p.75).
What does this mean?
Ordinarily, we consider time to be linear. This does not mean that it only ‘goes forward‘, but rather that it has a spatial element. This moment is placed next to this one, and so on. (Bergson uses the example of the hands of a clock). What is difficult to understand about Bergson‘s Duration is that it rejects spatiality. His argument is that as soon as we even consider the past and present and future, we turn duration into time. In other words, by conceptualising the past and present (and future) we spatialise and divide the experience of Pure Duration and render it as something different: time.
For Bergson, Duration is how we experience the ‘flow of consciousness‘. The power of Duration in synthesizing the flow of memory offers an escape from temporal linearity. To recognise the radical power of Bergsonian memory invites the prospect that the past is more than simply the detritus of our future, but instead is propelling us there.
“… we must enter into the thickness of a duration where our memories are forged” (Cariou 1999 p.102).
Bergson’s memory is dynamic, emergent, disruptive, surprising, and central to corporeal action. Its unique association with perception draws the past into the present, and connects it with imminent action. This is critical: rather than proceeding from the present to the past, Bergsonian memory proceeds from the past into the present, drawn to perception’s role as an “occasion for remembering” (Bergson 1988 p.66), and exists to serve action, within the flow of novelty producing Duration.
So what?
A concern for novelty—sparked by the “flare of becoming” (Guerlac 2006 p.189)—steers us away from metaphors of space in which the cultural contours of the body are statically mapped. Instead, our bodies are invigorated by their experience of Duration—dynamic, novel, inventive, and un-fixed—in which “the same does not remain the same” (Bergson 1996 p.79).
The paradox, however, remains. I sustain an overwhelming interest in this living remembering (Duration), but at the same time feel restrained by the spatiotemporal foregrounding of language, of performativity, of presence.
But perhaps, at the very least, Bergson’s resolve to celebrate non-spatialised (1) time might challenge us to seek other metaphors, other ways of articulating memory, and remembering, and the embodied singular flow of Pure Duration; to be active “as a moment in our own being in the world” (Matthews 1999 p.131); to explore a poetics of Pure Duration in which memory ceases to be consumed via a “rearrangement of the pre-existing” (Mullarkey 1999 p.9) or a clinging to nostalgia, and instead assures novelty via the “radical force of the time of becoming” (Guerlac 2006 p.63).
In Bergson’s(2) analysis of action he presents the following consideration of a swordsman:
“The swordsman knows perfectly well that it is the movement of the button [the tip of the sword] which has pulled the épée, the épée which has taken the arm along with it, and the arm which has stretched the body as it itself is stretched: one cannot lunge properly or make a straight lunge except after feeling things in that way. To put them in the inverse order is to reconstruct, and this is to philosophize; anyway, it is to make explicit what is implicit, instead of restricting oneself to the demands of pure action …” (Bergson, cited in Moore 1999 p.139).
I might pick up on this idea of presence invoking a sense of the spatial. To be present implies (whether we mean it or not) knowing where one is located. But, at the same time, we tend to refer to the temporal—of being in the now for example—as being a critical aspect of presence. Bergsonian Duration frees the experience of presence from location or space. It marks the experience as a temporal one, but not one that is locked to the current. Rather, Duration exists in flight through time(3); it demands (gently) that presence be thought of as consciousness: as flow through memory, temporality, and attention.
(1) I wonder if it is helpful, or possible, to imagine non-spatialised time; or rather that, as dancers, it is useful to imagine that neither space nor time are subordinate to the other.
(2) Bertrand Russell once described Bergson as “not a philosopher at all, but merely a mediocre poet” (Guerlac 2006 p.12). He wrote: “When his philosophy will have triumphed, it is supposed that argument will cease, and intellect will be lulled to sleep on the heaving sea of intuition.” (Russell, cited in Guerlac 2006 p.28).
(3) See how hard it is to write without invoking spatial metaphors!: “marks“, “through“. In other words, to write about presence denatures it. Writing is a spatialised act, its primary weapons are metaphors of space. it is nigh impossible not to feel clumsy when writing Duration.
shelley 4:28 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
sdm, 8th Feb 09 – I find the idea of ‘Duration‘ very helpful. Thank you for providing such a nice description of it, Simon. To side-step the term ‘presence‘ or augment it with the term ‘Duration‘ – carrying with it a sense of consciousness and flow through memory – lends a deeper sense of what the ‘present‘ might be, but still begs many questions. What is consciousness, for instance? (Shitty question, I know.) The quote about the swordsman is illuminating. It implies that we put to one side the idea of ‘pure action‘, as when we are ‘present‘ in action we are reconstructing (philosophising) and responding to a future point in time which we will soon be in. We have a memory of action and we are anticipating the future. We are experiencing the present from different directions, all at once.
simon 4:29 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
ske, 9th Feb 09 – Nicely put. Although I suspect Bergson would say (and I do like this) that the present IS from different directions at once. Or something like that.
shelley 4:29 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
sdm, 8th Feb 09 – That said, the present is, in part, defined by the limits of our capacity to accurately anticipate the future. Even when elements of the future have been mapped out, in the case of a choreographed dance, we still cannot anticipate exactly what it will feel like to follow the path that has been laid out during any particular performance of that choreography. Norbert‘s description of discovering well-rehearsed choreography as if it were new terrain provides a nice illustration of this.
One of the things we learn in an improvisation practice is to give up on anticipation, or perhaps to give up on the notion that the future is a ‘preexisting arrangement’ which we are attempting to get to and enact. We try to stop assuming that we know what will come next and instead open ourselves to the multiple (which I imagine being denoted mathematically as ‘reoccurring’) possibilities for the future. As a consequence, the idea of ‘pure action’ is sometimes put forward as ideal state that we ought to be working towards. (If this were described mathematically, it could be graphically shown as an asymptote. Our conscious action/movement would be curve A and ‘pure action’ would be curve B, with the relationship between A and B being asymptotic.) I often find that this privileging of ‘pure action’ is accompanied by a correlating hierarchy of body parts. Dancing with nervous systems is good. Dancing in your head is bad. The body is mapped with speeds and temporalities, if only metaphorically. According to this schema, nervous systems are fast – capable of pure action and reaction. Heads are slow: bogged down with the “rearrangement of the pre-existing”, perhaps. It is as if brains are too distant from the action; locked away in our skulls.
One of the reasons that I like Bergson’s description of the swordsman is that it undercuts the idea of ‘pure action’. It reminds us that action always entails both anticipation and memory. The nervous system is part of the brain, and the nervous system insinuates itself into most every part of our body. The nervous system, as part of the brain, has memories which allow it to anticipate.
simon 4:30 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
ske 09/02/2009 18:19 – I think there is a danger in believing (I am not suggesting you are saying this) that being present is about not being in your head. That the head is in someway a hindrance to presence. It is an analogy – in which a person’s inability to attend, to listen and to concentrate is reduced by inexperience or egotistical concerns … or …?? And then we call this “dancing in your head”. –
shelley 4:30 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
sdm, 10th of feb. I agree. Dancing ‘in your head’ in the context of partnered improvisation is seen to be egotistical because it involves anticipating your preexisting arrangement. It suggests that you are not ‘listening’ closely enough to your partner; not being responsive enough. On the other hand, Steve Paxton’s concern, echoed by Norbert above, seems to be that contact improvisation as a form is, despite it’s aspirations to the contrary, placing limits on the future possibilities of any moment in any one dance, resulting in the appearance of contact improvisation as a constant. It leads me to wonder how the form can be changed so as not to limit future possibilities.
simon 4:31 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
ske, 11th Feb 09: With my biases the way they are, it is VERY hard for me to disagree with you (and Paxton) here! I think it is misleading of ‘people‘ to imply that presence is not about considering the future and the possibilities that become available as the listening continues. I believe that it is a myth that things just happen (unconsciously). Actions occur, situations arise that are about how the listening/attention dialogue (in real time) with one‘s experience, understanding, physicality. (Perhaps there is a tendency to conflate experience with the unconscious?) This doesn‘t make the process of improvising (and presence) less mysterious or less profound, but rather something that can be ‘accessed‘ and consciously engaged in. This is why I like Bergson‘s consideration of Duration as a way into this complexity (notwithstanding its impracticalities). He enables us to consider time outside of linearity, and so—for example—the future might puncture my past, whilst I am now.
ske, 11 Feb 09. It‘s worth adding that I am not a contact improviser, although I have done a lot of it. My practice is—for the most part—a solo improvisation practice (sometimes observed, other times not). The exception here is the work I do with Kirstie Simson (who has a long history with the first wave: Paxton, Stark-Smith etc). One of her superb exercises is “listening with hands that don‘t want anything“ … in which we (dancing in duos) make simple points of contact with our hands (as the other dancer moves down a space). Its simplicity belies the complexity of what it means to listen and not want. To listen and not want! This embraces not only the possibility of presence (and an inevitable openness to what might happen, and what can happen), but also the back-grounding of ego in the process of attention.
ske, 11 Feb 09. I see contact improvisation as being at a crossroads. Its popularity has seen a strong (but not preordained or purposeful) shift towards codification as it is taught around the world (something I think Nancy Stark-Smith has resisted – at least in my various experiences of her work/teaching). We now recognise the usual form of the listening (through the point of contact) – and it often leads towards particular ways of moving. Different actions have been given names (http://slightly.net/improv/?p=73) and in their naming the way in which they become known by dancers has shifted. And yet I still experience a great deal of strength in what I come to understand and embody through the information and sensitivity provided (or shared) by another moving human being. It complicates and tones my solo improvisation practice, and reminds me (more broadly) of my place in a community of dancing (landing a genuine sense of the Other as I am working). It peoples the work.
ske, 1 Mar 09. I happened across the quote below this morning, written by Lisa Nelson. It reminded me just how easy it is in these discussions to forget the role of the audience in improvisation (or performance more generally). I like how Lisa describes an “improvisational dilemma for both observer and performer” (although of course, the term “observer” is ambiguous. Does she mean the other performer(s), audience …?).
“Within an improvisational framework, I’ve looked for the communication systems that could encompass both the choreographic craft and the experience of dancing. In tuning scores, I discovered a tool to make visible the space between the arbitrary and the inevitable, an improvisational dilemma for both observer and performer.” Lisa Nelson (sourced from publicity for her recent performance with Scott Smith in Brighton, UK)
norbert 4:31 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
np, 16th Feb 09 – Back to the issue of the constant:
Understanding and documenting the history of CI is a complex enterprise due to its nature: non-copyrighted and non-hierarchical.
As Nancy Stark Smith points out by titling her report “one history of Contact Improvisation”, there are many different views on what CI has been, how it developed, how it has been taught. This helped keep the form alive: dynamic and growing.
The freedom and power given to teachers enable them to integrate their interests, specific skills and knowledge from other fields into CI, be it sports, sciences, politics, therapy, social work, sex work…
The non-hierarchical structure of the form influences its development: while a certain canon of “basic” exercises has established, there are innumerable specific exercises invented regularly. Styles and approaches form within smaller communities.
As you pointed out, Simon, time and geographical expansion brings a need for references. And I do agree that this process of verbalization needs to be done with care.
shelley 4:31 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
SDM: 22 Feb 09 – One of the questions I am interested in is what temporality we live in/out in order for contemporaneous codification to occur – a ‘canon’ to develop. Does it entail a sense of shared history; of shared time; of time ticking in equivalent measures, like a metronome echoing across the world? Wikipedia provides an authoritative account of the birth of contact improvisation: ‘The first performance work recognized as Contact Improvisation is Steve Paxton’s Magnesium (1972) which was performed by Paxton and dance students at Oberlin College.’ So, we have a beginning: a monumental moment in time which allows the marking the birth of a new code according to one story of Contact Improvisation. Having marked the genesis of contact improvisation we can then say what else was happening at the same time: parallel developments on the West and East Coasts of the USA, for instance.
Benedict Anderson (Imagined Communities, 1991) suggests that the ability to enunciate the idea of events occurring ‘at the same time’ when describing the history of any ‘imagined community’ (a nation, a movement, a sub-culture, to give a few examples) is one of the features of modernity. This was made possible by the invention and spread of the printing press which allowed simultaneous, popular communication through newspapers and novels. That sense of events occurring at the ‘same time’ must surely be heightened by the internet, and our geographical mobility.
Monumental history – the mapping of events across common time-lines – can be contrasted with other types of history imbued with different senses of time: cursive history (Nietzsche), for instance, which arises out of the accumulation of actions, gestures, lives and so on, of peoples within specific cultures. This kind of history is much more difficult to map in any linear sense or to show across a common time line without sacrificing so much as to make the mapping near worthless.
The resistance to writing one history of contact improvisation is linked to a resistance to codify it. We wish to share the form, learn from each other, but it would be a shame to pass over the specific histories and dialects which have arisen in intimate communities and through individual experience, which may not be translatable across time or with a sense of constant, shared time.
norbert 4:31 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink
np, 23rd Feb 09 – The beginnings of CI are rooted in questions relating to composition raised in US during the 70s. The seminal research was made for the sake of performance, Magnesium being one example often referred to.
It then evolved to what we experience it as being today: a participatory art form. Even though social and community aspects are certainly a relevant aspect of it, I prefer the term “participatory art form“ to “social dance form“. I like to see it as a tool not only for fostering human relationships and values, but also as a container for artistic research.
A very accessible container, making dance encounters with highly trained experts possible. It has been a source for inspiration for numerous artists who applied principles to their work.
I suspect that it is the participatory nature of CI that has kept it marginal in the writings on contemporary dance (and in the funding politics of dance). Dieter Heitkamp, Tinu Hettich and I are creating a web-tool for documentation and exchange within the community as well as information of non-practitioners and easy accessibility for research (www.contactencyclopedia.net).
In addition to inspiring choreographers, encouraging artists with no dance training to participate in dancing and dance making, developing skills and knowledge about partnering and awareness, CI classes and jams were essential in Germany for the emergence of what is now a well established contemporary freelance dance and movement research scene.
Yet, it might be the egalitarian principles that are crucial for both the benefit of the form and its (seeming) stagnation and marginalization.