How do we express our agency while dancing?

And what do we do when we fall into repetition and get bored with our movement choices?

In honor of Contact Improvisation turning 50 years old this month.

“Esta es una guía práctica para quien está pasando un duelo y para sus amigos; cómo vivir un duelo, si expresarlo o no, cómo encuentras tu propia manera para sobrellevarlo. Se han escogido citas de Neruda, Machado y Dickinson de una manera hermosa”.
—Coleman Barks, traductor de La Esencia de Rumi

Here are two excerpts from Fall After Newton (© Videoda 1987), a documentary about the development of Contact Improvisation.

In these clips, narrator and initiator of the form, Steve Paxton, is joined by dancers Nancy Stark Smith and Curt Siddall, and musician Collin Walcott. 

The full video is available in a collection that documents the first 12 years of the dance form. 

To find the documentaries at Contact Quarterly, click here

Here is one minute of a 20 minute duet with dancers Sole Medina and Sergio Palomares Vicente. This was at the Salt Spring Island Plunge

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Here is what I notice:
• The soft tone in their bodies that allows for an alive responsiveness
• The ease looking into, and entering the backspace
• Their use of hands to map their partner (rather than manipulate)
• Sole’s use of sound to communicate her current state
• They don’t seem to be putting impulses into the dance, but rather are receiving impulses from the mutual conversation
• How they don’t have “terminus stations.” They let one moment, one motion, be the seed of the next

What do you notice?

(In my book, * Dancing Deeper Still: The Practice of Contact Improvisation * I talk about seasoned C.I dancers and their terminus stations or rather lack of terminus stations)