April 26-27 2025:Fluid Architecture CI Workshop with Alicia Grayson
Here's one jammer, Ken Manheimer's↗︎ take on Contact Improvisation. See also What Happens at Our Jam.
People see many different things when they look at Contact Improvisation. Actually, people do many different things when they practice CI. However, there's an underlying practice on which the different perspectives are based.
On the surface:
A bit below the surface:
It is different from coordination with yourself in that you have to accommodate the pragmatics and needs and whims of another. In that specific way it is also an extraordinary opportunity to share the process of together exploring your combination.
Most partner dance forms involve a similar kind of shared coordination. What's different about CI is that the collaboration is not contained within some set repertoire of patterns — postures, rhythms, step sequences, roles, etc. Instead, CI partners develop, vary, drop and add emergent patterns, from moment to moment, in each partnership.
The lack of mandated patterns is a challenge, because CI partners have less guidance about where/how to begin to develop each partnership. There’s just the shared points of contact, and discretion about what works in collaboration and what doesn’t. However, this allows a lot of opportunity for the partnership to vary according to the pragmatics and inspirations of each moment. In CI, so many aspects are subject to improvisation, and can change, adapt, much more than in most types of partner dance.
In the midst of the exploration you may find yourself using more of and expanding your movement vocabulary, exploring and expanding your frontiers of movement.
Unlike most other games, dance forms, sports, or other collaborative activities, Contact Improvisation is not packaged in some ulterior agenda - not competition, nor liaison, nor hierarchical roles like leader/teacher/guru/performer / follower/student/disciple/audience. There is room for all those to happen, but if any take over they get in the way of the most immediate, mutual, and spontaneous possibilities that come from just mutually following the points of contact, receptive to your self and your partner.
There is joy to be found in any of these kinds of deep cooperations, whether it's in the context of sports, partner dance, personal relationship, or any shared endeavor. The difference in CI is how the action is arranged, so the participants can arrive at their cooperative agreements with less delineating structure than in other practices. The pragmatics of mutually following the contact points constitute the guidelines, with more of the process open to spontaneous negotiation and agreement.
More about CI: