An actor's experience inside an improvised circle.

My  Reflections on  Contact Improvisation  

Every now and then you want to do something that would surprise you  and help you discover something about yourself  that you think never existed before  and I did something like that exactly when I decided to attend the “ contact improvisation ‘  workshop by Lucy May Constantini  a week ago.
Contact improvisation by definition  is an  improvised dance form  based on the communication between two moving bodies that are in physical contact and their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern their motion—gravity, momentum, inertia. The body, in order to open to these sensations, learns 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.
I come from a non-dance background   with a little bit of  amateur theater experience and improvisation purely  from a  ‘playback theater’    or a ‘Whose line is it anyway’  format . These workshops  leverage the  ability to think on your feet and use language as the medium of expression  to perform for an audience and entertain them.  I had never thought that there would be an opportunity to just engage myself and perform for myself. That in itself is a whole beautiful creative process i realized  through this medium of contact improvisation.
 Before I enrolled into this I had enquired  from the organizer Nakula  if an entry level person like me  could attend and he was more than  open to have me as a part of the group.  The moment I entered the ‘space’ and got myself  into acknowledging the folks around I realized that most of them were actually professional /part time amazing dancers and I dint even know the abcd of dancing. I have infact just started learning contemporary dancing with Tarantismo , and one of their best teachers/ dancers were also around.  For a brief moment, my mind was struggling to find reason  and my body finding it's own feet as to what I was doing amidst such  good experienced dancers ? What would I  be able to learn and  what would I contribute  to the team as a whole ?
 However, I was very pleasantly surprised to find my unsettled mind calm down and my deepest fears laid to rest right from the word go when the workshop began because of the   way it was done  by   our  facilitator Lucy  and the people around   who went about in such a fashion that  by the end of it  I can say that I am more at peace with myself. I have learnt to see events/ things around from a completely different perspective, i.e to look at life and nature around as one big composition that we can only fathom to touch the top  layers that our  perception or should i say 'nervous system' can comprehend. This definitely  was something unexpected and unsettling . I use the word unexpected because when you dance  , most of the times its  with music; it’s with a certain  audience in mind  and follows a certain pattern.   This was nothing like that….
I do not want to list the activities or how it went about during the week, but I want to definitely share that  we began with doing something  very basic and from the  ‘ground’ level   quiet literally. Connecting to  the ground beneath not just my feet, but connecting the whole body to  earth  and your partner  and letting the earth receive and give energy to you is a very  unique experience.  It doesn’t matter if you  practice dance,  or music or  act on stage or just  go up and speak to an audience , but  the very  energy exchange that happens is something that I experienced  and allowed myself to enjoy it thoroughly .  The continuous  cycle of   : The earth- your center - touch - partner and the earth is an amazing feeling . At the very beginning,  it does take its time to come to terms with as there is  the fear lurking inside that  always creeps within  and asks me  -Why am I allowing  someone to  peek through a part of me  or even why am I allowing this part to come out of me to either be witnessed by myself or through someone watching ?  Have I exposed something or  shared my vulnerabilities , that was just for me  and my sensibilities ?
 Anyway once you begin to accept what you go through , there is something very beautiful that  emerges from the  space – the  emptiness and nothingness around that cannot be explained logically or intellectually.  From getting to know the earth , to ourselves, to partners and exploring the space through a dance that has no structure, no set rhythm  no set sound  no set time is fantastic and is something  so fundamentally transforming that  only when you experience it can you believe it . We are so used to the visual  means of perceiving the world around  that some of the things we did with our eyes closed gave us a whole new sense of  ‘sensation through the senses’. The whole time you just allow your body to function like it has a mind of its own and allow it to take and receive, feel and listen rather than use language or words to express or allow your brain to  respond and take control.
Whenever we would want to appreciate , the sign language  hand clapping or the reverse clapping  is what we followed so that we do not break out of the  state of self  that we are in. Understanding a composition , doing the sweeps , tilted room, expressing through imagery rather than long sentences   and many more things that I went through the workshop made me look at  things around from a very different perspective.  Another key thing   we did towards the end that I enjoyed was the whole ’underscore ‘ thing  on one of the days  that typically lasts for 2 hrs atleast.
Finally I do have to say that there is something about Lucy and the way she taught us  with such zeal , innovativeness in   her style , allowing us to experience reflections , satisfaction , empathy   and a whole lot of feelings  through the medium of   ‘pure  unstructured dance’ . We as a group are very humbled to have learnt from her and though this was just a one week workshop , we are deeply thankful   for having accepted us  to be worthy of knowing this   form of dance and sharing her insights  in the little time that we had with each other.

May we ‘contact ‘soon and ending it with a small poem by the movie maker Farhan Akhtar  ( in Hindi  first and then the  translation below  ) whose feelings I echo this very  moment
Pighlay neelam sa behta hua yeh samaan Neeli neeli si khamoshiyaan Na kahin hai zameen Na kahin aasmaan Sarsaraati huyi tehniyaan,pattiyaan Keh rahi hain ki bas ek tum ho yahaan Sirf main hoon meri saansein hain aur meri dhadkanein Aisi gehraiyaan Aisi tanhaiyaan Aur main sirf main Apne honay pe mujhko yaqeen aa gaya

The moment flows by like molten sapphire Deep Blue silences No Earth below No Sky above The rustling branches and leaves Saying that only you are here Only me My breath My heartbeat Such Depth like this Such Loneliness like this And me only me I now believe I exist


Shivster
Know Shiv! - actor, improviser, runner!

Improvisation into Performance with Lucy! - the beginning of Fluids.

Underscore-Score-Bangalore

Pretty much as soon as the kalari puja at the end of Navaratri was over (towards the end of October), I was on a train to Bangalore.  Those who’ve followed my adventures in the past may remember that I spent two months there last time I was in India, choreographing, performing and teaching.  It was time to put on my dancer’s hat once again.  I was off to teach a workshop for dancers and actors, which we decided to call “Improvisation into Performance".

On day one, in our opening circle, I asked the assembled group to share why they had come to the workshop.  The reasons were various, but one woman confided she found it hard to recall the movement material she’d improvised when trying to set it later.  She hoped the workshop might help.

I said it might, but that wasn’t what the aim of this sort of improvisation.

It was a lovely and diverse group assembled in a large studio on busy Miller’s Road (co-incidentally, the road I had lived by, albeit further out of town, during my last stay).  There were some extremely skilled and experienced contemporary dancers, others with various classical or folk Indian backgrounds (kathakali, kathak, chau, bharatanatyam), some who were coming back to dance after a break, salsa dancers, Bollywood dancers.  All seemed curious and hungry for new information.  My intention was to teach skills of contact improvisation and also work with improvisational scores that could include solo, duet and group work.  The idea of scored improvisation was new to most of them and their experience of contact was at best limited to a few occasional workshops, there being no regular, ongoing jams or CI classes in Bangalore.

 

It seemed a no-brainer to introduce some of what I had been working on at Roehampton University in London last June during Nancy Stark-Smith’s Extended Underscore Workgroup (see here for a reminder about that). So the purpose wasn’t to help dancers remember what they do when they improvise, but to investigate the states and structures that allow improvisation itself to be performance, if or when we choose it to be so.   

Time was limited, but we managed to use elements of the Underscore to teach and refine contact skills, working initially in pairs or trios to find release into gravity, release into touch, specificity in giving and receiving touch.  Mostly, the first half of the class was devoted to contact skills while the second half was given over to practising scores (for those not familiar with the idea, a score in dance improvisation functions a little like a musical score; it gives structures, rules, that hold and shape the improvisation).

As the week progressed, it felt clearer and clearer that we should dance an Underscore – Bangalore’s first Underscore!  So we organised ourselves for the traditional talk-through of the various elements of the Underscore and then danced it during our two hour class the following evening.

There was a cyclone in Chennai at the time, which played havoc with weather and roads in Bangalore, but nonetheless, most of the group made it to the studio for Bangalore's first Underscore, no mean feat in itself.

For more pictures than this blog entry shows, please visit my “Bangalore’s First Underscore” Facebook album.

Each time I have worked with dancers in India, I have been reminded of what is so precious and life-affirming and challenging about the kind of dance I do, and why I love to share it. This was no exception. But in the end, I prefer to allow some of the participants to articulate their experience for themselves.

Shiv Kumar shared this in a note on Facebook:

I do not want to list the activities or how it went about during the week, but I want to definitely share that we began with doing something very basic and from the ‘ground’ level quite literally. Connecting to the ground beneath not just my feet, but connecting the whole body to earth and your partner and letting the earth receive and give energy to you is a very unique experience.  It doesn’t matter if you practice dance, or music or act on stage or just go up and speak to an audience, but the very energy exchange that happens is something that I experienced and allowed myself to enjoy it thoroughly.  The continuous cycle of: the earth- your center - touch - partner and the earth is an amazing feeling . At the very beginning, it does take its time to come to terms with it as there is  the fear lurking inside that always creeps within that asks me  - Why am I allowing  someone to peek through a part of me or even why am I allowing this part to come out of me to either be witnessed by myself or through someone watching?  Have I exposed something or shared my vulnerabilities, that was just for me and my sensibilities?

Anyway once you begin to accept what you go through , there is something very beautiful that emerges from the  space – the emptiness and nothingness around that cannot be explained logically or intellectually.  From getting to know the earth, to ourselves, to partners and exploring the space through a dance that has no structure, no set rhythm, no set sound, no set time is fantastic and is something so fundamentally transforming that only when you experience it can you believe it. We are so used to the visual means of perceiving the world around that some of the things we did with our eyes closed gave us a whole new sense of  ‘sensation through the 5 senses’. The whole time you just allow your body to function like it has a mind of its own and allow it to take and receive, feel and listen rather than use language or words to express or allow your brain to respond and take control. 

Here is the link to Shiv's full note on Facebook, if you would like to read more.

Shreeya Kishanpuria wrote:

One thing that I cherish taking back from the classes is... beginning to appreciate and enjoy my sense of touch. Felt so connected to myself and the stranger because of the Touch. It inevitably brought a smile to my face… It showed to the city dancers... a different meaning of performance! Not just something you would do on a high rise stage in front of an audience as a formal presentation…

At the time of the workshop, Nakula Somana, who had organised it, was inaugurating the idea of a collective of dance and theatre practitioners to organise ongoing training in Bangalore.  He decided to call it “Fluid” because of what the word implies about both physical qualities and flexibility of structure. 

In the Fluid Facebook group, Mafalda Mas Sangranichiny shared this: 

Lucy May Constantini workshop, the beginning of Fluid? Most of us think that her workshop change us in many different ways.... in my case it was a revealing work, it gave me a new view of myself being myself.... 

From Lucy May Constantini 

with love, x 

To know more about Lucy's adventures, please check out her blog : http://underthetrident.blogspot.in

Erica visits and we dance again!

CI and contemporary dance in southern India

This past year I traveled to INDIA three times to teach, study, live, and experience the sounds
and sights of this extraordinary country. In BANGALORE, a city of some 8.5 million people
in the state of KARNATAKA, there is an artist revolution rumbling under the surface…ancient
stimuli inspiring new expressions. I find myself with the dance anarchists of Bangalore—
Kha, a collective contemporary dance group (Sanskrit for “Space”). They exude pride for their
various cultures and possess passion for more—alive and interacting with imagination and

brilliance. They are associated with Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, the premier dance
conservatory in southern India for classical and contemporary dance.

Attakkalari’s artistic director, Jayachandran Palazhy (Jay), explained his vision: “Our attempt
is to deconstruct some of the [Indian] folk traditions to understand the impulse that inspired the
forms. I am working with the principles and concepts rather than outer form—trying to imagine
the source.” When I asked him how he sees traditional influences within his contemporary work,
his response revealed an understanding of tradition as an evolving form rather than a constant to
be observed. “Remember…contemporary IS Indian.…India is a mosaic—a lot of give and take.
The idea of tradition is an artificial construct. Some people are afraid of change. But the only
constant is change. What kind of orientation do we want to have? How do we gravitate? Can we
evolve to a contemporary Indian confident enough to explore?”

I am in Bangalore to teach yoga and to conduct CI workshops for diploma students at Attakkalari
and to work with Kha, who arranged for me to teach a weeklong CI workshop for them and other
professional dancers at Kalari Academy of Performing Arts.

It is truly a cultural exchange. My interest in teaching CI in India is not to impose an aesthetic or
style of movement but to support an appetite for contemporary possibilities. I am fascinated to
see what happens with CI here, spiced by the local life and individual sensibilities.

In the studio with the professional dancers, trained in traditional classical dance and modern
forms, I feel the fertile rub between ancient and new. Many of us traveled far to participate.
One dancer traveled 5 hours by bus, another, who sells bananas on a cart in the day and dances
at night, traveled 10 hours via train. The intense interest is exciting and leads to dancing with
intelligent intrigue. Some have experience with CI, but others have never touched the opposite
sex outside of privacy. I assure them that they can dance man-to-man/woman-to-woman if less
distracting. But they want to try.

After my time in Bangalore, I went to CHENNAI, the capital city of 9 million people in the
state of TAMIL NADU. Chennai prides itself as a traditional society—nearly all women wear
saris, and many men dress in wrap skirts and bare feet. And yet again, I mingled and intertwined
in dance with the contemporary scene. Chandralekha’s legacy as a physically and verbally
articulate dance revolutionary is felt all over India. She utilized classical movements along
with yoga and Kalari (a South Indian martial art) to express nontraditional themes—eroticism,
feminism, abstract expression of energy. Before she died, she established a campus called
Spaces, and this is where I am teaching. Located near the beach, it is a haven for movement arts
in Chennai.

Local dancer and activist Andrea Jacob is committed to the cultural exchange and support of
contemporary dance in Chennai. She arranged my workshop at Chandralekha’s Spaces and an
interview with curator Sadanand Menon—a handsome man with a deep voice that vibrated
through me with every word. His love and respect for Chandralekha was clear. We sat on
marvelous house swings, reminiscing about her work and her continued influence and relevance
today. It was then that I learned Jay had been in Chandralekha’s company. I felt my dance travels
coming full circle—Chandralekha to Jay to Attakkalari to Kha.

Regardless of where on the globe or when, history tells the tales of revolutionaries. So often,
even artists become followers—CI dancers are not exempt from this—learning “the moves” and

perfecting them into the dance dialogue. Yet with new options and raw openings exposed, new
forms of expression, communication, and knowledge can blossom.

As a dancer, choreographer, and yogini, I have found my time in India to be incredibly
stimulating. I have traveled quite extensively in the world but am uniquely captivated by India’s
juxtaposing cultures of ancient and new, finding myself propelled into a wealth of interest and
ideas.

Not bound by past convention, I respect what has inspired traditions and embrace this as a source
of current investigation. What is tradition? It seems to me that even a culture such as India,
which theoretically embraces the fact of constant change in the material world, falls into the trap
of yearning for absolute answers and familiarities. It is part of the human domain to want to hold
on to traditions, treating them as though they have always been there. It is the creative mind that
disrupts habits of following. I find myself part of the wave of disruption, supported by love and
respect rather then revolt and denial.

And so, among the cows and chickens, mixed with bikes, motorcycles, rickshaws, pedestrians,
and incessant honking, I watch, listen, smell, taste, and feel my way into my next dance—
leaning, pressing, falling into the momentum of change.

-Erica Kaufman
Few pictures from the workshop (out on the streets)!

CQ Contact Improvisation Newsletter
Winter/Spring 2013 vol.38 no.1

Guest Editor: Dey Summer

CQ Newsletter Editor: Nancy Stark Smith