Contact As A Means Of Survival
Home now after the Urban Contact Improvisation Survival Camp, a 3+2 day event I co-organized and facilitated with Valerie Sabbah and Shanthi Minor.
My inquiry into Contact Improvisation takes root in my belief that language can serve the body's wisdom. I acknowledge my body as a primary teacher, learning from its lessons and leaning into the embrace of life's pain and joy on a spectrum. My focus is on shared creative improvisation, with all arts practices serving as a foundation and a living archive of my journey. I dance, I write, and I draw, all together.
During our urban camp, I offered participants another iteration of the Fountain, a practice I've taken up from Cristina Svane's 1992 article published in Contact Quarterly. It is originally a form for collecting watching and reporting one's experience of witnessing. Its most important feature is that discussion is not allowed. I have adapted the process into a means of harvesting writing from movement and observation. The process is such:
- Watching and/or Dancing
- Writing -- immediately, for 3-5 minutes, in silence
- Reading -- out loud, in a circle, only what you wrote
- (Optional) Collecting+Printing what was collectively written
Over 3 days, our group of 14 participants were given 7 occasions we called "Landing". There were prompts encouraging them to reflect and write about their current emotional or mental state, capturing the essence of their recent experiences. Each participant began by reading their card #1, then collectively moved on to card #2, and continued this pattern until all 7 cards were read and shared among the group. This process facilitated a structured and shared reflection on the experiences encountered throughout the camp, and substituted a discussion-based closing circle.
In this post, I will share my own set of 7 landings, with the English version of each prompt I gave the group in bold.
What feels alive for me right now is anticipation. Exhaustion gives place to joy and fire rumbles in the body. Tuned in up the spine and oh-so-aware that it is a journey neither ending nor begun. Be here now because teleportation is a myth hiding alienation. A joke? I'm not laughing. Share love from the visceral calling, ignore all the bullshit.
To survive, this body teaches me to listen, m'efforce à comprendre qu'il y a unité et qu'il suffit d'y adhérer. I learn through the messages that come with skin. The heat of flesh, the fatigue of an optic nerve. Flashbulb memory distracts but my body survives by bringing me back here now with you, friend, with me, all of us making a whole.
When I am tuned in, I am in a state of flux, flowing, the river moulding its shape over the stones in the riverbed. Notice the ever present fire that pushes farther the inquiry curious into the ebb+flow of yes+no. Tuned in means listening, it's a sound metaphor and a physical practice. It's my love of self+other as all-there-is, the collective wisdom developed by shutting the fuck up and finding something below my workaway preoccupations. The flexible, changing truth.
When I am improvising, I feel alive. It's that daring to try something without any certainty about the results. It's the attempt. It's making it up from my gut sense of this-just-might-work. And so what if I fail? Failure is information; invest in failure. Devote time to making a million mistakes, and after years (measured however you'd like), something will change, energy will make itself known as true. Therein is the fundamental consciousness.
Describe a sound, or a movement, or an intersection of Sound+Movement: I am laying on the floor outside the circle of emerald lights, my eyes closed. Warp Zone 7 is happening. People are giving it their all on the dance floor. I can tell, because each landing or heavy step sends a ripple through the wood. Ripple like an emerald wave, I feel the floor fall and rise beneath me, and hear THUMP THUMP of bodies jumping. The hard wood falls away and comes up to meet me even while my contact remains steady.
Describe a moment of impact: Jumping off a swing into a roll I don't know if I'll manage and somehow I make it out the other side but not without the head's awkward tuck not quite flexible enough to get out of the way, so as I hit the playground's wood-chip covered ground I do not get my body into the shape and I come out the other side with a silent ringing in me. The impact's vibration resonating through the spinal column. Next day, tension in the neck reveals near head-ache and just the right stretches to alleviate the pain. Plow--gravity does the work.
Completion. It's a matter of course that the pendulum swings. What feels alive for me right now is the amazing essence of collaborative creation. We are together revolving around a star in some centrally lost corner of an imbricated universe. Big words where simple ones might suffice: Gratitude is the truth of being alive here, now, together. You and I and We create this joy together, new constellation bearing our collective name.
It took around 40 minutes for us all to read the 90-ish cards that were generated over the course of the week. Someone sat out, let us read their cards after. Some of us said "pass" at certain numbers.
My work with the Fountain delves into the embodiment of myths and stories through movement, connecting dance and storytelling. Participants explore conscious and unconscious patterns, engaging in shared inquiry, somatic practice, and guided reflection. My broader purpose is to help participants through individual processes of seeking liberation in a turbulent world.
This was the second iteration of the work. I am finding out more about themes of movement, collaboration, and self-awareness intertwined with storytelling, challenging personal assumptions, and fostering connections through a mythic perspective. I'm interested in deepening the exploration of conscious and unconscious patterns, engaging in shared inquiry, somatic practice, and guided reflection. This experimental journey, while not a technique class, melds well with technique, and encourages questioning and deeper exploration of movement's significance. The time spent reading aloud is rich with emotion.
I am deeply grateful for my collaborators, our participants, and the experience of the last week. Blessings to all.
(Next up: I am off to the Gaspe peninsula for a couple of weeks of retreat, hiking, and self-practice! Stay tuned)