If you could do Aikido, surf, wrestle and dance at the same time, you would have an idea of what Contact Improvisation feels like. For these rehearsals, Steve Paxton relied on his training in modern dance (he had danced in the companies of, "Bonding with the earth" thus refers (in part) to the experience of the "Small Dance", "Engagement" to the commitment that can be involved in a contact improvisation duet, "Skinesphere", the space beneath the skin. According to the magazine's statement, Contact Quarterly is the longest living, independent, artist-made, not-for-profit, reader-supported magazine devoted to the dancer's voice. A selction of photos and pictures to help inspire students and teachers in contact work and lift lessons. The dance content of the piece presented for assessment must be of sufficient sophistication, complexity and challenge to allow each student to access the full range of marks available. [32], Contact Improvisation involves technical aspects or "moves" that support the duets and create a recognizable style of movements: shoulder and hip lifts, head-to-head improvisation, table-top position (being on all fours, supporting the weight of the partner on the back), surfing (rolling on the floor, being "surfed by" the partner), and aikido rolls.[18]. Eye contact definition, the act of looking directly into another's eyes: We never made eye contact at any time during the interview. To move rhythmically usually to music, using prescribed or improvised steps and gestures. [29], Women have expressed feeling uncomfortable on the dance floor and in the community, especially with men who overstep intimacy, bringing unwanted sexual energy into the connection. Contact improvisation is now taught in a majority of American universities offering a choreographic curriculum (New York University, Oberlin College, Bennington College, Smith College, Ohio State University) as well as in many contemporary dance festivals (Jacob's Pillow, Bates Dance Festival). Being mainly an art, and not a commercial trend, this kind of modern dance art attracts people all over the world by its deepness, simplicity and sincerity. Contact Improvisation (CI) is a dance technique in which points of physical contact provide the starting point for movement improvisation and exploration. Definition of Contact Improvisation from Wikipedia In 1975, the dancers working with Steve Paxton considered trademarking the term contact improvisation in order to control the teaching and practice of the dance form, consequently for reasons of safety. This definition is here only for the sake of those who are surfing the Web and stumbled onto this page. 1. Repetition in dance: mindbending and mesmerising, or just plain maddening? [8] In this practice, vocabulary is tailored to fit the specific experiences of dancers and benefits from Nancy Stark Smith enmeshment with contact improvisation. Being not limited by cultural and national features, it arouses interest and brings together open-minded and open-hearted people which tend to be free and happy in their life activity, social development and dance. "[13][37] It consisted of a score serving as a descriptive and prescriptive base for the practice of group improvisations. What are the "mere facts" about it? While the development of contact improvisation has benefited greatly from Nancy Stark Smith and Lisa Nelson's editorial work to support the writings of dancers in their exploration of the form, it also owes much to the cameras of Steve Christiansen and then Lisa Nelson, who documented many moments of the work (especially in performance) and allow the contactors to observe themselves with meticulousness. Various definitions establish in their own ways what was at stake in a contact improvisation duo. The improvised dance form is 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. [36] Dancers are dressed casually (sweat pants, T-shirts) and performances can happen in many venues, including theaters, bookstores, galleries. Contact Improvisation (CI) is a dance technique in which points of physical contact provide the starting point for movement improvisation and exploration. Contemporary dancers strive to connect the mind and the body through fluid dance movements. Modinha - Brazilian dance, which is the diminutive of Moda (Mode or Style) and is directly derived from the Portuguese songs and dances of that name. Information and translations of contact in the most comprehensive dictionary definitions … Here it must be emphasized that despite the use of the term “inward focus” in Novack’s account, the cultivation of kinaesthetic awareness cannot be equated with an “introspective” preoccupation with private sensations; rather, the accent lies on sensing-through the responsive body, combining both “internal awareness” and “responsiveness to another”. Definition of lap dance in the Definitions.net dictionary. This is the case with choreographers Bill T. Jones, Wim Vandekeybus and Antonija Livingstone, or in the companies Punchdrunk (especially in their famous site-specific 2011 production Sleep No More[45]) and DV8 Physical Theater. [13] The syncopated, risky, raw and awkward style of the first performances gave place rather quickly to a variety of aesthetics within the form. In African societies, dance serves a complex diversity of social purposes. Contact improvisation plays with the artistry of falling off balance, counterbalance, finding the shelves of the body, learning the mechanics of the body in order to handle someone else's weight or be lifted, breathing techniques, and can involve the art of getting to know your partner past the physical point through the physicality. An implicit attribute of movements such as tendu, glisse, and grand battement. Let's begin by learning about the roots of this form of dance. Perform actions or shapes that are similar to but not exactly the same as another dancer’s. Its homes were Germany (and surrounding countries) and the United States. As a teacher of Contact Improvisation, she had observed that particular warm-up exercises and movement activities were helpful in bringing dancers to a state of body-mind preparedness for engaging in a Contact duet. A style and technique based on improvisation, in which the dancers support and utilize each other's body weight while in motion; attributed to dance artist Steve Paxton working in the United States, beginning in the 1970's; normally performed as a duet and without music, the emphasis is on touching, falling, lifting, leaning, sliding, counter-balancing, and supporting the weight of another person. In January 1972, Steve Paxton was in residence at Oberlin College on a tour with Grand Union, a collective where he collaborated among others with Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown. • world workshop/event This is different from free style dancing done at clubs and parties. Jams also occur at multi-day residential courses led by a dancer or a group of dancers at conferences or festivals, where the days can alternate between free practices, courses by guest artists, and debates regularly bring practitioners together. Steve Paxton, along with other pioneers Nancy Stark Smith, Danny Lepkoff, Lisa Nelson, Karen Nelson, Nita Little, Andrew Harwood, and Ray Chung, thus participated in creating an "art-sport," oscillating between different emphases depending on the moments and personalities who practice it: Formally, contact improvisation is a movement improvisation that is explored with another being. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3Icyn7qky8 [27] The conference was mainly dedicated to contact improvisation, which had been referred to as an "art-sport" a few years earlier by Simone Forti, and introduced contact improvisation in the American academic world. Dance for camera. See also African music and mask. Full wikipedia definition and history here. Abdominals: Muscles found on the belly of the body. "In this performance, dancers usually use their bodies as a whole, all parts are simultaneously unbalanced or thrown against another body or in the air. • teacher directory http://www.contactfest.in.ua/eng/about. • site map •, Web Site Design by Moti Zemelman - Hosting by Jason Woofenden, Full wikipedia definition and history here, world workshop/event For the purposes of the Dance syllabus the following definitions will apply. "Contact improv" is an un-codified, somatic technique which serves as a framework for collective improvisation. Companies like DV8 and The Cholmondeleys have thus produced choreographies based on a similar anti-mechanistic approach to that of contact improvisation, coupling it with interrogations on gendered roles. In fact, many of the most renowned nondisabled Contact practitioners (including Steve Paxton), spend a lot of time teaching, facilitating and dancing with disabled communities. In June 1980, Elizabeth Zimmer, organizer and director of the American Dance Guild, put together the conference Improvisation: Dance Considered as Art-Sport. The form was founded in 1972 by Steve Paxton. Taking distance from the dance, she watched a lot through the eye of the camera and pursued personal research on the collaboration between the senses, in particular on the organization of kinaesthesia in relation to the way in which vision works (a practice later known as the "Tuning Scores"). contact center: A contact center -- also referred to as a customer interaction center or e-contact center -- is a central point from which all customer contacts are managed. The duration of the concerts can go from 20 minutes to 6 hours. bio/resumé • home 6 Resources. Abduction: Movement away from the midline on the lateral plane. Definition "A semi-improvisational form of choreography in which set movements were rearranged for each performance in terms of the sequence, location, and dancers involved." Meg Stuart considers her lineage to be in the experimental approach to dance proposed in the early days of contact improvisation history: If I could go back in dance history I would put myself at Oberlin College in 1972, crashing into Steve Paxton and his students as we performed Magnesium. 1. Dance for pleasure, dance for health, dance full of art, of improvisation, of happiness and spontaneous play with space… These are just some of the words which define the essential of CI, its necessity and usefulness in any civilized and open society. "[25], The "round robin" is the most frequent structure of performances, this happens where small groups of dancers arrive in the center of a supporting circle of other dancers, who can at any time integrate the couples and replace one of the two dancers. Regardless of those aesthetic choices, the central characteristic of contact improvisation remains a focus on bodily awareness and physical reflexes rather than consciously controlled movements. How to use dance in a sentence. As Patricia Kuypers remarked, "her staggered gaze nourished the maturation of the [contact improvisation], developing analysis of the perceptual system and revealing specific questions about how improvisation works. There can be music or it can happen in silence. However, dance communicates meaning, too. Contact Information General Inquiries [email protected] MEREDITH SCHULTZ | OWNER/INSTRUCTOR [email protected] KATE LOUER | OWNER/INSTRUCTOR [email protected] Connect With Us Location 2525 N. Elston Chicago, IL 60647 Phone 773-270-4246 Hours Monday: 2pm – 9pm Tuesday: 10-10:30am / 3pm – 9pm Wednesday: 3pm – 9pm … "Contact improv" is an un-codified, somatic technique which serves as a framework for collective improvisation. For several weeks, he offered Oberlin students two sets of practices: The meeting of these practices gives rise to Magnesium,[11] a twenty-minute long piece where dancers perform on gym mats, jump and bump into each other, manipulate and cling to one another. [16] One of the founders of the form, Daniel Lepkoff, comments that the “precedence of body experience first, and mindful cognition second, is an essential distinction between Contact Improvisation and other approaches to dance.”[17] Another source affirms that the practice of contact improvisation involves “mindfulness, sensing and collecting information”[18] as its core. contact definition: 1. communication with someone, especially by speaking or writing to them regularly: 2. the fact of…. What is hip-hop dance, exactly? [21], These residential events (workshops, festivals, long jams) represent a parallel economy that invited the creation of dedicated spaces of practice, the model of which was provided very early by Earthdance, a residential center built in 1986 by a Boston community of dancers.[22]. It's not amazing but it generated lots of ideas - which was the point!!! If you follow this link to YouTube you can see what we did exploring the pictures in 1hr 30. What is Contact Improvisation? Serving as a meeting ground for a worldwide network of contact improvisers, CQquickly grew to include writings and interviews on postmodern and contemporary experimental dance, somatic movement practices, improvisational dance, mixed-abilities dance, teaching methods, creative process, and performance.[20]. African dance, performing art deeply woven into the social fabric of Africa and generally involving aspects of music and theatre as well as rhythmic bodily movement. The first dance associated with hip-hop was break dancing. 2. Deva Davina, "Some notes of a contacter ethnographer", Julyen Hamilton, " Contact Improvisation was a question of my generation ,", "Contact Editions dance and somatics books & dvds", "The Experiment Called Contact Improvisation - FoundSF", "Nancy Stark Smith, a Founder of Contact Improvisation, Dies at 68", "Earthdance survives changing vision, changing times", "Respecting Boundaries/Coexisting Genders: A Zine about Women's Experiences of Feeling Unsafe in Contact Improv", "#MeToo DISRUPTION at the 2018 West Coast Contact Improvisation Jam", "A Compendium of Contact Improvisation Jam Guidelines and related material from around the world", "Contact Improvisation and the Lived World", "Art Through Time: A Global View - Meat Joy", "Our Own AIDS Time: Keith Hennessy and Ishmael Houston-Jones in Conversation", "Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods & EIRA | New York Live Arts", The Experiment Called Contact Improvisation, Contact Improvisation Global Calendar - Find information about Contact Improvisation events worldwide (classes, jams, workshops, festivals and more), A Compendium of Contact Improvisation Jam Guidelines and related material from around the world, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Contact_improvisation&oldid=997601872, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, experimental dance (practice-based research organized in dance laboratories), theatrical form (improvised performances and lectures-demonstrations), educational tool (classical training for professional and non-professional dancers in improvisation and in partnering), social dancing (through informal gatherings known as "jams"). 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