Photo by Bronwyn Lim
Hellene Gronda
Contact Jam: a space and time where people practice Contact Improvisation.
How do you have a rocking good time at a Contact Jam? And how do you have that good time, every time, regardless of how you find yourself at the beginning? How, in other words, do you warm up for the jam?
Of course, your idea of a good jam might be nothing like mine. But there are skills and states that support the group score of jamming. What is this “group score”? The group score is about having an awareness of dancing with the whole room. And it comes down to “energetic availability,” as Nancy Stark Smith puts it. Being energetically available helps stop the jam from feeling like a high school dance (people waiting around the side to be chosen and each dancing couple in a world of their own -- eeek).
Is warming up for the
jam the same as warming up for Contact Improvisation?
Yes and no. Yes, because the jam is where you practice contact. Obviously.
And no, because particular issues come up when you have a room full of people
(a social situation) without a leader, doing a group thing.
Then yes again, if you think of the jam as another layer of Contact Improvisation.
Another area in which to seek connection, freedom and satisfaction. Another
place to feel free and safe enough to follow your impulses, to take risks, to
meet yourself and others…
Warming up, preparing, or as Nancy likes to say, “synchronising with the activity,” is like improvising in contact with your own starting point. The more synchronised I am, the faster and deeper I will engage with the activity - regardless of what it is - and in physical activity, the less likely I am to injure myself. Long term warming up is usually called “learning how to do it,” while short term warm up usually means physical preparation.
Photo by Bronwyn Lim
Here are some notes on strategies, skills and layers that can support great jamming. There are scores you can practice and questions to research, for long and short term warming up to the jam.
• Physical
Presence
Being here in my body at the jam. Breathing. What are my sensations? Your own
physical warm-up can happen in a systematic way or just through the dancing.
Sometimes a warm-up dance is easy to come by and just what you need. Other times
you don’t feel ready for physical touch and the mere idea of listening
to another person -- yuk! Give your body the time it needs to release the layers
of tension and habit that structure your everyday social self. There is energy
stored in these patterns and keeping them in place is half the reason you feel
exhausted at the end of the day.
Shaking, bouncing and vibrational movements followed by lying on the floor or
The Small Dance of standing are both great ways to allow another level of organisation
to float up and energise your movement.
• Making Connections, or energetic availability
Can you dance with someone across the space? Or are you dancing in a room where
just incidentally there happen to be other people doing contact?
How do you find your partners? Do you hope there’ll be someone you know
and like to dance with or are you the kind of person who “dances with
new people.” The group score doesn’t exclude those two options,
but it gives you a whole lot more…
Often people avoid connections
because they’re scared of getting stuck in something before they are ready.
Nancy makes a really useful distinction between engagement and development.
An engagement is any kind of relationship that you notice - can be a feeling
(I like that duet) or formal (we are both jumping). Development is staying with
a connection. It requires a commitment. Notice how this happens for you –
is it when someone asks you for “a dance”?
You can notice connections without developing them. These connections are not
less meaningful or less engaged and I think they contribute more to the group
score than any particular duet (or trio etc). Playing with these connections
frees you from partner dependence and opens you to more dancing. One dancer
I know loves circulating. He’ll rarely settle into a duet but joins in
for little (or big) tastes. This flow of energy around the room, between, and
through the duet “units” is what the group score is all about.
Being energetically available
doesn’t mean you have to dance with everyone, or develop all the connections
you notice. It does mean that you will notice influence.
Influence is a type of engagement that changes your dancing. One day I came
up with this daggy metaphor: I felt like another duet threw choc-chips into
the cake mix of my dance. Yum! You don’t have to lose your own focus when
you get affected by the group.
• Beyond
the Duet - exercises to practice
Group games - pass the clap, throwing and catching as you run around
the room. Pick two people and keep an equal distance from both. Pass the impulse
(usually around a circle).
Accumulation score: one person starts, is joined by a second, they find the
dance between them, then they are joined by a third and so on.
Addressing: How do you address someone in movement? Can you address more than one person at a time? How do you know you are being addressed? A gorgeous simple score that Nancy uses: Half the group are almost still, the other half are free to move and investigate addressing the others.
Vision really supports the group score. Practice seeing the room as a whole, noticing the inter-relations of its parts, the contrasts and the harmonies. Can you see without dropping out of the dance? This is a different option from sitting out and observing. It’s tricky because seeing is heavily associated with regular sociality, it can make you self-conscious and over-ride dance or body focus.
Walking and seeing people. A simple practice of moving through the space and noticing the other people. How many people are there? How close do you pass them? What speed are they moving? etc.
I had a great time in one jam when I found myself lying face up on the floor after most people had formed duets. After a moment of peer-pressure panic I realised that I was looking at the most incredibly interesting confusion of body angles. Suddenly I found myself engaged in looking at the dancers from my upside down perspective. I spent ages zooming around on my back searching for satisfying visuals, developing this dance until it reached a resolution.
• Entering
and leaving
Notice how you end duets. How often does getting a drink substitute for acknowledging
an end? A nice exercise is to mutually, verbally decide to end and then keep
dancing to find a resolution.
Entering and leaving dances becomes much, much easier in the context of the
group score.
Without a group awareness, leaving a dance can feel like dumping or abandoning
your partner. Not a good feeling for either side and the duet can become an
obligation.
Use the round-robin score and practice sharing the thoughts and feelings you
have while entering, exiting, being left, or being joined. You quickly realise
that almost everyone has the same paranoias.
• Staying
in
The simplest way to deal with feeling “out of it” is just the idea:
I am always in. Feeling out of it is just one way to be in. Sure that’s
easier to say than to bear. Try expanding your awareness right out to include
the studio and surrounding area, go even further and imagine all of (lets say)
Australia busily doing whatever activities they are doing. Feel yourself in
relationship, feel your part in the whole composition. Alternatively, focus
down onto the peculiar sensations in your big toe.
Aside from jamming in ten different cities (!) and a wide variety of formats, one of my biggest resources has been Nancy Stark Smith’s teaching of The Score. She taught it at her Melbourne workshop. It is the specific practice of a sequence of states and processes that guide you from personal warm-up to a Contact Improvisation duet and then into an open group improvisation. Since July 2000 there has been a global Practice of The Score -- New Zealand joined the event last year (see report in <proximity> volume 4 edition 3) Anyone in Melbourne interested in doing it this year, please contact me and look out for further news.
vol 6 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3&4 - 2003 vol 5 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3 - ed 4 - 2002 vol 4 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3 - ed 4 - 2001 vol 3 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3 - ed 4 - 2000 vol 2 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3 - ed 4 - 1999 vol 1 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3 - ed 4 - 1998 |
e m a i l - <Proximity> |