Al Wunder

Martin Hughes and I taught our third workshop in four years. We call it ‘In & out of contact’ since it explores how to combine two different forms of improvisation. Martin has been very influential in teaching and developing a contact improvisation community in Melbourne, Australia. I have spent twenty years teaching what is called for the sake of differentiation in this particular workshop open improvisation, combining movement, words, sounds and music. In and Out of Contact was one of several improvisation classes taught during the January Improvisation Feast, a yearly event held at the Cecil Street Studio.

This year we expanded our five three-hour classes to five six-hour classes in order to give needed time to explore how best to combine the aesthetics of open improvisation and contact improvisation. Before the workshop Martin and I discussed our enjoyment of each of these forms, the reasons we wanted to combine them, and what difficulties we expected would occur in exploring a merger.

We both agreed that the contact form offers several extremely valuable attributes to the participants. I began our initial conversation with this provocative statement: ‘contact is a thoughtless, reactionary activity’, negative words that never the less describe what I thoroughly enjoy about contact improvisation. It is thoughtless because flowing with the moving point of contact releases the mind from making decisions about what to do next and partners must constantly react to point-of-contact and center-of-gravity shifts. This thoughtless reaction to the physical interplay between two bodies creates a unique communication between two people which is childlike in its impulsive play and beautifully adult-like in its intimate physicality.The essences of contact that appeal to Martin and I as audience are the sinuous flow of motion, elements of perceived and actual physical risk-taking, and the unusual and exquisite shapes which appear and disappear creating moments of suspended beauty. There is also the pleasure of watching performers who are so clearly and intensely focused on creating their art. Seeing a contact performance, for me, is like watching someone play the ‘cello. I am drawn into the music by the intention of the performer to let the music speak for itself. The musician goes into his or her music and the music goes out to the audience. Similarly, contact performers focus on their point of contact and the dance moves outwards to whoever is watching.

Open improvisation offers a vastly different set of values. There is a constancy of moment to moment choice-making that determines the actions and reactions between participants: where one stands in the room, where one looks, what body parts are in motion, how fast are these moving, are you travelling? when if ever do you speak? what do you say? how do you say it? etc. This is a dialogue of motion, the information articulated through defining one’s shape, awareness of spatial relationships, and clarity of speed. It is a stimulation of the mind, a call and response of movement, searching for and finding agreement in the game or story to be told and felt by the two protagonists.

As watchers Martin and I enjoy the emotional risk of seeing performers improvise a relationship using body, voice and wit to find the non-physical connecting point between two people. Energy bounces back and forth between performer and performer and even between performers and audience. Movement, words and sounds are externalised, initiated and responded to and a piece of theatre is created. Whenever an especially humorous, insightful or beautiful moment occurs it is especially appreciated because it emerges unplanned and resonates more for audience and performer because of this.

We used these generalised observations of contact and open improvisations to formulate a few avenues of inquiry that would form the basis of our teaching for the week. Our main aim was to examine ways that could include long segments of pure contact with equally long elements of non-contact as well as times where they combined into open contact. To achieve this we decided to focus on three elements; how to shift between internal and external personal space, three types of physical contact (no weight, light weight and heavy weight) and transitions between and combinations of the two forms.

Martin and I met each morning to discuss what each of us would teach that day. We devoted the last half-hour to discussion giving students the time to offer insights about the exercises that worked for them and any difficulties they may have experienced. The following is a synopsis of the each day’s activities.

DAY 1
Internal, Peripheral, and External Personal Space

On the first day we looked at what we both believed to be the most obvious difference between the two forms of improvisation: the performers’ primary source of spatial interest. ‘Personal space’ is an important awareness that allows the performer to be and look more alive and present within their activities. Most contact improvisation is done with an internal or peripheral awareness. I define internal space as the acknowledgment of what is happening underneath the skin, peripheral as the awareness on or close to the skin, and external as paying attention to things beyond the skin. We explored these three different facets of space in and out of contact, investigating what movements felt comfortable, and which moments felt emotionally real for us.

We also introduced the concepts of ‘in place’, ‘still’ and ‘locomotion’ dancing. The terms describe in the simplest way the limitations of each dance. ‘In place dancing’ means you can move as much as you like as long as you stay in one place. ‘Locomotion dancing’ signifies that the dance must travel, never staying in one place always in a constant state of locomotion. ‘Still dancing’ is just that, being absolutely still, but staying alive and attuned to the stillness so that you still feel like you are dancing. Again we worked within these parameters both in and out of contact.

What we introduced by getting students to practice these principles were two main possibilities: a more balanced use of personal space in both forms of improvisation, and how these could share the most basic forms of activity through in place, still and locomotion movements.

DAY 2:
No Weight, Light Weight, Heavy Weight Contact

The second day we wanted to focus on transitions between contact and open improvisation. Using the premise that most contact necessitates sharing body weight and most open improvs rarely see flesh meeting flesh, the idea of no weight contact becomes the meeting point of the two dances. Making, breaking and maintaining contact are the three acts of contact. By isolating each one, that is letting one part of contact the making, breaking or the maintaining be a more important element than the other two, a dance that surrounds the dance of contact emerges. Now, with the acknowledgment that making and breaking contact is as important a part of the dance as maintaining contact, we can create bridges between pure contact improvisation and open improvisation. By adding the parameter of various amounts of weight (no weight, light weight, heavy weight) that can be played with the bridge we build between the two forms will be as intricate or simple as we want it to be.

DAY 3:
Space Shaping

I was going to introduce some verbal game play on this day but Martin and I decided to leave out that element of my work because there was so much material we wanted to cover without introducing a new and very difficult element to the week’s teaching. Instead we looked at what is seen by the audience, and how the spatial relationships between dancer to dancer and dancers to the audience create a theatrical picture.

The group that Martin performs with, State of Flux, is very adept in using this particular device. It combines open and contact Improvisations, quite often having two of the five members engage in a full on contact happening while the other three find interesting positions or movements that highlight the contacting pair.

Space Shaping is the name I give to exploring the emotional reverberations that are inherent in the placement of people in the performing space. An audience looking at an empty space will have a very different experience than if one performer stood in that space. One performer standing in the back right hand corner of the studio creates a different experience than one standing very close to the audience. The choice of the performer to have their front, back or side facing the audience can also alter the emotional makeup of the room.

Initially we put out a score called ‘facings and spacings’, the object being to explore non-contact relationships from a variety of different distances and body facings (front to front, front to back, back to side, diagonal back to front, etc.) Paired dancers were asked to deal with not only the proximity between their two bodies but also relate spatially to the walls and the audience. All this was a prelude to framing or highlighting a pure contact dance with an open improv dance.

Two duets performed simultaneously in the space together. One pair danced out of contact with the specific intent to relate spatially to the other duet, whose task was to do a pure contact improvisation ignoring as much as possible the movements going on around them. This set-up highlighted various ways in which out of contact performers could support an in-contact duet.

It was at this point that we reiterated our basic premise for dong this workshop which was to value and give equal time to performing in and out of contact. We wanted people to acknowledge the performability of pure contact improvisation and be willing to work for several minutes before finding a transition out of contact without losing the sense of an ongoing performance. Conversely we also wanted students to find a non-physical connection and be able to keep that dance going without contact being made. There is also the third form, the combination, the merger between open and contact improvisation I call ‘Open Contact’, which also was to be given equal time in the performance space. What is ‘Open Contact’? I don’t know yet but that is why I love teaching this workshop with Martin because he also loves delving into uncharted territory and seems to enjoy the search as much as, if not more than, the discovery.

DAY 4:
Time Structures In and Out of Contact

On day four we created a couple of scores that addressed the problem of seduction. Contact Improvisation creates such a strong bond between people that it is very difficult to break the form without losing the sense of connection with your partner. Taking the most obvious route we set up an ABA choreographic structure to ensure that equal time was given to both the in and out of contact dances.

Students were to choose whether they wanted A to be an in contact dance or an out of contact dance. If they chose A to be contact improvisation then B had to be open improvisation. They then did a three-minute dance timed by me with stopwatch in hand. The first minute had to be A (contact), the second B (open) and the third A (Contact).

A variation on this theme was not verbally agreeing on what A would be but allowing the dance to decide. Also the timing of the dance, which was to be about three minutes in total, still had to have equal time spent on each of the A B A sections. Then the final variation, which produced some wonderfully wild and exciting moments, was presented.

Each member of a duet was to choose without consultation whether he or she would start in contact or out of contact. Each would be responsible for their own timing of the ABA structure. This score engendered in the students delightfully playful moments of agreement and disagreement in the in and out of contact dance. There seemed to be a focus that allowed the flow of the dance to move easily between the two forms.

DAY 5:
The Dance of Negotiation, Acceptance, Resistance, and Insistence

One of the participants had mentioned during the talks that she found difficulty in negotiating non-verbally the transition from out of contact to in contact, while another student found it harder to move from contact to out of contact. So the basic form that the last day took was allowing the dance to be whatever it was at the moment. The evolving elements of negotiating, accepting, resisting and insisting gave the whole dance a wonderful sense of logic and organic development. These elements are all important communication dynamics. The scores we put out on day five all dealt with one or more of these dynamics as they related to moving in and out of contact. The final dance of the workshop was to value any or all of the communication variables and express them through the dance in abstract, theatrical, humorous or serious ways. The emotional dynamic layers that occurred in contact and out of contact easily extended themselves, the workshop ending on a high note with some very beautiful performances.

It was such a very exciting and fruitful week teaching ‘In and Out of Contact’ with Martin that we are looking at the possibility of team teaching this form through-out the year. It seems that teaching a format like this once a year will not be enough to break through the barrier of finding a true balance between in and out of contact. There seems to be a pattern of spending a lot of time in contact when not performing in front of an audience and performing out of contact with just some brief moments of contact when an audience is watching. This is our ongoing issue, how do we combine these two beautiful forms of improvisation?