martin keogh
an interview

Paul Roberts

How long have you been dancing Contact?

It's been 19 years now. I started when I was living at Berkley and very heavily into Zen Buddhism. On Friday nights I would go out with some people from the Zen centre to this dance place called dance jam. They've spurted up a all over the States now, back then there were very few, for the first hour they'd play really slow music for warming up then they'd really crank it up. So it's no shoes, no smoking, no alcohol, people went there who just loved to dance. I used to dance, roll around on the floor and I just had the most fun. This one night I was rolling around with this man and afterwards he started giving me feedback about how I could roll around better. I was really confused for a moment and then I said, "You mean this is a dance form?" And he said "Yes, it's called Contact Impro" and I was ecstatic. I signed up for three classes that week and within a year I'd studied with 19 teachers. I did four intensives and by the end of the year I was teaching and performing. It was home. It was like I walked in and knew where all the furniture was and I knew I must be home.

Speaking of home, where are you living at the moment?

I live in a town called San Miquel De Arendes, in central Mexico. In this little town, actually it's more like a small city, there is a weekly jam. So people who come through there will get to dance with people from Argentina and Chile and Columbia and Peru and Mexico and Europe, the States; it's an artist colony so people come there from all over the world.

Have you ever considered what may be key elements in achieving the best personal approach to Contact?

This is a dance form that is dependent on having partners, rightÖ so for myself, dancing with a huge variety of people and being in many different dance situations, from workshops to labs, just getting together with people to work on dancing, to work on improvisation, has been really essential. And the form consistently humbles me on how magnanimous it is. I strive for that as an ideal for myself, I don't know if I'll ever become as magnanimous as this dance form but at least I have this as an ideal. One thing I feel about this dance form, by being very engaged in it, means that you put yourself into one of those little rock tumblers, you know those rock tumblers where you put in the rough stones from the ground and they all tumble together and the edges get knocked off and they get all smooth. By being in this nebulous tangible and yet intangible thing called the Contact community it's like putting yourself into the tumbler. I've seen people come into the tumbler who had very edgy personalities and slowly by knocking up against all these other people they become smoother and rounder, not only in their dancing but also as who they are as people. I'm still having my edges knocked off. (Laughs)

How do you maintain excitement and freshness when people are knocking up against one another repeatedly, over those same edges, for a long time?

I think the words here are not excitement and freshness but depth and history. If I've been dancing with someone for ten, fifteen, twenty years, when we come together to relate or come together to dance that whole history, the good and the bad of it, is informing our dancing. It becomes more complex in some situations and simpler in others, there's a richness in it. Ray Chung is an example, we have a lot of history together, when we go out on stage and perform we are basically performing our friendship, and those years of knowing one another in a lot of different ways, and the times that we have pushed against each other to push each other away and the times that we've really embraced each other, it's like all of that is now in the dance and so the excitement and freshness is in the history and depth.

Some of your material for the Ready! workshop came from your research into the ways older dancers and athletes move, what struck you the most as a result of this research?

I've been doing this research because I really want to keep dancing for a long time and I'm 41 now and I just want to put myself on a trajectory now that will allow me to arrive in my 70s and 80s with a body that's as able as it can be. I'm already feeling the limitations of age coming in and I'm trying to be as graceful and as accepting of them as I canÖ um but I want to do what needs to happen now to keep dancing. I'm looking at older people a lot in athletic situations to see what keeps them going, and also to see what things in the body close down and how can I begin working in an attempt to keep those open. One thing I've really noticed about older people is that their rib cages freeze up, and their spines in general become less mobile, so a lot of my work right now is in the rib cage and seeing if I can really get some articulation some release in my rib cage and spine so that even if it does begin to freeze up over the decades I'm at least starting from a place where it's open. This questioning this inquiry has made me realise, okay when I am older and more limited what I'm going to need to do is dance in a way that is much more easeful. And so I'm trying to find ways of dancing allowing the force of my partner, the force of the dance itself, the force of falling, the forces to supply the energy that moves the dance so that I'm not efforting. So that I'm moving in an easeful way that still is, in a sense athletic and acrobatic, but I'm carried by the dance. I can still be getting upside down and taking somebody up but it's constantly more and more in an easeful fashion. Less exertion.

Do you think its possible to combine a dance that is primarily easeful, with aspirations for the most spectacular the most energetic the most powerful, the strongest dance that you're capable of?

The short answer is yes. (Laughs) An image that I've come up with for this particular kind of dance where the body is in this very ready and easeful state is that my partner is the banks of my river. So sometimes the banks are thin and the river is running fast, and sometimes the banks get really wide and it's very shallow and the waters moving very slowly, so the banks supply the... energy, um how can I put this... the banks kind of create the dynamic that's happening so I don't have to put energy into that. Since I've started dancing with that image and especially if my partner is dancing with the same image, we end up going places that are in a sense over boulders and under rocks and up this bank and that bank, and we end up in places that are surprising and disorientating, and very um... I don't want to use the word acrobatic but our bodies end up going places that we couldn't have planned. Some of my most spectacular dancing has been while working with the images that I've been developing for moving towards dancing in an easeful fashion when I'm older.

Fantastic.

Yeah. (Laughs)

So you don't experience it as restrictive and limiting at all?

I don't want to call it restricting and limiting. I've loved also muscle in my dancing, but I think what's going to happen as I get older is some of the muscle moves some of the lifts that take strength, I'm just not going to be able to do and already I'm starting to feel those restrictions come into my body and that's why I'm looking for other options.

Is it an expanding horizon, or a narrowing one?

I think its both, you'll have to check in with me every decade (Laughs).

Are you quite happy, being a dancer who is experiencing the challenges of getting older?

I'm filled with questions about will I be able to continue as a teacher and performer, which is why this whole inquiry began about the ease, hopefully to keep dancing for a long time because I find I still love this form. I don't know, the future is unclear, some times that causes me concern, sometimes it's looking good.

continued next issue

You can find out more about Martin Keogh at his website.
www.martinkeogh.com


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

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