Paul Roberts

Are you performing much at the moment?

After 19 years of doing this form I still grapple with the question: is Contact Improvisation a performable dance form?

Why is that?

An image that I heard recently is that modern dance and ballet come out and they penetrate space, they colonise space. When an audience watches these dances they are reached by the extroversion of these forms. Contact Improvisation is different in that we allow space to penetrate and colonise us. This is one reason why this form takes so much trust. It's not all about putting yourself out, you are letting the world come into you. Often that experience of being penetrated can't be read by an audience. It's an introverted experience. It's much different to be filled by space than to fill space.

Do you think that is a question of the audience being blocked to proceeding to a different level when perceiving performance?

Certainly an audience that is educated in the Contact form, especially if they have danced it, are going to appreciate it much more because they are going to be seeing the process rather than the result. Contact at its best is about the discovery. An audience that can see the choices being made, the moments of Ah ha! are going to get a lot more out of a Contact performance.

Do you make scores for performance?

Sometimes I work with scores and sometimes I perform with no score at all. Mostly when I perform I prefer to enter the stage without a score.

You go on stage to discover rather than to arrive?

Yes. And I mostly perform with people who I have some rich history and dance chemistry with so that the history and chemistry can be read by the audience.

You talk about being penetrated by space in the way that dancing Contact allows you to journey inward and expand the space within yourself in Contact with another person. Do you think that if you are experiencing something which is on a deep personal level, that this translates effectively to good a performance, without necessarily being in the form of something spectacular?

It's paradoxical because some of the most engaging dancing that I see happens at jams. I often ask myself why can't this happen in performance? Often those same dancers who have such an incredible dance connection on the dance floor in a jam, lose their Contact faculties when in front of an audience. They seem to forget about rolling the Contact point. They don't venture to go off balance. It becomes more controlled thought out as they are shaping and composing the dance. They lose a lot of the excitement that comes from the unknown in Contact. However, if I move that same dance from the jam to a stage, something else would still have to be added to make it work in the performance situation.

What do you think that might be?

The way I have been breaking it down recently is that there are certain performance states that we enter. I'll name four of them here. One of them is a narrative state where the dance is filled with image and is telling a story. It might be linear and literal or more likely is not. There are flashes of imagery informing the dance. Another state I call the time/space state. It's a state that you see Improvisational dancers do who aren't Contact dancers. They go out and are aware of the bigger frame of the whole stage. What they do is in relationship to that whole frame, the negative space, and the timing of their movement. This state is compositional and thoughtful. Another state I call an emotional state. This covers a whole range of relating. One is revealing how you are feeling about the dancing you are doing in the moment: this is fun, I'm frustrated, my partner is taking me places that are exciting and new! And the real feelings in the moment are shared with the audience. Another way to enter emotional states is by playing with ëwhat ifs.' What if I were angry in this moment, what if I was in love with this person, what if I was deeply sad and to allow that to inform my dance. The 4th state I call the body state. It's similar to the state when we are jamming. Here we are responding to the physical forces of momentum, gravity, centrifugal force, inertia, and playing those forces. The interesting thing for me is I often see people get on stage and they relinquish the body state and go into a time/space state. I personally find time/space to be cerebral and I end up watching thinking rather than movement. What I like about the time/space state is that it's aware of the whole frame and the eyes take in the whole frame and possibly the audience. My favourite way of seeing Contact performing is when people are in the body state as their primary resource and then they season it with emotion, with time/space, and with narrative. The other states are seasoning. They are pepper and garlic and oregano. But they are not the meat and potatoes. I don't like eating a plate full of oregano and I prefer not to watch performance that's all seasoning and composition.

Do you think that the body state is the foundation behind Contact?

In the dance I do and teach it is. And there are other dance states, there are archetypal states. Entering states where you become the king or the warrior or the fool and you enter forces that are bigger than yourself and you let those forces dance you. There is the ecstatic state. There is the puppy dog, kitten, baby monkey state. I am sure the list of states goes on and on. Its almost like the weather system you're dancing in is your state.

I don't quite understand what you mean by that.

The state is something that is carrying you, it's bigger than you, you're immersed in it. And when I say a weather system it's like you're in a sunny day or you're in a stormy day or it's muggy and humid today, or it's snowing, it's the environment in which you are dancing.

Could you include a spiritual approach to Contact in those states? I thought of that when you started talking about archetypal states. Being caught up in something that is larger than yourself and your personality, I wonder whether you could move into something which is within the spiritual realm? A consideration of yourself not just as Martin or Paul but a spiritual entity and then dance from that place. I bring this up because I was told that Contact replaced your practice of Buddhism.

That's right.

How did that take shape?

Contact had a lot of the qualities that attracted me to Zen. In terms of being present, and becoming aware of how unconscious willfulness affects how we behave in every moment. And seeing if we can slough some of that off and be as present as we can to this moment now. The Contact didn't have all the trappings of the dogma of the religion of Buddhism and I am glad that Contact got me out of Zen Buddhism.

Isn't Zen suppose to be free of dogma?

It is a religion, and I think what happens in the West is Buddhism gets romanticised. People don't read the texts and they don't see all the underlying trappings. Buddhism is a religion with hierarchy and power battles and sexism. Buddhism has as big a dark side as Catholicism. People here haven't read much about it because much of it is hard to find in English. Because of all the emphasis on ëobservation' I find a lot of Buddhists end up in the bleachers to their own lives. But let's leave Buddhism. Late at night with a close intimate partner we might whisper in low voices about the spiritual side of Contact Improvisation, but there is a way in which to protect that place I think it's inappropriate to talk loudly and widely. I can say that I hold that side dear.

Do you think that when you dance you dance as Martin? Do you have your own exclusively personal dance?

As opposed to what?

As opposed to being just a dancer whose patterns and techniques and strengths and weaknesses could be taken on by somebody else. The same way that contemporary dance choreographers present films for other dances to assume.

This is something I love deeply about this form. It used to be that you danced within the "form" of ballet. Then with contemporary dance you danced Graham technique or Cunningham technique. Now we have this form called Contact Improvisation where there are principles, but everybody is the choreographer and we get to mix our choreography in collaboration with an endless number of people. Yes, it's Martin out there dancing, and its Martin out there doing his dance and learning the dance of somebody else and seeing how that's informing his dance, my dance.

Do you dance much with beginners?

I do, especially because of teaching. I have heard some Contact teachers I respect say that the mark of a master of this form is not their ability to dance with people who are skilled, but their ability to dance with beginners. And that's part of the magnanimity of this form. Yeah, its easy to dance with somebody with skill but can I bring my skills to dance with who I am dancing with, to have the dance that I'm having.

You said at the end of the weekend workshop that anybody can teach Contact after they have got the first steps which are safety and then the preliminaries to Contact. Once you've got those you can then take those and teach them. Do you think that is going to allow for the best possible teachers to be out there developing growing participation in Contact?

In the computer world there is a revolution happening right now called open source programming. This is where a program is begun by a person but then anybody who wants to can improve the source code. What has been discovered is by having this piece of software that nobody owns, that is completely democratic, that anybody can try to improve, the best software that is bug free, that is efficient, is getting created out of this method that has no central control.
And that's one reason why I believe Contact Improvisation is going to be around for a long time because its an open source dance form. There is no central control. There are central areas of communication like with open source programming where people send stuff in and then it gets sent back out so everybody knows what's going on. We have that with the Contact Quarterly magazine and in the fact that you can't do this form alone, the information is always moving between people.
Everybody contributes to this form because it's created in each moment. Contact is an inherently unfinished dance form. Each person gets to complete it with themselves. And I think this is the strength of the form and I think it's why it keeps slowly growing world wide. I hope it never becomes trendy, because trendy things end. I actually don't see it going that way because it doesn't have the flash, it's not out penetrating, it's not out colonising, but there is a group of people who each is contributing their little piece to the dance.
Something else I love about Contact is that you don't have to go to a class or a rehearsal to dance. You can go to jams, either 2 hour jams or residential jams, you can go to a park, and you also get together and lab with people. It's in these places where this investigation, this inquiry is constantly being deepened. It goes back to this open source. There is an international network of people collaborating on the form. And after a while each person makes it their own and they don't have to go to somebody to enlighten them. We are all enlightening the form.

I asked that question because when Nancy Stark Smith came over there was a discussion about who should be coordinating teachers and maintaining standards, and I think that their primary considerations were along the lines of safety.

Absolutely.

But it is interesting to hear your answer that question, showing it as a dance that is being worked on at thousands of different points with each person who participates.

And if somebody knows the alphabet from A to P they can teach it to P, and if they don't try to teach X, Y, Z they are going to teach a safe dance class. I think it's a matter of each person teaching at their level of inquiry. Because the form is about inquiry rather than results, I believe that teachers teach best when they can put themselves in a state of inquiry and transmit that state so students can see the teacher living in the question marks.

Where is your inquiry at the moment?

My inquiry right now is in what do I need to do now to set a trajectory so that I can dance fully late in life. The ëready' material has come out of this inquiry. I'm also revisiting performing. Articulating the different performance states has come from that inquiry.

Have you resolved that question of whether or not Contact is performable?

No.

It sounds like you want to keep that ambiguity.

You might be right.

Why is that?

I think I would be deeply disappointed if I decided it's not performable. And if I decide in a concrete way that it is performable then possibly my inquiry wouldn't be as alive into the how's and the possibilities.

I understand what you mean. If you found criteria under which it became definitely concretely performable, then you've got parameters that you have to align yourself within.

Right. And it's part of living in the tension of the question. That somehow feels more important than living in the security of the answer. It's more of a fertile ground to take into performing.

I want to change directions here. I've heard that you're into inviting your students into a more sexual area, that you invite your Contact groups to orgies.

(Laughing) If my students are going to orgies, they've failed to invite me. I'm afraid whatever you've heard far exceeds my reality.
On the west coast and in San Francisco there is a group of Contactors who are also in the pagan/anarchist community and they go to sex parties. That world has brought back some good information to the Contact form. They are deeply into communication of limits, into consensuality, and into the use of safewords where a particular word will stop the action if it gets too intense.
For myself I am interested in bringing all aspects of ourselves into the dance. I do a lot of what I call community building exercises, finding out who we are and bringing our emotional selves to the dance and not denying our sexual selves. I often hear people say, "Oh I love this dance form because its a non sexual way to be physical and playful with people." When I hear that I realise that for myself there is a way in which I am always sexual, every breath I take is sexual and I am not going to amputate that part of myself in the dance. I'm also not going to pour that over my partner and I am not going to do anything that's not consensual, but I am also not going to cut that part of myself off.
I teach a workshop called "101 ways to say no to Contact Improvisation.î My theory is that until you can say no to something you can't fully say yes to it. I teach ways to say no to momentum or say no to a dance, or no to touch, or no to being lifted. And it's interesting because when you work on what you need to do physically to create a ëno' to being lifted, it allows you to extrapolate the other side which is how you can more fully say yes to it to being lifted. I believe this is true in touch as well. If you can learn to say no to the touch then you can extrapolate the other side to more fully let touch in. Part of my teaching work is around different ways of saying no and setting limits. The hope is that the students will be more confident in themselves with their ëno' in place, that they will be more able, more fully to give a full and desired yes.

Where did you find that knowledge from?

From my life experience. The image that I've heard is that we have a door in our psyche As children the door knob is on the outside and people come and go as they please. As adults we learn to have the door knob on the inside and we can choose when to open and close the door. Because I know I can close the door, I'm free to invite people in.

Does that apply with a lot of your material, that its come from your personal life experience as a source for your teaching?

Definitely. People tell me that I'm somewhat unique in the community building material that I do. Its important to me because I want to know about the people I dance with. I feel that when I have depth and history with a person, our dance becomes more multi-faceted, subtle and satisfying.
The constellation score we did during the workshop is one of my community building exercises. We stand in a circle and each put a shoe behind us on the floor and a stool in the middle of the circle. We then imagine that the space within the circle is the entire universe and all the people that exist are in the circle. We then ask ourselves, 'what do I most want to know about this group?' I might want to know about people's attitudes towards dance. I might have a political, spiritual or sexual question, or a question about people's family lives.
I take that question and turn it into a phrase. Somebody might say, "I've had ballet training," or "my parents were divorced." Each person decides for themselves if the phrase is true for them or not. If its true they move to the stool, if its completely untrue they move out to the edges, and if its partially true they go somewhere in between. Each person takes a stand in what is true for them. And then we get to see how the group constellates around each issue. An important part of this structure is if somebody doesn't want to divulge the answer they go somewhere in between, so they don't have to reveal things they don't want to.
This structure allows everybody to see how the whole group constellates together in terms of the demographics of the group. People get to see where they stand alone and where they stand in company.

And even emotionally.

When somebody says "I have a close friend who has died of aids" and they go up and see three, four, five or seven other people for whom that's true there's some thread that gets woven and there's also a thread woven to the people who are back and they see that these people have this in common and that knowledge illuminates the dancing. There is more of a trust and more of a connection because you see how you have constellated to the whole group on all these issues and questions. A person gets a sense of who makes up this group with whom they are being physically intimate. Even though with some people they don't even know their names.
I think that particular exercise is what bought up the questions in my personal life after the workshop. It stirred me up being aware that I am a part of the community. I am in this group of people who share all sorts of concerns and all sorts of questions and realising that I am dancing with other human beings, that we are all bringing our entire lives into this space and into this dance. It gave me a tremendous sense of being a part of a community and also the way in which I wasn't a part of a community. It was rich in learning. People always remember when they said something, or somebody said something and they end up standing alone. And they also remember where they say something and they think they are going to be alone but then they find out there are other people in the group with them. Certainly at times that structure has ended up in tears especially with people realising they are not alone.

Your workshop shook me up in a way that I didn't expect at all, especially from spending two days with an emphasis on ease and accepting less effort, and finding the effortless pathways. I didn't expect to be moved in such a deep and significant way. It reached to a very deep level in my personality and in my approach to Contact. It's reinvigorated my interest in Contact. Thanks very much for that.

Thank you. I am glad that happened for you, which means I must be doing something right.

Is there anything else you would like to say?

It has been wonderful to come to Australia and see the aliveness of the improvisation community from Maleny to Melbourne. Here in Melbourne, there are many people exploring different doorways into Improvisation and into Contact Improvisation and it gives me a lot of heart to see people here so earnestly in their inquiry into the form. It's been a pleasure coming down here to visit.

Thank you for coming.

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

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