Symbols for jamming, created by 2012 Kiev CI festival participants
I just taught an intensive called “Breaking Eggs” at the 2012 Kiev Festival of Contact Improvisation. Along with providing a framework for claiming and then expanding one’s movement patterns, I included a somatic track, consisting of 5 advanced principles that I feel are crucial for articulate, connected dancing. Each one really deserves its own thorough treatment, but for this short intensive, they were simply presented as seeds, to be grown (or rejected) by each participant through the course of his/her own continued exploration.
Here they are…
Five Seeds for Delicious Contact (a.k.a. “Пять семени для вкусной контактной импровизации”):
- Shape-shifting through the torso: Having a soft, malleable torso, and allowing it to move in a gradated, proportionate way with every movement of the limbs
- Yield-Push: Feeling the moment of emptiness, of sensing, prior to pressing into the earth or your partner
- Pelvic propulsion: Using the ricochet from the Yield-Push into the earth to launch the pelvis into movement, ready to follow your partner’s center at a moment’s notice
- 6 hands, 6 feet: Being able to move your partner via contact with your hands, elbows, shoulders, feet, knees, and/or pelvic halves, especially useful when doing multi-point contact
- The eye of the hurricane is calm: Keeping perception fully open, even when the movement becomes fast or complex