I just returned home from a 3-day contact improv retreat. After dancing, hard, for three days, my body is both juiced, and totally used up. It is a bit after 8 PM and I doubt I will be awake much longer. But I am satisfied, oh my.
Contact is an incredibly physical dance form, ranging from slow and gooey to fast and athletic, sharing weight and momentum with one's partner(s). As the name implies it is all improvisational and generally done without music. It is a dialog in movement between two or more bodies.
It is also highly egalitarian. There are no moves that are "men's" or "women's", rather each dancer performs techniques or follows movements according to his or her measure.
On Friday night - Day Two - we presented a free performance to the community. Much of the show was improvisational, but (strangely) only a small portion of it was actually contact improv. I find it frustrating that when it comes time to play show-and-tell so many are quick to set our practice aside, but it happens pretty frequently. To minimize that, partner Megan and I did a piece that featured CI and was titled "Mis-Interpretive Dance". We had fun and the audience was amused.
As is often the case, there is a SLIDE SHOW of the entire batch - some jam pictures and some from the show. Enjoy!
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Mazopalooza!
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