It is said that two months of contact improvisation is equivalent to five years of therapy. ;) I really agree with you, we have so many feelings and memories locked up in our bodies and while recieving touch and movement the emotion or the memory is set free. I have cried on the dance floor more than once!
i don't think it's true CI is a dance form while therapy is a commited, profound and often painful way of dealing with an emotional distress. i find this opinion misleading and harmful to both CI and a therapy
very interesting, and I'm sure it has some very important therapeutic uses as well. I can imagine how it can be revealing of inner feelings and opening new windows to our self, for instance.
mungojelly, I get where you're coming from however, as a dance professor who teaches in the bible belt south of the US, I also sense an intellectual resistance to this type of work. I only say that because I hear it all the time in my classroom and among the administration who don't see the point of learning this type of work. Not criticizing you, just....I've had these conversations about dance and "touch" many times over and let me say, one has to be open to the experience. Its like eating gourmet food, or drinking a great wine or even being in love only in that one has to be open to the enjoyment of the experience and not in a cerebral way, otherwise it can be very confusing, invasive and uncomfortable for the participant. Not judging you but my metaphor basically points out that contact improv is a sensual (sense oriented) experience. Dance, very visual is 90% of the time oriented to be pleasing to an audience. Jazz, ballet, hip hop...all are to be watched instead of experienced. Contact improv although interesting to watch to a point, is really more for those who do it, and those who do it aren't often in the entertainment dance genre. Modern dance contemporary dance was formed TO BREAK BOUNDARIES, so contact improv fits within this ideology. However, if one is not into having their personal spatial boundaries broken, then I totally see how this lecture could be seen as "a bit much".
Interesting. I guess the debate in the comments is about trust in another human being. I can't do aerial yoga because I don't really trust the hook. But I have to admit that once you do trust a thing or another person, you'll get amazing feelings...
Dan X no sir, don’t trust and depend on your partner. Take care of yourself, together. Both people follow, no one leads, each takes care of themselves. And the physics works well to stay connected while falling. That’s key. Don’t fall and try to save the other person.
I'm more and more disagreeing with this sense that you can just "intuit" people's boundaries or the ways they want to be touched. Contact improv seems to me to be just another habitual pattern of certain touches that are just assumed to be OK because of the context. Just as there are certain places and ways that are OK to touch in a "hug," there's a fixed set of touches that make up the normal "contact improv" repetoire. No one's actually intuiting anything about how to shape that space, they're just doing the standard thing. Rather than communicating non-verbally or in any way about which touches will be OK, the practice seems to be to just quickly touch people in any of the ways standard enough that it seems like they must be OK. That carelessness (combined with people actually respecting boundaries enough that they intuit they can't actually explore freely in that format) crimps it into a formulaic pattern of touches concentrated in one safe-enough zone of standardness, with no mechanism to expand or contract the space based on your actual felt needs.
YZ I haven't, no. I'd certainly enjoy it, as I happen to like all the touches involved and like touching strangers, but that has nothing to do with my critique. Incidentally since your thesis is that you're so good at intuiting boundaries it might be interesting information to you that your response hurt me.
+mungojelly If you haven't tried this form, you are making judgements from the mind .....this is a body experience. Also it is unfair to diminish another's contribution by saying it 'hurt' you. How does the truth of someone who knows the form hurt you? Your own boundaries sound unhealthy. To call any challenge a 'hurt' is diminishing your own power.
truerosie It didn't "hurt" me in quotes, it just normal unquoted hurt me. It's fine, I'm fine, I just thought that might be a helpful example, because I just don't buy at all this idea that anyone anywhere is awesome at intuiting boundaries and always does it right. It's really hard to guess when people will be hurt by things. I would guess instead that if someone feels hurt you do something like putting it in quotes and telling them they should have accepted it as a challenge-- if you were even to randomly find out somehow, since in general there's no concept that it would be worth asking. You just assume that things that are OK with you are OK with everyone else, so of course that's easier than actually negotiating boundaries, but there's no reason it should happen to give people the touches they want or are comfortable with, because people are different.
+mungojelly Yes people are indeed different. What you cannot appreciate without experiencing the dance is that the connection itself speaks (in sensation, not in words). . I agree that intuiting may not be the best word, it's not intuited separately in each persons' head where the boundary is........the connection between the dancers communicates its presence through each of the dancers' bodies. You truly cannot appreciate this from an opinion position. It can only be appreciated from experience.
It is said that two months of contact improvisation is equivalent to five years of therapy. ;)
I really agree with you, we have so many feelings and memories locked up in our bodies and while recieving touch and movement the emotion or the memory is set free. I have cried on the dance floor more than once!
i don't think it's true
CI is a dance form while therapy is a commited, profound and often painful way of dealing with an emotional distress.
i find this opinion misleading and harmful to both CI and a therapy
very interesting, and I'm sure it has some very important therapeutic uses as well. I can imagine how it can be revealing of inner feelings and opening new windows to our self, for instance.
Itay, other than speaking very well is an amazing conact teacher. if you have an opportunity to study with him consider yourself lucky.
Sublime, magical and mind-blowing.
I'd like to see a progression as the child grows and the parent ages
so fluid, like water. I love how they embody communication.
Thanks for posting the video and I enjoyed the comments, below, too. Those comments rise some important cultural issues.
wonderful, thanks!
that was magic
I like how much it's free like jazz, but freer still.
Subtitulos en español 😔
mungojelly, I get where you're coming from however, as a dance professor who teaches in the bible belt south of the US, I also sense an intellectual resistance to this type of work. I only say that because I hear it all the time in my classroom and among the administration who don't see the point of learning this type of work. Not criticizing you, just....I've had these conversations about dance and "touch" many times over and let me say, one has to be open to the experience. Its like eating gourmet food, or drinking a great wine or even being in love only in that one has to be open to the enjoyment of the experience and not in a cerebral way, otherwise it can be very confusing, invasive and uncomfortable for the participant. Not judging you but my metaphor basically points out that contact improv is a sensual (sense oriented) experience. Dance, very visual is 90% of the time oriented to be pleasing to an audience. Jazz, ballet, hip hop...all are to be watched instead of experienced. Contact improv although interesting to watch to a point, is really more for those who do it, and those who do it aren't often in the entertainment dance genre. Modern dance contemporary dance was formed TO BREAK BOUNDARIES, so contact improv fits within this ideology. However, if one is not into having their personal spatial boundaries broken, then I totally see how this lecture could be seen as "a bit much".
avisnubia a bit much? Do you need
Protection from his experience? Just don’t do it, or don’t watch it.
Of course there's a TED for this? :)
waw!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Interesting. I guess the debate in the comments is about trust in another human being. I can't do aerial yoga because I don't really trust the hook. But I have to admit that once you do trust a thing or another person, you'll get amazing feelings...
Dan X no sir, don’t trust and depend on your partner. Take care of yourself, together. Both people follow, no one leads, each takes care of themselves. And the physics works well to stay connected while falling. That’s key. Don’t fall and try to save the other person.
🤩😁😍🙏🏽❤️😯😲
I'm more and more disagreeing with this sense that you can just "intuit" people's boundaries or the ways they want to be touched. Contact improv seems to me to be just another habitual pattern of certain touches that are just assumed to be OK because of the context. Just as there are certain places and ways that are OK to touch in a "hug," there's a fixed set of touches that make up the normal "contact improv" repetoire. No one's actually intuiting anything about how to shape that space, they're just doing the standard thing. Rather than communicating non-verbally or in any way about which touches will be OK, the practice seems to be to just quickly touch people in any of the ways standard enough that it seems like they must be OK. That carelessness (combined with people actually respecting boundaries enough that they intuit they can't actually explore freely in that format) crimps it into a formulaic pattern of touches concentrated in one safe-enough zone of standardness, with no mechanism to expand or contract the space based on your actual felt needs.
mungojelly you're missing the point so much i can't even. have you even tried it?
YZ I haven't, no. I'd certainly enjoy it, as I happen to like all the touches involved and like touching strangers, but that has nothing to do with my critique. Incidentally since your thesis is that you're so good at intuiting boundaries it might be interesting information to you that your response hurt me.
+mungojelly If you haven't tried this form, you are making judgements from the mind .....this is a body experience.
Also it is unfair to diminish another's contribution by saying it 'hurt' you. How does the truth of someone who knows the form hurt you? Your own boundaries sound unhealthy. To call any challenge a 'hurt' is diminishing your own power.
truerosie It didn't "hurt" me in quotes, it just normal unquoted hurt me. It's fine, I'm fine, I just thought that might be a helpful example, because I just don't buy at all this idea that anyone anywhere is awesome at intuiting boundaries and always does it right. It's really hard to guess when people will be hurt by things. I would guess instead that if someone feels hurt you do something like putting it in quotes and telling them they should have accepted it as a challenge-- if you were even to randomly find out somehow, since in general there's no concept that it would be worth asking. You just assume that things that are OK with you are OK with everyone else, so of course that's easier than actually negotiating boundaries, but there's no reason it should happen to give people the touches they want or are comfortable with, because people are different.
+mungojelly Yes people are indeed different. What you cannot appreciate without experiencing the dance is that the connection itself speaks (in sensation, not in words). . I agree that intuiting may not be the best word, it's not intuited separately in each persons' head where the boundary is........the connection between the dancers communicates its presence through each of the dancers' bodies. You truly cannot appreciate this from an opinion position. It can only be appreciated from experience.