at last!

At Burning Man this past year (2008), I got to make inroads into two communities near and dear to my heart: AcroYoga and Contact Improv. My entry into the world of Contact Improv was both spasdic and powerful; after multiple rejections using the naive and traditional technique of "tapping in" to a dance, I finally paired up with a fellow improver, a guy, closed my eyes, and we rolled, flipped, and flew powerfully through the core of center camp. After that, the kid who had rebuffed me earlier came up and gave me some pointers. Then a girl from Atlanta came up and said we just had to play like that back in the city.

I was so energized and charged up from this experience that I vowed that upon my return to Atlanta, I would facilitate and teach a contact improv jam at my favorite yoga studio, Jai Shanti. I immediately announced my intentions to Jeremy, and upon return home, contacted Bill about the possibility. He was enthused.

Somewhere along the line I googled Contact Improv, and found that there was a long standing group already in place at Emory University. I got on their email list and made plans to participate.

Fast forward 9 months.

I made the short drive to Emory, and arrived. Met a kind woman just outside who used her keycard to let us into the Dance Studio at the Schwarz Center. I was delighted to see that it was indeed a serious dance studio, replete with high ceilings, wall length mirror, and pro sound system.

The next three hours can only be described as being in complete flow... barely a verbal word was spoken, as we all let our bodies do the talking. I found the "care to dance?" language the most natural and intriguing of all... basically, just walk/crawl/dance/leap on up to your chosen partner, and connect by touching some part of your body to theirs... proceed with natural flow from there.

There were episodes of roleplaying, laughter, fear, strength, laziness, and everything else in between as we rolled and flowed through the space.

The only thing I can critique the general form for is a proclivity to be low to the ground... gravity is a real force, and often in the CI I've done, one or both partners are on all fours or rolling over one another in prone positions. This very different from my AcroYoga practice, where one partner is, by and large, completely aerial at all times.

I can imagine, however, that just as in acroyoga, as trust is built between partners, that more and more challenging aerials can be accomplished. To quote Louise Runyon, the local mother of CI:

Contact Improvisation is a dance form where two partners maintain contact of body surfaces - the shelves and ledges of the back, front, sides, hips, shoulders, and head. The giving and sharing of weight is essential to Contact, which often involves partners lifting and rolling over each other. In Contact Improvisation you entrust your full weight to another but are always ready to fall, to roll to the floor; the bottom line is that you have responsibility for your own weight and safety. The beauty of Contact is in the effortless conversation of two connected bodies in motion - more than anything else, it is about listening.

of note: "you have responsibility for your own weight and safety"... this is opposite from acroyoga, where the responsibility is primarily with the base, and secondarily with a spotter... the flyer is encouraged to make maximum risk poses in trust of those other two.