22/06/2022
That moment in dance
I’d only been dancing contact improv for about a year or so when I had one of those dances, you know the ones I mean, when you walk away and think I will always remember that! When chemistry and relational bodies move beyond technique, and the coming together of two or more unfold the magic of meeting in dance.
I was living in Bristol and the time, the early days before I became one of the local Contact Improvisation core team, at that point just dipping in and out of the community jams.
My own skill level was I would say beginner - ish but when dancing with someone who knew their stuff yeah I could let loose and found some juicy ability.
Flying and twirling, weaving through the studio my partner and I wound our way between other dancers, around and over twining our bodies around each other.
What can I say about that moment, when everything opens, body, mind, heart, s*x and aliveness pours though being met and meeting each other, dance no longer defined by a ‘form’ or technique but has become this alchemical melting pot of relational bodies. We danced I think for an hour or so, I guess, I can not say really as time was irrelevant.
The dance found its own ending as they do. Complete. My dance partner asked what my name was, he was passing through and we had never met before, and then finished by say you know I wont remember your name but I wont ever forget this dance. So true it stayed with me too.
Fast forward many years later, and I find myself organising Touch&Play UK Summer Festival. A melting pot growing from a foundation practice of Contact Improvisation and, in the beginning, the exploration of it edges.
Touch&Play for me offers a space not only to experience the foundations of CI and to honour, the technique, the form, this potential embodiment practice but also encouraging a letting go of the limitations. Controversial at the time of its inception, inviting more than a ‘dance of physics’ Touch&Play for me allows a taste of the freedom of being which as I’ve described happens naturally when we are not trying to make a shape but letting the relational body take space.
uk.touchandplay.org
