Space jam

Learning to reach out and touch someone

By Amrita Narayanan Bruce

Contact Improv jammers meet every Sunday at Portland Yoga Studio, 616 Congress Street, from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Call (207) 408-0720.

MOVING EXPERIENCE: Contact Improv can start as a duet and lead to much more.

I sit in a corner of the studio with my pad and pen, feeling a little absurd to be taking notes while this crazy improvisational dance is unfolding in front of me. Contact Improv performers resemble a group of frolicking puppies rather than what we’ve traditionally come to think of as “dancers.” The participants, some of whom have only just met, crawl about on the ground, roll over each other, throw and catch each other, and balance on one other. There is no music. Rather, the sighs, laughter, and occasional comments serve as a background to this — at times gentle, at times wild — rumpus.

I hadn’t planned to participate. But I quickly begin to feel like a tentative schoolchild who is watching a group hug and wondering if someone will invite her to join. Finally someone does. A man in his early thirties looks up at me from where he lays on the floor and asks, “Wanna Try?”

“Sure,” I say, and then feel immediately awkward. He gets up and stands by me.

“Where do you want to start?” he asks. This is weird, I think. He’s asking me where we should begin touching. I pause for a very long minute. I’m not good at boundary setting.

I remember my earlier conversation with the Portland organizers of the Contact Improv Jam. Both of them had stressed the importance of dancing in a way that was relaxed and comfortable. They’d also said it was the responsibility of each dancer to be pro-active about protecting their physical and emotional space.

“Back to back,” I answer finally, taking a deep breath. I relax as my partner takes my body weight on his back. As I slide off my mind flashes uh oh, he’s going to drop me.

Remembering the instructions, I relax my body instead of clenching it and my transition to the floor is smooth. I wonder if I have a hard time trusting I think, marveling at how my partner’s body is always there at the right place. I didn’t fall at all.

Minutes later another dancer comes over and starts to pull me by my feet. Giggling at the sensation of being dragged across the room, the chatter in my head finally ceases and I realize with a shock that I’m having fun.

Before the Jam I’d discussed the casual touching with John Bainbridge, co-organizer of the Portland Contact Improv Jams. “Some people have more difficulty with it [casual touch and non-sexual intimacy] than others,” he says. “I always suggest that people should pay attention to their comfort levels and only do what is comfortable for them. If that means focusing on dancing with the floor and gravity — our primary dance partner, its always there — while waiting for a dance that feels safe, so be it.” Bainbridge also explains that a lot of the nervousness surrounding this kind of dance just comes from feeling unsafe. “My personal focus is to create a place where people feel safe. Safe to explore their bodies, their relationship to gravity, and their relationship to other bodies.”

The subject of sexuality is one that Contact Improv is always dealing with in one form or another. For example, recently a group called Sacred Sexual Dances asked to have a link from the national Contact Improv Web page. The national organizing committee decided against it because sexuality is not a focus of Contact Improv.

The characteristic feature is close, unrestricted contact through touch between the dancers. The dance plays with gravity and conversations with each other’s bodies. The history of this form dates back to the ’70s when dancers Steve Paxton and Nancy Stark-Smith in New York City were “exploring Newton’s laws of gravity from the perspective of an apple.” Today there are Contact Improv groups all over America and the world.

The weekly jams in Portland are pretty free form. Dancers come into the studio, stretch to warm up, and then initiate movement when they feel like. They may contact another dancer through touch to begin a duet that can then evolve into a dance with three or more people, all of whom are touching, maintaining a point of contact in one way or another. “There are a few general principles,” says Bainbridge. “Maintaining a point of contact with your partner and moving from that point of contact is one. I also encourage people to do what feels easy and safe and to remember to bring as much of a sense of play into it as they can.”

Watching experienced dancers performing, it’s hard to believe they’re not levitating. They throw themselves across the room and at each other in highly adrenalized movements. “We use our bodies to explore a 360-degree space rather than a linear space,” says Kari Van Tien, dancer and fellow co-organizer. Van Tien comes from a ballet and modern dance background, but many of the participants at the weekly jams do not have any formal dance training.

Why do people who are not “dancers” need a forum to move? The premise is that physical interactions are as informative as verbal interactions. “When you’re unrestricted in your exploration of space you are as comfortable upside down as right side up. You learn how the body informs. You’re also forced to confront your boundary issues and that can be therapeutic,” says Van Tien. Bainbridge also says that dancing can teach you about living. “The principles of Contact Improv carry over into the way I handle interactions with people outside the studio.”

While each person’s Contact Improv experience is colored by the feelings and expectations they bring to the dance, dancers are unanimous in the reason they do Contact Improv: it’s fun to dance and play without restriction in a safe place. And if you keep a running commentary in your head like I do, you can do some serious soul searching while rolling around on the ground.

Amrita Narayanan Bruce can be reached at amritabruce@yahoo.com.