Contact Improvisation : The Very Basics

Join us for Convergence Primer. -- some good basics! Thinking of dipping your toe into the world of contact improv at the Convergence Festival (April 17 - 19), but feeling a bit unsure? Five things, called the "frank five", will help you feel like you have a vocabulary from which to draw... But FIRst: two things you really need to turn toward: Contact is built on Being not Doing. there is no "wrong way" to do Contact. As Peter Bingham loved to say: by "paying attention to what you're paying attention to" you'll see how mind/body responds naturally to somatic input. We'll telescope into those responses. We'll play with uncovering impulse. From the stand point of our "soft animal body", without effort or management, our inner-world inevitably meets then responds to the outer-world. Contact is the study of that meeting point. And how we do that is always>.. well perfect. That's the beating heart of improvisation arts: get quiet, pay deep attention, respond from the body - not the head. Track your sensations not your thoughts. So after an opening circle we'll spend half an hour exploring some somatic practices to let these two beautiful points land. (Embodying just these two points alone can change your life a bit!) *Be, don't do... and *stay in your body, get out of your head. CI really is a "presence practice". From there we'll cover the Frank Five fundamentals that support an safe, easeful, fun, connected contact dance: *rolling point of contact, * sluffing, * counterbalance, *it's opposite, and *head to head work. These are perfect building blocks for beginners and intermediates wanting to get aquainted with the basics and then play with them like lego. Money back guarantee as we drop into the work we'll encounter the spooky weird thing where the dance just happens in the space in between. They call the "third dance". It's a bit magic.