Now what you can imagine, you can experience...
...because Contact Improvisation offers all of these benefits, and more.
If you have never heard of contact improvisation until now, you might want to stick around because you are guaranteed to fall head over heels in love with this dance-sport-martial art-meditation rolled into one. Or, take a quick sneak preview of a contact-dance in progress by watching a free video clip. Or just keep reading because this site will offer information on how, where and why contact improv originated, but more importantly will equip you with the fundamental tools and techniques to contact-jam in the comfort of your own home.
And if you have already had a close encounter with contact improv, don't stop reading just yet. As an experienced jammer, you'll know the exhilaration, invigoration and beauty of contact improvisation. Wouldn't you love the chance to share this dynamic movement form with your friends, family and colleagues? And give them the opportunity to join the contact improv global community?
What is Contact Improvisation?
Contact improvisation is a dynamic movement form in which two or more bodies interact spontaneously with each other by maintaining contact and simultaneously interpreting the common parameters of gravity, weight, momentum, friction and inertia to achieve continuous flow. Contact Improv is dance-sport-martial art-meditation rolled into one. As the term contact improv implies, this movement form encourages the drawing together of bodies in a creative and collaborative context. Contact improvisation provides opportunities for personal, social and cultural differences to be expressed on common ground, through physical parameters that are common to all human beings.
A New Age Global Village
The physical actualities of touch, proximity, balance, counterbalance, impulse and response that are encountered through contact improvisation are metaphors for aspects of interpersonal relationships – such as greeting, intimacy, trust, support and compromise – that are found within any society or culture. When we are able to recognise our fundamental sameness as human beings - fashioned of the same substance and influenced by the same forces - we learn to understand, accept and celebrate the differences that we have chosen to express. Contact improvisation is a divinely paradoxical experience in which you discover yourself together. By focusing on the similarities we share through contact improvisation we are able to establish a new and communal cultural context.
Change is the only constant
Ideas do not hold the same potential for change as actions. Actual shifts in behaviour are only possible when we embody our thoughts. This is what it means to walk your talk. Your negative experiences will continue until you are able to literally move away from simply adopting new names and titles for old beliefs and attitudes. We know that history repeats itself. We also know that we have the mental capacity and emotional intelligence to break the cycle. The conscious act of breaking of old, stale patterns that no longer serve us as individuals, or as communities, is a fundamental principle of contact improvisation. When we embody, rather than debate, the change we want to see in the world, then cycles of behaviour based on fear, ignorance and doubt are broken.
Creative Collaborations
Contact improv dissolves conceptual boundaries separating individual bodies, as well as internally perceived boundaries separating body, mind, heart and soul. Making contact in a creative and collaborative environment enables us to witness our actions, and those of others, with curiosity, respect, playfulness and sensitivity. Jamming allows our mind to become a co-creator with our body. Our rational mind, rather than being the active manipulator and controlling force of reality to which it has become accustomed, assumes a far more balanced role. We are able to use an intense focus on the body - and all the sensations of shifting balance, pressure, texture, space, speed, momentum and friction - as a foil to help us curb the debilitating and incessant gossip of involuntary thinking.
Mindfulness
The amount of power we invest in our minds is proportionate to the amount of power our minds have over us. Meditation is not a process of stopping our thoughts; nor is it a process of ignoring the impulses from our body. Rather, meditation is a process of entering into a state of pure acceptance, awareness of both thoughts and sensations without judgement, surrendering wholly to the flow of presence. In this state of being, our bodies and minds are in harmony, as well as attuned to the environment which surrounds and contains us. In this state of being, no one aspect of our experience can dominate or rule over another - a truly liberating experience.
Contact Improvisation...
...a moving junction...
...where strangers find common ground...
...where participation is the key to connection...
...where reaching out is reaching in...
...where all pathways lead home.
Love the Dance,
Dance the Love.
Welcome to the world of Contact Improvisation!
...because Contact Improvisation offers all of these benefits, and more.
If you have never heard of contact improvisation until now, you might want to stick around because you are guaranteed to fall head over heels in love with this dance-sport-martial art-meditation rolled into one. Or, take a quick sneak preview of a contact-dance in progress by watching a free video clip. Or just keep reading because this site will offer information on how, where and why contact improv originated, but more importantly will equip you with the fundamental tools and techniques to contact-jam in the comfort of your own home.
And if you have already had a close encounter with contact improv, don't stop reading just yet. As an experienced jammer, you'll know the exhilaration, invigoration and beauty of contact improvisation. Wouldn't you love the chance to share this dynamic movement form with your friends, family and colleagues? And give them the opportunity to join the contact improv global community?
What is Contact Improvisation?
Contact improvisation is a dynamic movement form in which two or more bodies interact spontaneously with each other by maintaining contact and simultaneously interpreting the common parameters of gravity, weight, momentum, friction and inertia to achieve continuous flow. Contact Improv is dance-sport-martial art-meditation rolled into one. As the term contact improv implies, this movement form encourages the drawing together of bodies in a creative and collaborative context. Contact improvisation provides opportunities for personal, social and cultural differences to be expressed on common ground, through physical parameters that are common to all human beings.
A New Age Global Village
The physical actualities of touch, proximity, balance, counterbalance, impulse and response that are encountered through contact improvisation are metaphors for aspects of interpersonal relationships – such as greeting, intimacy, trust, support and compromise – that are found within any society or culture. When we are able to recognise our fundamental sameness as human beings - fashioned of the same substance and influenced by the same forces - we learn to understand, accept and celebrate the differences that we have chosen to express. Contact improvisation is a divinely paradoxical experience in which you discover yourself together. By focusing on the similarities we share through contact improvisation we are able to establish a new and communal cultural context.
Change is the only constant
Ideas do not hold the same potential for change as actions. Actual shifts in behaviour are only possible when we embody our thoughts. This is what it means to walk your talk. Your negative experiences will continue until you are able to literally move away from simply adopting new names and titles for old beliefs and attitudes. We know that history repeats itself. We also know that we have the mental capacity and emotional intelligence to break the cycle. The conscious act of breaking of old, stale patterns that no longer serve us as individuals, or as communities, is a fundamental principle of contact improvisation. When we embody, rather than debate, the change we want to see in the world, then cycles of behaviour based on fear, ignorance and doubt are broken.
Creative Collaborations
Contact improv dissolves conceptual boundaries separating individual bodies, as well as internally perceived boundaries separating body, mind, heart and soul. Making contact in a creative and collaborative environment enables us to witness our actions, and those of others, with curiosity, respect, playfulness and sensitivity. Jamming allows our mind to become a co-creator with our body. Our rational mind, rather than being the active manipulator and controlling force of reality to which it has become accustomed, assumes a far more balanced role. We are able to use an intense focus on the body - and all the sensations of shifting balance, pressure, texture, space, speed, momentum and friction - as a foil to help us curb the debilitating and incessant gossip of involuntary thinking.
Mindfulness
The amount of power we invest in our minds is proportionate to the amount of power our minds have over us. Meditation is not a process of stopping our thoughts; nor is it a process of ignoring the impulses from our body. Rather, meditation is a process of entering into a state of pure acceptance, awareness of both thoughts and sensations without judgement, surrendering wholly to the flow of presence. In this state of being, our bodies and minds are in harmony, as well as attuned to the environment which surrounds and contains us. In this state of being, no one aspect of our experience can dominate or rule over another - a truly liberating experience.
Contact Improvisation...
...a moving junction...
...where strangers find common ground...
...where participation is the key to connection...
...where reaching out is reaching in...
...where all pathways lead home.
Love the Dance,
Dance the Love.
Welcome to the world of Contact Improvisation!
Imagine being able to combine the body-mind discipline of Yoga and Pilates with the self-expression of authentic movement and dance improvisation...
Imagine being able to combine the mindfulness of Zen Buddhism with the athleticism of Capoeira...
Imagine being able to combine the power of Aikido with the freedom of Expressive Dance...
Imagine being able to combine the healing of dance therapy with the exhilaration of acrobatics...
Imagine being able to combine the mindfulness of Zen Buddhism with the athleticism of Capoeira...
Imagine being able to combine the power of Aikido with the freedom of Expressive Dance...
Imagine being able to combine the healing of dance therapy with the exhilaration of acrobatics...
© Solsurge 2008
The Ultimate Dance-Sport-Martial art-Meditation
| PURCHASE Fluxing, an interactive, multimedia CD-rom on contact improvisation |
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