I’m writing these notes on my way back from the 2024 Contact Improvisation Festival in Freiburg. It has been an incredible opportunity for me to clarify not only my understanding of CI, but more generally for delineating what I am actually doing when I do CI and why I do it. Having 300 wonderful human beings around, all committed to explore in various ways the same field, has been an immensely powerful catalyst for this process. Everything that follows here is open source: it comes from others, digested by me, and can be taken by anyone.
Perhaps the most important thing I’ve appreciated is that CI is not a form; actually, not even a “practice” (in the sense in which this word is used when referring to others formal activities like meditation, yoga, even dance). More fundamentally, CI is an inquiry. It’s a space to explore a certain question. Of course, you need to do the exploring (you can practice CI), and you need some coordinates for that (there is a bit of theory involved), and you can map different pathways in which the exploration can go (there are techniques specific to CI that you can use), and CI is usually categorised as a “dance” (you can think that you’re dancing CI). But none of these aspects really touches upon the core of what really happens in CI.
Contact Improvisation is an inquiry about how to move with others towards intimacy with the unknown.
There are many kinds of inquiries. CI is a kinesthetic inquiry: it focuses on, and unfolds at the level of movement. This is the most fundamental level of experience, because all that exists and is real can be recognised as such because it kicks and moves. Movement is multidimensional: somatic, emotional, mental, spiritual. CI is a full-blown inquiry through all these dimensions together.
This inquiry is not a solitary or individual one. There is a very fine line between “being next to others” and “being with others”. In most cases in our social life we are just next to each other. We share spaces and even interact according to certain scripts. But each of us remains replaceable in the overall arrangement. Even in a dance choreography, in an orchestra, or in a sport team, one player can be substituted by another, provided that the same function is covered and fulfilled. Moving with others requires something deeper. It demands to really meet and listen to the other for their unicity, acknowledging the ever changing boundaries that define their agency from moment to moment. In being with others there is space for a degree of autonomy, independence, soloing. But it always remains a relational construction that balances between “my” agency and the other’s. I’m not here for the sake of just enjoying myself. I’m here for the sake of enjoying myself with you.
Establishing this ability to move with others is already a huge step. It can also unfold in many directions (see also here). CI is the specific space to investigate how can we move with others towards intimacy with the unknown. Intimacy is the ability to both get deep and be at ease (recall this). Being intimate with something means being not only close, but somehow immersing oneself and diving into that being gladly and with a thrill of curiosity and even longing, while feeling safe. Not all depths call for intimacy, and not all experiences of ease are intimate.
We rarely seek intimacy with what we don’t know. The unknown is scary. Large part of our mental activity is meant to avoid it, by projecting past experience onto the future, anticipating the present, making plans, controlling and managing realty. Our automatic default reaction is to avoid the unknown. Even when we try to present our highest achievements we often phrase them in terms of what and how much knowledge we obtained. But we forget too often that whatever we (think we) know, it’s at best a pointer towards what we actually don’t know.
The unknown is not just an amount of information that we have not yet downloaded. The unknown is the core of reality, its transcendence, what distinguishes it from a sheer illusion or a dream. It’s the fact that all our plans to control reality are at best suggestions or invitations, because ultimately we can’t control anything. It’s the fact that we really and authentically meet others only when we allow ourselves to open to the other as a (partial) mystery, we accept and remain fascinated by the shadows, and whatever might be hiding beyond sight. The unknown is never absolutely unknown, we know at least when we meet it and that we meet it. The unknown is not a thing, but a residue, an ineffable echo in which reality finds its expansion. Falling into the unknown is neither falling into a barren empty abyss nor into sheer chaos. It’s falling in love.
Seeking intimacy with the unknown moves against the grain of much of our ordinary life. In this sense, there is definitely a learning curve to explore, a process of habituation and familiarisation with something strange, and potentially scary. We go through this process together with others because this is the only way of doing it. There is no unknown without otherness and vice versa. Only through this authentic connection with another (a connection that sees the other as such, acknowledging their difference and hence their mystery) can we genuinely escape from the myriads of mind patterns and scripts through which we force reality in schemes and stories, which are functional perhaps, but often limited, and always caging. What we discover is the beautiful and undeniable diversity of reality, the infinite multifacetedness of identity, and the inclusive fluidity with which differences merges, mingles, split apart, in a dissonant yet majestic choir of harmony.
Moving with others towards this intimacy with the unknown requires safety and bravery at the same time. It demands to honestly acknowledge one’s expectations, needs, plans, agendas, and without denying or suppressing them, finding ways of converting them into invitations. It would be a violence against oneself to deny one’s needs (and even desires) when they are present. But it would be a violence toward the other to impose them straight away. It just takes adding a question mark, changing the intonation of the gesture, letting go the attitude of manipulating, grabbing, controlling, and turn it instead into a gesture of support, a pointing towards, a possibility. Instead of intending “I’ll bring you there” you simply invite “Shall we go there?” The change is minimal and subtle, but the effect immense.
A magical catalyst that propels this process is a sense of mutual commitment, which grows during the exploration. A commitment not based on a shared identity or ideology, not even on a shared plan. We’re both seeking the unknown that we are, yet we learn how to be here for each other, fully, now. We expose ourselves to the deepest risk, and precisely because of that we instinctually become available, supportive, present for the other. Paradoxically, it is the availability to open up ourselves to the scariness of being together that bonds us in the strongest way, as if we’re moving through an emergency situation where the need we have of each other is so obvious that requires no thought. We don’t know where we’re going, nor how—but wherever you go, I go. Whatever this is, we’re in this together.
The sort of inquiry pursued in CI remains open-ended by definition. There is no ultimate answer. Yet, there are many local and momentary answers. In this moment, it feels like this, it can work in this way. This is great. The next moment, we don’t know, but we can find out. This is also great.
A sense of excessive seriousness might suffocate the inquiry. Where is the fun of flying on each other, lifting and do acrobatics? But in fact, where is the fun of any of that when you “do” it, as a planned and well-prepared, predicable performance? The fun comes from the unexpected, the unplanned. And diving intimately towards the mystery can be immensely fun and light, and even clowny, since there is nothing to hold on too seriously when you don’t know where you’re actually going—or who you are going to be.
The main method for pursuing this investigation is to explore the pulsation, intersection, constant negotiation between the force of gravity (the force that pulls us towards the floor, eventually allowing us to surrender, yield, let go, be safe), and the force of lightness (the force that moves us away from the floor, spiralling in multiple directions, projecting us in space, taking risks, making us brave). These two forces work together all the time, and we need both. They have no fixed point of equilibrium, though. Their ever changing fabric is the way in which the unknown embodies itself in movement. That’s the dance. Perhaps, exploring the interplay between these two forces is all the “technique” one might really need in CI (see also here).
It can be objected that what I’ve written so far is an overly-philosophical presentation of CI. In fact, from what I’ve written I couldn’t really trace a sharp distinction between CI and other aspects of my life, from my academic research to my social relations. From the above presentation it is also apparent that the difference between CI and contemplative practice is immaterial (in fact, at the moment CI is the most effective way of cultivating the sense of surrender of control and embracing of uncertainty that is at the essence of the Buddhist teaching). I’ve barely mentioned that it is a dance, I’ve not focused on specific somatic aspects or forms that would define CI and distinguishing it from other practices.
Fair point, and I won’t object back. I simply notice that the act of defining something is inherently aimed at delineating an object and separating it from something else. I wouldn’t say that CI is not related to dance, somatics, performance, even martial arts, and music (why not?). But I would not use any of these to define what CI is. What is “dance” after all? And why seeking a definition in the first place? Knowing definitions makes us feel safe, gives us something to hold on, like a grain of sand around which we can grow the pearl of our ignorance. I’m not interested in collecting pearls. I prefer rolling on sands. Maybe, what’s special about CI is that, ultimately, there is nothing special about it. I don’t know.
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