Dance - Touch me
Experimental dance sessions resemble group gropes, but sex isn’t the point
So I’m writhing around on the floor with Sandra Yee. I’m sweating pails, leaving twisted trails on the floor. We’re in constant motion but always pressed together: butt to butt, belly to belly, legs intertwined, rolling, she’s on top, I’m on top, lifting each other and lowering. She’s letting out these high-pitched luxurious sighs, her head tilted back. And, oh yeah, several other paired-off couples are doing similar things nearby, though Yee and I are too wrapped up in each other to pay much attention.
What? No, you dirty bird, this is not a night at the Velvet Heaven. This is a dance class. Sheesh. Not that you’re the first person to get confused by contact improv, a dance technique pioneered in the 1970s by post-modern dancers and choreographers as a collaborative method to develop new movement and partnering techniques. It’s mostly free-form - heed your partner’s movement, and move as you both are moved - the only rule being that, most of the time you and your partner should be touching: lifting one another, crawling onto one another, pressing into one another, and doing whatever else your two joined bodies can figure out between them. Imagine folks getting highly creative with that old team-building exercise where you stand back to back and try to sit down and stand up. Contact is much more open-ended than that, but the basic dynamic is about the same.
“No boundaries,” says instructor Patton White as he begins the first workshop in a new weekly session, organized by Yee, that continues through the rest of the summer. But, “Take care of your own safety. ... Listen. ... Communicate.”
That “no boundaries” part has given contact improv a sketchy reputation in some circles. Dance sometimes morphs into group gropes or fuzzy-brained touch therapy. Word gets out, and with a flush like you’ll see at the mention of Burning Man or cuddling parties, people who don’t care a lick about dance start to get in on the action. “Workshops” become “parties” and “jams.” “Dance” becomes “play.” Serious dancers start to check out of the practice.
When I found out that contact improv was returning to Atlanta after an extended absence, I wondered if this workshop would suffer the same fate. Were we going to learn how to dance or were we going to have a weekly pile-on debauch? Would we discover new and surprising movement phrases or transform it all into some sweaty tantric search for revelation? Let’s say that I was undivided in my hope that this workshop would remain pure in its devotion to dance.
After holding the first session in a studio at Several Dancers Core, we move to the church (temple? Architecturally pleasing contemplated abyss?) of the First Existentialist Congregation of Atlanta. This is not a good sign, I’m thinking, as I meet Solomon Simmons, who introduces himself to me as a “transparency seer.”
Later that night, after White finishes his regular 30-minute skill-building segment and turns the floor over for 90 minutes of open dance, I see Simmons alone, spinning and shuffling from side to side. As I move toward him, I overhear White talking to another dancer. “Contact,” he says. “You don’t have to be touching. It can be cosmic energy.”
So I fit my body into the open spaces traced by Simmons’ body, but a foot or two away from him, then a little closer. He starts responding to my movement, and though we’re not touching, we’re moving as though we are. There’s an almost animal quality expressing itself through our bodies in a language that signifies a physical confrontation but actually isn’t one. There’s an aggressive energy between us on the edge of hostility - I don’t know why - but our bodies seem to be working it out, finding a way for us to share the same space.
Eventually we do touch and move together and press against each other and hold and lift and trust. There’s a union, an unspoken communion between us. “I felt like our spirits were speaking to each other,” Simmons says later. That night, I have vivid dreams, including one in which I am standing next to my brother, who was killed in a car wreck nearly eight years ago, and I have my arm around him and am holding him close.
Oh, crap, I’m doing it, aren’t I? Going all archetypal and alpha-wave addict. This is dance. I have to keep reminding myself of this. Dance.
Dancing with Brooks Emanuel, I find ... we find surprising new ways to fit our legs together and move ourselves as one mass. Lauryn Menard and I figure out how to adapt our partnered movement to the substantial difference in height between us. Louise Runyon shows me the meaning of stability as I give her all my weight and lay suspended on her back.
Dance, not spirituality. Partnered movement, not sex.
Except that the more I dance contact improv, the less I can maintain these binary oppositions.
We move in the undefined spaces. It’s not sex, but it is intimate, sensual ... it feels really good. Contact improv doesn’t cure all that ails us, but in laughter and body play, we soothe at least some of the hurts and heartaches of the everyday. It doesn’t transmute us to nirvana (still here, writing), but through improvising with a partner, we do learn to heed energies and orders outside our own motives and preconceived notions.
For now, at least, we’re finding all good things in the place where dance and all the rest make contact.