My hipbone digs into the shoulder of my contact improvisation dance partner. My trembling hands are extended towards the polished wooden floor, and as I tentatively extend my legs towards the ceiling I find myself balancing like a teeter-totter in what, to me, feels like an imminent state of freefall.
Although realistically, I can’t be more than five feet from the ground, I’m overwhelmed with a boggling head rush and a sensation of flight. Somehow I’ve managed to find myself quite literally picked up out of my sedentary—and largely misanthropic—urban lifestyle, and lowered into a tight-knit community of dancers who thrive on communication with strangers through touch, movement, and eye contact. I’m the kind of girl who pretends to text on the subway to avoid awkward human interaction—and now I’m balancing precariously on the shoulder of my stony-faced, six-foot dance partner as he takes slow steps around the gym of the Trinity St. Paul Centre.
I slide back down to the floor, and with my feet safely planted ask my partner sheepishly for some feedback. He advises me to “commit more,” which essentially means that the next time I swing my weight onto his shoulder, I need to reach for the floor. This seems like a surefire way to take advantage of the universal health care system in Canada with a smashed nose or broken neck, and, needless to say, I’m not wild about this critique. Instead, I take a moment to survey the room.
The high-ceilinged, makeshift dance studio is filled with about 20 other students of contact improvisation, a hodgepodge of men and women of various ages and physical types. Although I’m probably the youngest person in the room, I can only watch with envy as the part-
ners complete their lifts with impossible grace, shifting their weight, rocketing into space and then returning to the ground with an overriding sense of serene concentration.
“The best contact dancers are usually in their sixties,” instructor Suzanne Liska explained to me before the class, “It’s because they were around when the form of dance first started. You don’t need any technical training for contact improvisation, but it still takes
years to perfect.”
Contact improv began in the early 1970s as a project of Steve Paxton at Oberlin College in Ohio. For this kind of dance there is no choreography; instead, it requires the dancer to engage with his or her surroundings and partner with an emphasis on gravity, momentum, and resistance. In laymen’s terms, that essentially means that people support each other’s weights through lifts as they attempt to move together through space, typically in groups of two.
Liska, who was introduced to contact improvisation in St. John’s, Newfoundland, continues, “Contact improvisation really heightens your senses: it’s all about choreography in the moment. You have to be in touch with your body and your partner. There’s an endless range of things that you can do. It’s really new territory in movement.”
Toronto also plays host to the longest running “Contact Jam” series in the world, based out of the Dovercourt House. “Jams” are a common way for contact improvisers to perfect their skills, engaging in an hour or two of completely spontaneous movement among peers. The Dovercourt House runs a jam on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings. And although the jams are open to newcomers, I wanted a little bit more structure for my introduction to the postmodern dance form.
In theory, contact improvisation is right up my alley. It emphasizes expressing yourself through authentic movement, without the constraints of technicality, or having to be a pawn in someone else’s choreography. Instead, you are completely free to move your body in accordance to your own vision and your own emotions. With years of technical dance training under my belt, and a penchant for relaying my emotions to friends with impromptu interpretive dances, I thought that I would be the perfect candidate for a form of dance that just required me to express my emotions through movement.
Turns out, the hardest part about contact improv is the contact. Working with a partner to simultaneously express your perspective and tell a story requires sensitivity and com-
promise. Partnering happens organically, which means that as you start to dance, you have to get a feel for the person who is moving at your pace and moving in the same direction. Making eye contact, and touching another person with both force and sensitivity while improvising a dance that you want to look at least a little bit graceful is intimidating as hell—and when my partner asked me what it was that I wanted out of this partnership, I almost screamed that I wasn’t ready for anything serious right now.
But God, when it’s done right, it’s done right. In moments, I managed to lose my inhibitions and get a sense of the organic rawness that makes this form of dance unique. But watching Suzanne Liska work with partner Pam Johnson, a jam facilitator at the Dovercourt House, I realized why this is a form of dance that, while it doesn’t necessarily require technical prowess, takes years to perfect. The two of them managed to move effortlessly across the floor, forming shapes with their bodies, and hoisting each other’s weights in impossible positions, creating an emotional movement that was both fluid and dramatic.
Inspired, I turned back to my partner, this time determined to leap onto his shoulder with the same effervescent ease. And hey, although I’m sure it wasn’t perfect, at least I managed to commit to something without snapping my neck.
Photos by Alex Nursall
