18.3.2025
When teaching CI
When teaching CI, of course I’m not there to tell anyone how to dance/practice Contact Improvisation.
That would be taking away from their creativity and lessening the total of what they bring to the exchange. They deserve a chance to figure things out for themselves, which in itself already IS the learning and IS the dance.
As the one temporarily in the role of a teacher, I’m there to help for that process to happen safely for them and for those around them, sharing the experience I myself obtained while going through my own process of learning and discovery.
Also, I’m there to help them reflect on the consequences of what they give or not give to others, to the space and to themselves.
I don’t think Contact Improvisation, or any other improvisation for that matter, should be learnt. I think it should be discovered. And discovery is sometimes a struggle, which makes it worthwhile. Taking workshops or classes is not essential, though it can and does help.
I’m not necessarily into making things easier or happy-looking. We do our thing and then it will be what it will be. As we are no longer children we know, that life’s not always simple. Quite the opposite, it’s complex.
In the studio, interacting with others through weight exchange, is a good preparation for it: building bridges, trying, failing, resolving, trying again. Collaborating. Reinventing. Not escaping and not shutting out.
It’s just that I believe, that a dance isn’t a break from life. It’s a practice for life.
END
13.3.2025
Excerpts from a working diary 2010/2011, on diving into TUNING SCORES
Went to the first day of the Brussels Tuners: Pascale, Franck, Baptiste, Felicia, Caroline, Eva.
They work on imagination. The 2 hour improv they did had a dramaturgy to it; one they had not envisioned beforehand.
The important things about the calls is, that the Watchers and the Doers all acknowledge when the call happens, and what it is. By this call alone the future becoming present changes the past, because it brings it in a new context – without anything necessarily physically (objectively) changing inside the space. Because when a call is made you know everyone is taking it into the account. Knowing that changes what you’re looking at, by contextualising it.
27.7.2010, in my bed in the studio, East Charleston
…Lisa’s Tuning is observation, where the tools she proposes are just a way to become more aware of what is going on, what one is seeing, what one’s eyes are doing, and so on. It’s that thing that all of us are doing anyway, made conscious…
7.4.2011, my room, upstairs at the Nightingale, Brighton
Good morning. Yesterday was a day of trying to work within Tuning Scores with music. I’ve enjoyed being a musician; Nuno said a line in the morning that set me up for the day: he said something like »a performing musician is present as a body in space; and still does movement. But he does it with an intention of making sound.«
For the rest, at first it was a tired day; I’ve picked up somewhat only after lunch.
It’s a good place to try things out; to DO before censoring oneself.
END
12.3.2025
an excerpt from my personal diary, written on 15.11.2010, while exploring the TUNING SCORES
Approaching the performance… after a week of practicing Tuning Scores
…
I realize (because I also asked them about it) that my partner can really feel what I am feeling. They feel the changes I’m going through. When it is I want something, as well as when there’s nothing I desire, except to just be. And they, in turn, ‘very selfishly’ (in their own words ), just do what they feel like, as I do that too.
This [our dance] opened me up, completely. We were all clustered in the center, and mostly on the floor, and moving slowly.. and yet in me there were universes happening.
What was amazing for me was that I didn’t need to counterbalance what I was doing with the opposites: of being faster, jumping, being elsewhere in space, all of that. Something real was happening and I was happy to give it duration, more time, and more time.
Only this time, I knew how to stop and feel; how to feel time; how to ‘pause’. I knew how to stop and just be.
Then after, when trying to do the same with the public present, that situation brought on so many other impulses, that I’ve just failed all together. I selfishly wanted to stay in the sensual ‘now’ zone, when the moment asked for some organizing, some perspective. And [I felt] the group abandoned me, or I abandoned the group.
My task for myself was how to stop and be still; to be patient; to relate to the public in a natural way.
But perhaps there is no »natural way« with the public. I am being looked at, and got to do something with it. Besides feeling and being present, it seems I have to also somehow organise myself in a certain way…
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18.8.2019
Being teachers
At the Contactfestival Freiburg (this year, 8-14. of August) and especially at the teacher’s meeting which precedes it (this year, 3-8. of August), through the years I’ve repeatedly heard some of us referring to our group as “teachers”. “We are teachers, we should know about this kinds of things,” and similar. Every time, it creates a little doubt, and a question inside me: what does this word mean for the speaker?
I can’t know that, but this is the way I see it:
I may be a teacher now, and a student tomorrow. Do I still feel as a teacher when I am being a student? Hardly. That’s when I’m in a different mind process, than someone guiding a class, transmitting a knowledge. However, a learning and a teaching might still be taking place; and I might be doing both.
One of my most revered teachers, Lisa Nelson, says that us – her students, are her best teachers. There is always a learning taking place, and one is always the student. Even when teaching a class. The same goes for the teaching – one is always teaching someone something.
The teacher then, I observe, is a transitory role; not a status that is maintained throughout a festival, throughout a life. The problem arises when we (I) start addressing ourselves (myself) as “teacher(s)” when outside of the teaching situation. Using this word as a title, meaning knowing more then the non-teachers, certainly more then the students / the people I am teaching.
That short-sighted perspective should be enough to put anyone in their place – back to the beginning. Learning is something that happens when the conditions are right; it happens to a degree we (the participants of a lesson, be it students or teachers) can take-in at the moment, in the circumstances provided. What isn’t learnt remains somewhere in us, stored, kept on ice, for it to blossom when the weather gets warmer. Like a seed. Or so I have experienced it.
A teacher is someone that is in a role to both create conditions and provide the seeds which will sprout. The student, however, still has to do the learning themselves. Making the connections between what they are getting to their previous experience, and their own Now.
A teacher is a role we take on, being in service of a learning process. It’s not a permanent status and when we use it as a title it carries the danger of loosing perspective. However – temporarily taking on the role of a teacher, I do do the work of preparation, and take onto myself the responsibility of guiding a certain learning-teaching processes, but which flow into both directions.
For me, teaching is a performance. I know, because I have felt myself teaching things I didn’t know I know, in ways I didn’t know how. Which is the same line of discovery that regularly happens on stage. The audience, and the students, taught me that.
So when I hear “we are teachers, we should know this”… I am relieved inside, thinking “It’s ok. We are clearly but students, and there is so much we still have to learn.”
10.4.2019, Athens
One. And one. Again.
On 12.4.2019, a 2nd improvised performance with George Kokkinaris, at Synergatiko studio in Athens.
More here
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