What is Contact Improvisation?
Contact Improvisation is a modern dance form invented by Steve Paxton in 1972. The emphasis is on touching (not surprisingly) and on the use of body weight; it has been compared to a kind of cooperative, non-combative wrestling. To judge by the descriptions and pictures in Novack (1990), it is most often done by pairs of dancers. There is a great deal of lifting, falling, and supporting of one dancer by the other. It started out as at least a semi-social dance form but has become more professional as the years have gone by. It is claimed that contact improvisation requires no prior dance training, but it’s clear (and not surprising) that as you learn from experience the range of things you can do increases. In the descriptions that follow, taken from postings to alt.arts.ballet, there is not complete agreement on what it requires of the dancer or what it does to/for him/her: “It was extremely cool stuff, but you really had to be a good dancer, i.e., modern or ballet, in order to pull i
