Can contact improvisation help us work through limiting patterns?
Moments of change occur when insights are made and patterns are shifted. This article explores the anatomy of these deep embodied realisations and how they can impact our ways of relating.
The bare-footed footsteps on the wooden floor feel random and chaotic. Eye mask on, I’m lying on a gym mat at the edge of the room, resting. It’s the last 20 minutes of Nita Little’s contact improvisation (CI) dance workshop. It’s been a long day and I’m pooped.
I pull off my eye mask; the chaotic sound is revealed as beautiful and balanced movements - people are dancing CI together, mostly in pairs. Standing and observing the room, the only person not paired up is Nita Little herself..
On meeting Nita earlier that day, I immediately felt an affinity and warmth towards this wonderful woman. She’s 72 and has the elegance of a life-long dancer. Big bright open eyes, long gray hair, upright yet relaxed posture. She is, in my world, a living Master, one of the originators of the CI movement. This day has been a rare privilege.
I walk over to her and ask if she’d like to dance. (It didn’t seem brave in the moment, but in hindsight I can’t quite believe that I did this). She agrees and we place our shoulders and upper arms together, gently leaning towards each other.
We take a few awkward steps together.
It doesn’t feel right.
Something in me sinks.
And we stop dancing.
She looks at me, saying; ‘I want to show you something.’
Nita explains the importance of genuinely giving your weight to your partner. You’re committing yourself, even if you’re sharing a fraction of your weight.
I realise that I’ve been leaning into her but my feet are spread wide and I’ve a low centre of gravity. So I’m leaning and in contact, but I’m taking care of my own safety; I’m not trusting her with my weight, there’s no commitment or reliance on her.
She says,
“Give me 1% weight, but 100% commitment.”
I try, it feels clumsy and awkward, but her body responds with presence and poise. “Put your feet closer together,” she tells me. I do; this means I’m leaning onto her.
And it feels different. Not that I haven’t lent on people before in CI, as that’s what we spend most of the time doing. But in this moment I’m acutely aware of being 100% committed.
“Ok, now let yourself lean into me and keep your feet where they are.”
I do as she says, and as she moves away a few inches, I’m falling - slowly at first, then a little faster. She moves at the speed of my fall, and just at the moment when it seems like I’m falling too fast and too far, and I want to move my feet..
She is there, meeting me, pushing me back upright - coming to stand on my own two feet.
She turns to me, a sparkle in her eye and childlike enthusiasm in her body language. In her soft American accent, she looks into my eyes and says;
‘You see, wasn’t that fantastic!?”
I need a moment. Tears spring to my eyes, my body flush with emotion, and my mind struggling to grasp something important that feels both profound and simple. In this simple exercise, Nita gave me an embodied experience of trust. That the memory remains crystal clear shows me its significance.
This kind of story is not an isolated incident in the world of CI. This form of movement practice affords us magical moments of deep embodied realisation. In sharing this story I’ve been privileged to hear of equally transformative moments that have had a lasting impact. You can read about two of these stories in this previous post.
There are two things I’m curious about here.
1. What is ‘the anatomy of an insight’ ?
What is going on in our bodies and minds when we have these profound moments of insight or realisation? I think there are four main components; (1) embodied presence, movement and relating; (2) naming and making the pattern something we hold as object; (3) reflection, witnessing and experimentation with a different pattern; (4) emotion / sense of a new pattern feeling psychologically significant. I’m planning to write more about this in a subsequent post.
Is this something that you’re also curious about? For some reason this holds a certain fascination for me. I’m curious if learning what creates these moments of embodied realisation feels interesting for you…?
2. How is it that CI affords us these powerful experiences?
If we are intentional, is it possible to create more of these kinds of experiences? I see CI offering unique potential for transformation, healing, and self-understanding - which is what I believe is happening in these moments of realisation. In CI there’s a unique combination of practices or methodologies coming together; embodiment, conscious relating, observing and playing with patterns. Through this embodied relational dance, we get a chance to see ourselves clearly and experience ourselves differently.
Here’s my theory…
Hypothesis:
Contact improvisation (CI) offers an opportunity to construct profoundly healing and psychologically developmental experiences.
Theory:
Part of CI is based on the principles of improvisational movement in relation with another person. These principles invite us to dance with whatever is going on for us internally. Although there are techniques to learn, there are no definitive steps to follow or dance moves to do, sometimes there is no music. You simply have to listen inside, feel into the contact with your partner, and dance in a way that is intentionally bypassing the thinking (or strategic) mind.
How we move with others therefore mirrors our pre-cognitive internal psychological and emotional world. It’s a window into our subconscious. In this way, the dance allows us to witness our inner landscape and relational patterns.
In relationship to our partner, our patterns reveal themselves.
We make our patterns object by self-observing our dance. This means rather than operating from inside of our patterns (being subject to them) we can start to see them and to hold them outside ourselves (as an object for our examination).
(If you are curious about Robert Kegan’s ‘Subjet-Object’ theory you could this his book ‘The Evolving Self’.)
In becoming aware of the ways in which we move and the patterns that show up in our dance, we can pull our inner psychological states outside of ourselves, turning them into objects that we can see and explore, manipulate and change, and ultimately transform.
Pausing to name, reflect upon, and hold our patterns as object loosens the hold that these patterns have over us. We’re gifted with agency and choice, and - here’s the important bit - in the dance we then have the opportunity to embody and experiment with new states or ways of being in relation to others.
Nita helped me see that I wasn’t trusting her; she offered me a new way of experiencing trust by giving her 100% commitment with just 1% of my weight.
Doing something different in relation to another lands that new way of being into your body. This acts as an anchor to change henceforth. The dance serves as a metaphor for life; I can feel more comfortable leaning into and committing more of myself in situations that require trust, having experienced Nita's meeting of me in that moment in the workshop.
This feels like a direct route to psychological development and healing. In that moment with Nita I feel I accessed what weeks of talking therapy might eventually have helped with. I believe it’s the same for James and Lucy from the previous post.
There were no foreign plant medicines needed, no mysterious techniques, and no medication necessary. Just the body, presence and conscious movement with another person.
Do you have a story of insight or realisation generated through CI dancing? I’d be really curious to hear it. If you’re feeling brave you could comment below. Or you could send me an email to chris{@}chris-hardy.com.
I’d love for these thoughts to be built upon, critiqued, edited, and broadened. If you are so inclined, do please pipe up in the comments section. I’m particularly curious if you know of other studies, writers, or dancers who are thinking in a similar way.
I love this piece. It’s very moving to be allowed a window into such a profound and personal experience of vulnerability and clarity. I’m grateful you have shared it... and I was so engaged that I would have loved the piece to extend into a deeper exploration of the ways that this insight has rippled out into your awareness and experiences in other areas of life since then. I was left wanting more from you on this piece - a 100% commitment to mining the gold that is here!
Love this so much - brilliant articulation of how CI allows you to embody, see and play with relational patterns.
I recently came across something on social media that feels somehow resonant. It was describing how child health nurses in Scandinavia advise parents to playfully cradle their babies in a way that builds trust.
Basically standing rocking the baby in their arms and in micro-moments sort of gently lifting the baby up then dropping their hands slightly to give the baby a sense of falling and holding, falling and holding, falling and holding - over and over and over again - while smiling and maintaining eye contact.
I found it so beautiful to watch (there was a video) and moving to imagine how it would feel - fear and relief, fear and relief, fear and relief - until the baby is in a more trusting flow and can relax to enjoy it. Some parallels perhaps to what you experienced with Nita?