About Contact Improvisation

Contact Improvisation is a dance-movement practice that deals with the creative and poetic possibilities and limits of moving in physical touch and close proximity without a plan.

Most partner forms of dance emphasise modules of movement and a particular “feel”. In Contact Improvisation the emphasis is rather on understanding the principles of shared movement so that we can simply meet and create dances from there.

Contact Improvisation dances can be slow, fast, gentle, tender, athletic, boisterous and humorous. They are created through the meeting of two people in physical contact with no fixed intention beyond creating a dance together, and with no fixed leadership role.

Because Contact Improvisation approaches movement in an organic and natural way no-one really arrives as a beginner. We all have movement possibilities and we all understand to some extent, momentum, support, how to bear weight, how to move with and alongside someone else, how to travel up and down alone or together, how to deal with and enjoy gravity, how to adapt to the decisions and movements of a partner and how to understand and appreciate ones own decisions and intuitions as well as those of other people. Contact Improvisation is founded on this natural understanding and it refines and deepens it, opening up the opportunity for a rich expression of the human improvisatory, poetic, sensibility in interactive movement.

CI is a key influence on Echo Echo's unique movement style and Artistic Director, Steve Batts, describes Contact as "one of the great joys in my life".

You can hear Steve talk about Contact here .

Echo Echo regularly hosts Contact Improvisation workshops, classes, performances and jams over the last 20 years and since 2018 hosts Echo Echo Contact Improvisation Festival - the only international CI Festival on the island of Ireland.

Gallery

Thanks to Eugene Titov, Ailbe Beirne, David McClelland and Simon Alleyne (Living Witness) for gallery images.