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- interrogating CI history
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Redux Forward Content Info
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The guest artists of the events are Vashon Island based Karen Nelson and Brooklyn, NY based K.J. Holmes who will reprise their 1991 duet “Swim Sea No See”. In advance they will workshop the movement score with local dancers, and then perform at Open Space where they will also share early video renditions of CI and their duet, talk about the form to bring the context of 50 years to light, and hold a post-performance artist talk-back session. On Vashon, they will be accompanied by Seattle musician, Evan Strauss on bass.
“Swim/Sea/No Sea” is a duet Holmes and Nelson performed from 1991-93 in N. America, Europe and S. America. What does a redux of an improvisation become after 30 years? Here is a take of our score: “Without sacrificing the primal power and reflexive responses of CI’s play with gravity, momentum and trust, they create a cinema of the body using editing principles gleaned from Tuning Scores as well as through constant questionings about musicality and the theater of dance.” CI INTERROGATES AND TUNES ITSELF is a lecture-demonstration, multimedia JAM ritual is a community event is where Nelson and Holmes will facilitate the lecture-demonstration-participatory-jam , “CI interrogates and tunes itself”, a 3-5 hour multi-media gathering that engages local dancers and observers to consider the history, currency and futurity of CI, and for each dancer to claim, share and dance their own origin and identity story of the form. Using archival video recordings the interrogation includes footage from Diverse Dance Research Retreat an initiatory program that brought people with disabilities and non-disabled dancers together to live and dance together as peers held on Vashon Island from 1993-2000, works by Ishmael Houston Jones, mayfield brooks and the late Fred Holland, and Nancy Stark Smith. These clips will lead us into dance improvisation practices of “replay”, ensemble dancing, and observing from an audience perspective. The interrogation's objective is for practitioners to gain felt-experience of the past, open to the present and dream into the future. |
As we emerge from lockdown and social distancing, we each bring our varied and diverse experience to social engagement. In the genre of Contact Improvisation (CI) dance, a form based in physical touch and athleticism, this has never been more true in the sense that lifting the prohibition to touch offers a chance to reinvent, to queer and mutate this form as it never has been consciously entered into before.
While diversity, inclusivity and democracy have been felt experiences reported in the form of Contact Improvisation, the population of white, hetero-sexual, cis gender, able bodied folk have dominated the practice. Still at the margins, artists of all identities have continued their research and development of the work. We meet, recall and learn from some of those artists in the lec- dem event, and we venture into present-time dialogue.
CI, a post-modern dance project that emerged in 1972 was seeded by the work of numerous artists living from and into numerous legacies. As lifetime practicioners of the art of dance improvisation, K.J. and Karen performed Swim/Sea/ No See 1991-93 touring in US, Europe and S. America as one of their many projects. In their work, they deeply embody the principals of dancing Contact Improvisation (CI) united with Tuning Scores (an improvisation + composition practice) formulated and introduced by Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson respectively. Karen and K.J. are holders of the legacies of their teachers and mentors, and have become that to many others who follow them. They now return to following themselves, with jump cuts back to 1991 and fast forwards to Oberlin 2022 (one of the many global CI@50 birthday celebrations in 2022.)
While diversity, inclusivity and democracy have been felt experiences reported in the form of Contact Improvisation, the population of white, hetero-sexual, cis gender, able bodied folk have dominated the practice. Still at the margins, artists of all identities have continued their research and development of the work. We meet, recall and learn from some of those artists in the lec- dem event, and we venture into present-time dialogue.
CI, a post-modern dance project that emerged in 1972 was seeded by the work of numerous artists living from and into numerous legacies. As lifetime practicioners of the art of dance improvisation, K.J. and Karen performed Swim/Sea/ No See 1991-93 touring in US, Europe and S. America as one of their many projects. In their work, they deeply embody the principals of dancing Contact Improvisation (CI) united with Tuning Scores (an improvisation + composition practice) formulated and introduced by Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson respectively. Karen and K.J. are holders of the legacies of their teachers and mentors, and have become that to many others who follow them. They now return to following themselves, with jump cuts back to 1991 and fast forwards to Oberlin 2022 (one of the many global CI@50 birthday celebrations in 2022.)
photos:
top-Ray Chung 1994 Western Front Improvisation Symposium
mid- Tim Richards 2022 Boulder ,Think Gravity Dance Tank
low- image from video Swim/Sea/No See performance 1992, Boulder, CO.
top-Ray Chung 1994 Western Front Improvisation Symposium
mid- Tim Richards 2022 Boulder ,Think Gravity Dance Tank
low- image from video Swim/Sea/No See performance 1992, Boulder, CO.