If ballet is the “negation of weight” (Kuppers 2000, 123), I would say that Contact Improvisation is the negotiation of weight.
Petra Kuppers (2000) Accessible Education: Aesthetics, bodies and disability, Research in Dance Education, 1:2, 119-131.
Context
Improvisation is not an exercise
“We know that improvisation is one of the canonical exercises of universal teaching.” – J. Rancière
While I do agree that teaching, whatever the subject, involves a healthy measure of improvising. I would, however, say that improvisation is not an exercise, but a temporal relationship that can be exercised during a given exercise.
projects of the moment
Concrete Form
Do
Contacting the Penumbra
hypothesis:
The Penumbra of Spatial Apprehension figures prominently in Contact at 10th and 2nd.
What Means Meaning
Is improvisation enacted phenomenology?
When improvisation is true to its intent, it never knows where it is going. This is because it is present-centered in its descriptive aims, accounts for temporal change, and does not have appropriate and inappropriate topics. It might move from Zen to dance to baseball to washing dishes, and even isolate a purity of attention that under certain circumstances connects them all. Improvisation develops unpredictably, according to the contents of consciousness. Â – Andrew Wass
original text below
When phenomenology is true to its intent, it never knows where it is going. This is because it is present-centered in its descriptive aims, accounts for temporal change, and does not have appropriate and inappropriate topics. It might move from Zen to dance to baseball to washing dishes, and even isolate a purity of attention that under certain circumstances connects them all. Phenomenology develops unpredictably, according to the contents of consciousness.
Sondra Fraleigh
A Vulnerable Glance, Dance Research Journal, v. 23 issue 1 1991, p.11)
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_A7V3U1Oeg]