Gender Notes on Contact Improvisation

here are a few notes...

Gender is an interesting issue. Are we drawn to explore contact cross-gender, same gender? Does it have to do with gender itself or with physicality that comes along generally with gender? It is good to be aware of and, while not necessarilly being self-critical about it, to be self-questioning. A few notes on gender and contact follow. As anything with gender, they are more statistical regularities than hard and fast rules... plenty of reversals exist. I also note that while some things have to do with physiology, probably most have to do with social construction of gender. Contact has always been a place where gender roles are invited to be challenged, and it is also a structural fact that most anybody, with effective body use, has the physical capacity to effortlessly lift and move most anyone else through the focus on structure and alignment. It is lovely how often these tendancies are NOT true in contact!

• Men tend to gravitate to lifter role. Women gravitate more towards lifted. This can be fun, but also can be irritating to women who don't appreciate being juggled.
• Men tend to be overconfident and eschew training in classes. Women tend to underestimate themselves and their capacities.
• Men tend to gravitate more towards balistic and athletic dances than women do and tend to more readily access physical power.
• Women tend to have an easier time with physical listening, sensitivity, and softening than men.
• There is a tendency in the jam scene for a greater emphasis on cross-gender dancing.
• Men tend to initiate more.
• When there is an issue of someone feeling imposed on in a dance, of someone's physical or emotional boundaries being crossed, it is more likely that a man was on the intiating end and a woman on the recieving end. Issue 1)Men's abilities to perceive boundaries and interest in tuning to them. Issue 2) women's abilities to affectively communicate boundaries and act on issues of boundary integrity. Both seem like good issues to confront and work on. 'comes up often enough in open contact jams or other open social gatherings that a comfort in verbally addressing it can be useful.

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