Leipzig December Jam

a convivial weekend gathering for the practice of contact improvisation

exact date and venue To Be Announced

If the coronavirus situation allows, Body Research will be hosting a contact improvisation jam weekend in Leipzig.  Unless there are some surprise improvements to the covid situation, the event will be a closed event for people in ongoing Body Research contact improvisation training in Leipzig.  The weekend will be lightly structured to facilitate a convivial and welcoming but focused space for body exploration.

Dates to be announced in early November, and venue will be announced at the time.

Tentative Schedule

	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Morning		Facilitated Warm-up Open Jam Round Robin Jam Feedback/Discussion Circle	One-On-One Dates and open space Facilitated Warm-up Open Jam
Afternoon		Class w/ Karl Frost : The Passive Sequencing Work Round Robin Jam Open Jam	Facilitated Warm-up Open Jam Round Robin Jam Closing Circle
Evening	Opening Circle Facilitated Warm-up mini-class: “How to do a Round Robin” Round Robin Jam	Facilitated Warm-up Open Jam

 

Round Robin Jam vs Open Jam?

Round Robin and Open Contact Jam are the two main open practice frames for groups doing contact improvisation.

The Open Jam is very much a “do-it-yourself” space where participants are invited to follow their own curiosities and timing for personal warm-up and participati  in the space within the shared understanding that the explorations of classic contact improvisation are at least the central reference point.  It’s not exactly a completely open space, but there is a lot of lattitude for personal exploration and an expectation of personal agency in navigating exploration and initiating, continuing, and ending individual exchanges.  Different open contact jams have different spoken or unspoken norms about  the atmosphere of the space and initiating and joining dances.  For these jams, we leave this open in an understood, convivial and mutually supportive context of encouraging initiative, physical attentiveness, and personal agency in following curiosty, interest, and personal needs. In other words the norm of the space is that you should feel free to explore initiating dances with a spirit of feeling out if the other person would like to fluidly join.  Understanding this, we understand that others will be initiating and we then choose from a sense of our own feeling of physical readiness and curiosity if we want to engage or not in the moment.  There is no set protocol for how this is done, so we feel it out and improvise from a shared culture of convivial mutual encouragement.  While much of the exploration is non-verbal, there is no rule around this.  Unobtrusive “shop talk”, where the dance is discussed, is encouraged, and verbal negotiation of either how or if to dance is an open possibility. If talking begins to take over the interaction and particularly if the subject drifts farther afield from the dance, then it should be taken to the side or out of the space.

The Round Robin is more structured. All are assumed to start the Round Robin already warmed-up and ready to move. It is a score (set of rules/instructions) that facilitates time spent both physically practicing and supportively obesrving dances, facilitates regular changing of partners, and removes most of the ambiguity around entering and exiting dances. The Round Robin starts with everyone in a circle at the edge of the space, their attention in the enclosed space of the circle.  Sometimes at the beginning, there is a communicative gesture of everyone lifting their arms to the side and looking around the room to establish that all are attentive and ready to begin.  As arms are dropped, people wait for imuplse or curiosity to draw them into the space to explore. As people enter into the space, they may take a some moments to explore solo or may go directly into contact.  Going into contact may mean joining an existing duet or joining another solo dancer. If someone joins an existing duet, there is a temporary trio and then at some point  one of the trio leaves to return to the side: usually the one who has been dancing in the center longer, but not always.  as people are in the center dancing, they may wait until someone comes to replace them, or they may spontaneously decide to end the duet and leave back to the side.  When someone leaves to the side, they may take a moment to collect themselves , recollect the experience, and/or write some notes, and then they bring their attention back to watching the explorations in the center.  The spirit of moving while being witnessed is to feel supported to investigate by the wtnesses and to simply share your curiosity and experiments in community.  It is not to “perform” (as on a conventional theater stage) or to entertain the witnesses but simply to share the results of exploration and experiment. As witness, while much of what might be seen will be quite interesting to watch, the point is not to expect entertainment but to watch curiosity and physical experiments unfold and to support hose in the center by generously staying attentive to those in the center. During a Round Robin, all should be thinking about balancing being in the center with observing from the side.  A heuristic might be a 1/3 rule: 1/3 of the time in moving, 1/3 of the time watching, and 1/3 moving or watching, as one feels.  In entering an existing duet, there is both an encouragement and expectation to intervene and interupt with something new and a desire to allow things to “percolate” and develop, and so to not interupt too early.  There is also an aim to keep both the exploring in the center and the witness circle alive and not to let one or the other dissapear. Usually a Round Robin will end with a brief feedback circle, sharing observations from both moving and witnessing.