EspacioFCI, a space for teaching practising contact improvisation in Madrid
Keywords: practice, practising, contact improvisation, repetition, relationality
In 2022, the fifty-year anniversary of contact improvisation (CI) was celebrated. CI on one level is a group exploratory practice of moving in contact with others improvisationally, sometimes fast and acrobatically and other times slowly filled with weight sharing, rolling on a floor. Groups gather weekly or monthly internationally for 2-4 hour “jams”, classes and workshops, as well as for multi-day festivals. CI is a dance form with a strong social component, which brings together professional and non-professional movers and somatic practitioners. For many, CI is also a form of practice-based research, where classes offer opportunities for group exploration. As a queer individual interested in improvisational partnered dance as a transformative political practice, attending CI jams initially provided me with a joyful space to connect with bodies. However, I soon realized that there was more to the practice. I wondered if it was possible to articulate the practice in a way that could deepen the profound embodied sensations, energetic presence, and somatic and physical skills that made it so special.
I had been taking classes with dancers Cristiane Boullosa (Brazil) and Diana Bonilla (Spain) since the early 2010s, and in 2015, I began attending the long-term vocational training program they created in 2013 at EspacioFCI. In Boullosa's classes, I found the articulation I had been seeking, allowing me to engage in continuous CI practice. Now I am a student in the Performance Studies PhD program at the University of California Davis, a program with a special focus on the Practice as Research of embodied practices. Part of my research, involves interviewing Boullosa and Bonilla overseas about EspacioFCI practices and methods. In this article, I will share some of Boullosa's views on CI teaching as a space for somatic relationality, and explore their connection with theoretician and practitioner Antonia Pont's concepts of practising and repetition that she takes from Deleuze, and Deleuze's idea of teaching and learning as a space.
CI has made its way into university dance programs both practically and theoretically. EspacioFCI in Madrid is one of the few long-term formal training programs exclusively dedicated to CI as a movement form. It combines rigorous training with a collective engaged group practice that has an inseparable political orientation. EspacioFCI created a community of highly devoted CI practitioners that share a common language and treat CI as a research-based practice. The second goal of this paper is to present EspacioFCI’s practice.
Reflecting on the origins of CI as a crowd-sourced practice in The Politics of Mutuality (Paxton & Stark Smith 2016), Nancy Stark Smith and Steve Paxton reflect on the lack of copyrighting of CI. Paxton remarks: ‘We all gave it to the people’, to which Stark-Smith responds: ‘My sense was that it was more a function of just not being interested in […] having to check people and regulate it’. This has allowed CI to spread widely and has created a diversity of teaching approaches and practising styles. It has also meant some resistance to deep training in CI. There are also inherent economic difficulties in offering long-term training to the non-professional dancers that populate the social practice of CI.
Focusing on the practice of CI as a form of embodied research through specific long training programs is not common. However, systematic teaching attempts are an important source for deep training in CI, and they can help in the conservation and spread of CI. Recent events around the 50th anniversary of Contact Improvisation (CI), such as the Future of CI online conference in 2021 organised by influential figures in CI with a strong political approach, such as Keith Hennessy, Diana Thielen, and Kristin Horrigan, and Critical Mass at Oberlin College in Ohio (USA) in the Summer of 2022, have shown how the CI international community is trying to create more awareness about some of its social and political challenges and create possible directions for the future. I took part in both events and they left me wondering: What are some challenges CI has to overcome in the coming years to keep spreading and consolidating as the mix of community building, dance, and somatic training that it involves? I believe that the consolidation of stable spaces for learning and researching the practice of CI, such as Boullosa’s, can make its nuanced qualities of movement and touch more accessible to professional and non-professional dancers. EspacioFCI aligns with the early practitioners' vision of CI as a research-oriented, politically engaged approach to dance.
EspacioFCI: an open space for the practice of CI as research
EspacioFCI not only imparts a dance form but it also promotes a non-hegemonic practice of embodiment, learning, and community. Schatzki's pivotal concept of the practice turn allows us to think about how practices yield discoveries about bodies: ‘Bodies and activities are “constituted” within practices’ (2001: 11). An embodied practice like CI could constitute a way to unfold new possibilities of movement and relationality for human bodies and dance. It is in the spirit underlying the creation of CI to dwell on how practice constitutes bodies, rather than just reproducing those practices. Paxton explained how CI was a shared experience that unfolded in his and his peers' bodies, prompting him to seek a means of teaching it, because ‘I wanted to find a way to express it to you guys’ (2016).
Teaching the practice of CI is a form of embodied research. After fifty years of history, CI is more systematized, but it is still evolving as a dynamic form of movement. In What a Body Can Do (2015), Ben Spatz talks of a growing research culture ‘in diverse areas of physical culture, performing arts, and everyday life’ (2015: 3). Research in embodied practices involves the ‘development of new techniques through processes of investigation and exploration’ (Spatz 2015: 60). EspacioFCI might be part of this growth in the research of embodied practices. For Boullosa:
CI helps you understand movement, generating skill with less effort, expanding the life time of the movement. From there we can go from improvisation to composition in real time, and then to my aesthetic goal, which is the development of choral dance from CI. It is also a political place […] Macro-systems are made up of micro-systems. (Boullosa 2022)
CI as a movement form combines improvisation, touch, and choral movement. CI jams offer a space of experimental freedom to improvise with one's body in relation to others. The social practice of CI, however, can sometimes become stuck in a practice of merely reproducing shapes observed from others, and pleasant touch sensations while sharing space and community, even some moments of subjective somatic transformation. A more systematic practice of CI can deepen its somatic, energetic, and political principles. Spaces that treat CI as a research practice, such as EspacioFCI, have the potential to generate these individual and group experiences that are repeatable, uncovering new possibilities of movement and relationality.
EspacioFCI was created by Boullosa, an experienced CI teacher in Madrid, partnering closely with Bonilla. Boullosa's training in modern, expressionist, and postmodern dance in Salvador de Bahia (Brazil) in the 1980s fueled her lifelong interest in improvisation. Bonilla studied primarily in Madrid and Germany with figures like Shahar Dor, Katie Duck, Julien Hamilton, and David Zambrano. In the early 2000s, Boullosa discovered contact improvisation through Antonio del Olmo's invitation to continue his CI classes. While Del Olmo shifted focus to movement as therapy, Boullosa sought to incorporate her dance training into CI.
Over the years, Boullosa and Bonilla attracted a dedicated group of students. In the early 2010s, some students began to express a desire for deeper training. Attending scattered festivals, jams, and workshops felt lacking in structure compared to the more systematic approach we experienced in Boullosa and Bonilla's classes: ‘This diversity of practices has its strengths, but to build a clear conception of what this practice is, a space for a deeper, more systematized practice is required’ (Boullosa 2022). In 2013 Boullosa and Bonilla decided to create a longer systematic training. Boullosa remarks how ‘transmitting the practice from the shapes, which is more immediate, but also more superficial, has stabilised’ in some formal spaces (like conservatories and universities), ‘but working from the principles of CI takes much longer’ (Boullosa 2022).
I participated in the second cohort from 2015 to 2018. The program consisted of two full courses and an optional additional course, with classes three days a week and one or two full weekends per month. I took classes in Body Mind Centering® (BMC) applied to CI with Patricia Gracia, energy management in CI with Cristiane Boullosa, physical skills in CI with Diana Bonilla, contemporary dance with Mei-Ling Bisoño, as well as intensive workshops with guest instructors and thematic workshops led by Boullosa and Bonilla. EspacioFCI has since expanded its offerings, now providing classes five days a week in Madrid and introducing improvisation, flying low, and other specialized classes. They have also launched a two-year weekend intensive program in Bilbao. The three-year duration of the program, for both students and teachers at EspacioFCI, often feels short. Many students continue attending regular classes at EspacioFCI after completing the program: ‘People leave the two-three years with the awareness that this is a path you choose to investigate. They realise that finishing the training is starting the practice’ (Boullosa 2022).
The training is not intended to create a CI certification:
It is not a space to train dancers, pedagogues, or therapists. What we refer to as training is a space where we commit to sharing, and those who attend commit to spending time studying this practice. It is an experiential process of mutual learning. I do believe that a more ind-depth systematic training in contact improvisation is beneficial, and that it does not go against the principles of contact improvisation (Boullosa 2022).
Boullosa perceives the relationality between students and teachers as a shared space. Within this space, students encounter unmet expectations and unexpected discoveries during their learning process. Students undergo a shift in their understanding of the practice. Those who come in with formal expectations realize that the primary goal is not learning specific shapes and movements. Similarly, individuals with therapeutic or personal growth expectations come to understand that the training involves not only addressing emotional, psychological, and behavioral conflicts but also engages in physical training and the study of movement and the body (Boullosa 2022). For Boullosa, the program is an invitation to drop previous expectations: ‘In the second year […] a process of reflection and understanding of the body and dance begins’ (Boullosa 2022). Some people quit the training: ‘When I see that someone is not able to face certain places that were a challenge it is difficult for me to accept’ (Boullosa 2022). As a collaborative environment, it is a space where teachers learn and continuously strive to understand the challenges faced by individuals and how they can support them.
As a student, I vividly recall the sense of overcoming various physical and psychological challenges. Participating in group exercises involving rapid movement initially felt daunting and risky to me. I gradually learned to release somatic tensions through both physical and somatic training, allowing me to integrate the principles of the practice into my embodiment. Over time, I developed a relaxed muscle tone and heightened awareness of my surroundings, enabling me to confidently engage and interact within group settings without experiencing stress or isolation.
Boullosa's understanding of the practice of CI is to teach it as from its principles rather than from the reproduction of shapes or movement patterns. All the principles (discussed below) come together to form a non-hierarchical somatic movement practice. Many students at EspacioFCI often highlight that embracing non-hierarchical somatic training is one of the main challenges that encapsulate the structure of practising the somatic and political principles of CI at EspacioFCI. Boullosa always stresses that even if CI's identity allows for it ‘we are responsible for creating a space that fosters that reality. CI is not non-hierarchical per se’ (Boullosa 2022). EspacioFCI is devoted to creating a space that fosters the research practice of CI. This entails a continuous dedication, a specific teaching and learning structure, a stable practice environment, and a devoted community of practitioners.
Theorist and practitioner Antonia Pont makes a distinction between ‘practice’ and ‘practising’ that helps to understand the difference between transmitting the practice of CI as a dance form, and the practising of CI as a mesh of underlying somatic and political principles. According to Pont, ‘when one engages in one's repertoire of practices in such a way that the operations of difference and repetition come into play more explicitly, then one can be said to have drifted into the register of practising’ (Pont, 2021: 9). In her book, A Philosophy of Practising: With Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition (2021), Pont defines practising as a mode of doing that pertains to the how of doing, ‘the cultivation of an intentional relation to how things happen, rather than [...] the habit of reacting to what is happening’. Besides, practising is a sustained practice that transforms the doer, because practising ‘asks unexpected questions of your action, of the notion of “you” as a purportedly enduring, knowable entity’ (Pont 2021: 2-5). In the next section I develop this notion of sustained practising through EspacioFCI's principles.
Teaching CI towards the principles of the practice
According to Boullosa, there are three aspects that articulate the knowledge that forms CI practice: physical preparation, somatic sensitization, and the cultivation of attitudes towards the principles of the practice of CI. Teaching the practice involves making the body available to movement and relationality by triggering the practice from the sensed somatic body, towards the embodiment of the principles necessary to cultivate the practice. In order to achieve the teaching goals of EspacioFCI these three aspects need to be balanced.
The availability of the body is cultivated through individual, partnered and group exercises focused on touching and body listening that enhance physical condition, attention, alertness, speed, and spatial spherical awareness, among other elements, engaging in the somatic exploration of movement. This integration of somatic exploration and movement fosters an embodied understanding of the practice's principles.
• Physical preparation in CI involves engaging with fundamental movement patterns such as walking, running, jumping, crawling, rolling, sliding, spiraling, and interacting with other bodies. These patterns, present in early child development (Pikler 1968; Bainbridge-Cohen 2020), are studied and elaborated in CI as functional formal patterns for body mechanics. At EspacioFCI, a variety of exercises explore different tissues and movement qualities to enhance the understanding of the anatomical configuration and spatial development of the spiral. This physical preparation goes beyond skill development, recognizing that the basic patterns constitute the essence of movement in CI: ‘The basic patterns are very simple but forgotten […] Not only skill, but also the poetics of movement is generated in these patterns’ (Boullosa 2022).
Immersing ourselves in the basic patterns of movement allows us to disrupt pre-existing habits acquired from other dance forms, societal norms, and everyday routines. This process is interative, as we continuously find simpler ways to execute movements and cultivate the ability to be aware of and redefine both old and new patterns of movement and behavior. This allows for a growing range of possibilities of action in the moment: ‘CI creates awareness about the patterns we bring, differentiating between the basic patterns of human movement and the acquired ones. It is all a dialogue to determine whether, in a given situation, those patterns are valid or not’ (Boullosa, 2022). Repeating the basic patterns not only infiltrates and disrupts previously acquired ones, but also breaks down the basic patterns themselves as we discover and incorporate new patterns through repetition.
Pedagogically, the relationship between fundamental and habitually acquired movement patterns cannot be forced, but observed and guided until the student finds their own way. In teaching the practice, repetition is not reproduction or correction, but a practice in which the student will eventually find change within themselves, somatically. Boullosa describes the challenge of teaching this way:
As a teacher, removing a pattern is something aggressive; it interferes with the reality of another person instead of accepting it. Accepting means making that pattern conscious, rather than wanting to eliminate it. I admit that sometimes a certain pattern of someone makes me nervous, So I try to remove it. But this I must not do; this is also an intrusive pattern of mine (Boullosa, 2022).
Boullosa’s approach echoes Deleuze’s discussion of the necessary intimacy of teaching and its danger:
There is something amorous - but also something fatal - about all education. We learn nothing from those who say: 'Do as I do'. Our only teachers are those who tell us to 'do with me', and are able to emit signs to be developed in heterogeneity rather than propose gestures for us to reproduce. In other words, there is no ideo-motivity, only sensory-motivity. (Deleuze 1995, 23)
At the center of this pedagogical pointing is a release of concept (“ideo”) motivation and allowing the student to discover their own “sensory” motivation, to let them be guided by their own sensing movement. Such a transformation requires, for Deleuze and Pont, something other than imitation, it requires “practising repetition”, repetition that ‘deconstructs the habit's edifice’, producing difference and hence change, allowing us to open to an order in which to actively forget our previous patterns (Pont 2021: 9, 19, 20, 42, 173, 202). Deleuze refers to this as ‘liberatory and redemptive repetition’ (Deleuze 1995: 23), and it demands an experienced teacher who practices holding back their own intrusiveness.
• Sensitization of the body: Sensitization is becoming aware of the physical and biological interconnectedness of the body within itself and environmentally. Through practising repetition of foundational movements like standing and walking, as well as weight-sharing exercises, we heighten our somatic sensitivity to our inherently imbalanced body. Boullosa describes how this sensitization is developed:
At every step, even if we are standing still, there is always an experience of the fall. The person develops the ability to go into imbalance and allow the body to recover through an available tone, thus losing their fears. This opens up many personal layers. We are an imbalance, but there is something in our body that works to bring it into balance. We break the conception that control is the appropriate state of the body; It is to enter the poetics of chaos. Entering or allowing chaos to occur causes order to appear. Avoiding chaos creates a chaotic situation, as order is not allowed. Not accepting the imbalance causes us to be unbalanced all the time. (Boullosa 2022)
By familiarizing ourselves with these movements and exploring subtle weight shifts with partners, we develop a keen awareness of falling. This process allows our vestibular system to adapt to instability without triggering fear or tension, enabling us to confidently embrace falling as a poetics of chaos. This poetics of chaos is Boullusa's elaboration of Theodor Schwenk's elaboration of the material physics of chaos-theory in the world. In Sensitive Chaos (1978), Schwenk described how ‘the rhythms of the tides are a response to forces which work in the interplay of earth and cosmos’ (82). Boullosa extends Schwenk's analysis to interconnected human bodies. She takes up his notions of "surfaces arising in the interplay of different streams [...], responding immediately with expansion or contraction to the most delicate changes in the forces causing them", and the "sensitive forms of balance, on which it is possible for the most delicate influences to play" (1978: 82-83). All of this is done through specific exercises that train touch and other senses to expand their sensitivity towards our own body, the space, and other bodies.
In EspacioFCI, the body is sensitized through specific exercises that involve touch, contact, and individual and partnered movement. These exercises explore the somatic relationship between the person's body-mind, tissues, and organic systems with gravity, touch, momentum, inertia, spirals, and impulse. According to Boullosa (2022), allowing and observing how the body organises itself requires a long process of repetition and practice, which opens up not one, two, or three poetic situations, but an infinite number of universes. The poetics of chaos encompasses the essence of movement in dance, including CI.
When we repeatedly train with standing as a practice of imbalanced balancing, with walking as falling, with leaning into other bodies, and other kinds of partnered weight-sharing exercises, we can learn how to feel and maximise the sensation of the fall. This allows the vestibular system to become accustomed to being unstable, without sending signals of fear or muscular tension to the nervous system, which would otherwise prevent it from falling. Through months and years of repetition, this process develops a sensitized body that is able to naturally respond to falls without relying on specific patterns. It trains the student's reflexes to confidently and skillfully handle falling situations, allowing them to overcome fear and disorientation, and enabling them to take more risks and bigger falls.
• Principles that formulate the attitudes for practising CI:
For Boullosa, CI depends upon principles, these include empathy, respect, self and collective responsibility, non-judgment, no roles, acceptance and non-expectations, democracy, and non-hierarchy. All of these point to an embodiment of response-ability, respect of our own and other people's boundaries, and freedom and curiosity in the dance exchanges. These principles of the practice are to ‘embody a reflection on our mechanistic society – doing, getting, and having – instead of living the organicity of the body and life’. While in other dance and movement practices these aspects are not seen as important for the development of form, ‘in CI, the cultivation of the principles constitutes the physicality of the practice’ (Boullosa, 2022). For example, empathy is not an individual exchange of feelings in a dance, but rather sticking to the principles of the practice: ‘If I am clear about the principles, I can share my knowledge without getting into sympathy [or aggression] with the other person. That is where I have empathy’ (Boullosa, 2022).
As a student at EspacioFCI my experience is that the principles of self -responsibility and collective responsibility set the landscape for the practice of CI in which the embodiment of all the principles is enabled. In CI, self-responsibility means avoiding the cultural habit of blaming others or taking responsibility for them. This mindset applies to situations where something disliked occurs in dance or when a specific exercise feels ineffective. These attitudes can lead to harmful consequences, both physically and psychologically. Non-judgment is related to this principle as it discourages self-imposed expectations and blaming others externally. These attitudes undermine both individual and collective responsibility. Non-judgment implies recognizing and accepting one's body and not imposing desires or frustrations on another body. The combination of these principles leads to an embodiment of respect:
Respect is the recognition of how the body responds. The same towards the other person. You cannot recognize what they feel or what they think, but you can recognize what you feel or think in relation to the encounter. Do not be intrusive, do not force a situation, do not try to change the other or the dance. From there I can create a process and a discourse within the practice. (Boullosa 2022)
The two main outcomes of a sustained commitment to the principles of the practice are a dancing practice that is not focused on formal aesthetics, and a non-judgmental practice that makes CI accessible to everyone: ‘Accepting the body as it is right now, how far it can go, regardless of what is socially valued as beautiful or good. Questioning why one shape is more important or more beautiful than another’ (Boullosa 2022). This practice of CI elaborates its principles in physical and somatic experiences and enables a non-judgmental body moved by sensations and receptive to movement and somatic interactions:
The best dancer in CI is the one who has the most ability to share and understand what the principles of this practice are and can dance with any body. But if we practise CI from the theory but we haven't really researched it, we obviate the focus on the somatic aspect. We cling to formal patterns that we have seen. This is not CI practice. (Boullosa 2022)
As a result, the social and political principles of CI emerge directly from the physical-somatic practice. Boullosa believes in a non-discursive practice of CI: ‘The political and the social are already implicit in the practice. It is not necessary to let the speech lead first. The speech is important, but if you [do not start and end with] the physical aspect, the practice will be impoverished’. EspacioFCI's goal is to facilitate the somatic understanding of this.
EspacioFCI's methodology focuses on each of the three aspects, but physical preparation, somatic sensitization, and the practice of the principles always happen interdependently and simultaneously.
At EspacioFCI, physical preparation and somatic sensitization of the body serve as key elements in the daily practice, enabling the embodiment of the principles. However, as practitioners deepen their commitment to long-term engagement with CI, new layers of teaching and learning unfold, offering further opportunities for practising.
Teaching the practising of CI: a shared space of relationality
Teaching the practice of CI as a set of physical and somatic skills and principles is not the same as teaching the practising of CI, which requires a longer-term commitment. This commitment paves the way for new research findings within the practice. For Pont, the practising would emerge when the activities that occur when we engage in a practice are systematised in a continuous practice. She introduces four criteria to transition from practice to the state of practising: Structural form as repeated behaviour, intentional repetition over time, a relaxation that allows performing with a minimum effort, and repeating repetition: ‘The repetition eclipses the doer and even the content of the practice, becoming itself the “content” – doing-the- practice slips into sheer practising’ (Pont 2021: 19). The result of this is that ‘practising constitutes a kind of deconstructing of habit's edifice’, that leads to a new future: ‘In practising, we intend that which we cannot foresee’ (Pont 2021: 21).
Longer term training at EspacioFCI develops the student's sensitivity to spheres of action, and qualities of touch that allow to ‘handling skills and relationships through energetic movement in space’ (Boullosa 2022). There are two key epistemological approaches that structure EspacioFCI's CI practice and fall under Pont's mode of practising. They involve intentionally repeating a structured form that leads to moments of relaxation, enabling practitioners to invest minimal effort in the practice. They finally eclipse the doer and the content of the practice by repeating repetition (Pont 2021: 19). In the advanced stages of learning CI, Boullosa's methodology incorporates five energy movements inspired by the Chinese elements (earth, metal, water, wood, and fire) and a system of spheres that define relationships between bodies in terms of proximity and distance in the space.
Historically, CI has borrowed many East Asian practices and schools of thought, from Zen meditation to Aikido or Tai-Chi. Steve Paxton brought many ideas from Aikido to create contact, Nancy Stark-Smith also incorporated many Tai-Chi practices, and important figures in somatics like Bonnie Bainbridge-Cohen also practised yoga and martial arts. Similarly, Boullosa has drawn much of her CI teaching from studying East Asian holistic approaches to the human body. Boullosa pursued studies in Shiatsu and Zen meditation to gain insights into the energetic dynamics between CI and somatics. She integrated the qualities of the five Chinese energy movements into CI practice, creating a teaching system that encompasses various aspects of energy, movement, touch, mental, emotional, and physical states. The second year of the CI program at EspacioFCI is structured following the cycle of the five energy movements. Each element is connected with a specific set of emotions, tissues, and embodied aspects, and distinct physical forces, and each of them prompts different attitudes in the dance that are interconnected with the unfolding of the principles of the practice. The five movements system helps to integrate the principles of the practice with physical skills and sensitivity. These energies are a holistic practice not only related to dance, but also to people's personalities and individual somatic bodies.
The energy movements are transmitted as focused exercises. Maybe someone always has problems with a certain exercise, or on the contrary, they love doing it, or they judge the situation or the exercise. Each energy movement carries certain physical, psychological and emotional aspects. Thus we accept that it is something that happens to all of us, all the time, and that it varies according to our characteristics, our moment, how we feel, our patterns. (Boullosa 2022)
For instance, among other aspects the earth movement emphasises mass and gravity, the metal movement focuses on patterns and limits, the water movement addresses inertia and fear, the wood movement involves decisions and roles, and the fire movement combines all movements in choral dance.
Boullosa also describes a series of spheres that represent different levels of body interaction in CI, progressing from the individual to the group context. The first sphere focuses on training basic movement patterns, while the second sphere explores gesture edges and the body's center-periphery connections. The third sphere involves the intersection and exchange between specific bodies. The fourth sphere establishes a collective center. The fifth sphere encompasses the creation of space in a choral context. A possible sixth sphere is about the group's awareness in recognizing and playing with the qualities that are at stake in the improvisation.
Acquiring dexterity in dealing with the spheres leads to the dancer's and the group's self-regulation: ‘Without managing the relationship spheres, self-regulation is precarious’ (Boullosa 2022). In our interviews, Boullosa referred to Sloterdijk's spheres. For her, Sloterdijk's opus magna Spheres (Bubbles 1998, Globes 1999, Foams 2004), offers a theory of our spatial embeddedness in the world, where life takes place within membranes that are always spatially situated (Borsch 2011: 29). Spheres are shared spaces set up by common inhabitation within them [...] they form the immaterial, yet very realest result of [...] resonances [...] it is the primal agreement of the community’ (Sloterdijk 2014: 966). Boullosa's spheres encompass the proximal space of dancers, where she observes the interplay between the resonances of the phenomenological, political, historical, and symbolic aspects of the body in community.
The spheres inform Boullosa's understanding of relationality in compositional choral movement, while the five energy movements encompass the somatic, psychological, and social dimensions of individual and group improvisation. The ensemble practice of the five energy movements and spheres at EspacioFCI fosters the emergence of practising. By incorporating physical preparedness, body sensitization, the integration of the five energy movements, and the spheres, practitioners experience somatic relationality. Boullosa uses the term relationality to situate the practising of CI beyond speech. Relationality has spatial and energetic qualities that create a shared space between the improvisers.
I prefer the word relationality because communication reminds me of speech. […] relationality has nothing to do with a narrative reading of the moment. Relationality is a more poetic, integral space. It allows you to differentiate the ways in which you relate. It has an energetic component. Communication always needs a person to issue the information and another one to receive it. The relation opens a space between you and me, the shared is generated. (Boullosa 2022)
How is this somatic relationality related to Pont's ideas on practising? In my experience, the opening of a shared space in improvisation involves the mutual investment of individual identities by the improvisers or the group. Individual identities are attenuated, creating room for the emergence of improvisation itself, what Nancy Stark Smith called the ‘third mind’ and Steve Paxton the ‘third thing’ (Paxton & Stark Smith 2016). From my experience, Boullosa's relationality also facilitates an embodied state that could constitute practising as identity transformation. As Pont explains: ‘When we engage in practising, the pronouns-that-we-are are unlikely to emerge intact. Practising would be the strange doing of an identity or entity, that has abandoned investment in the preservation of the current version of itself’ (Pont 2021: 209). The shared space of somatic relationality transforms bodies and thus fosters practising.
At the end of the first year of training at EspacioFCI, I wrote a text called: ‘Aprender a ser un cuerpo’ (‘Learning how to be a body’). In it, I asked: ‘What is a more fluid and controlled movement? I don't know yet. I value the process of exploration when I encounter new sensations that may lead me there. But what if my intuitions deceive me? What if I can't recognize my own challenges?’ (**** 2016). After consistently attending advanced classes at EspacioFCI for years, I have noticed a gradual improvement in my movement fluidity, an expanded range of somatic abilities, and the ability to break free from movement patterns. Initially, I experienced a greater sense of freedom, reduced fear, decreased fatigue, and increased creativity. Subsequently, I developed a heightened sense of orientation and awareness of my surroundings. Finally, I began to explore diverse modes of interaction and discover new possibilities for touch, energy, and movement exchange. I think this echoes what Pont calls ‘relaxation that allows [one] to perform with a minimum of effort’ (Pont 2021: 19) and ‘a kind of deconstructing of habit's edifice’ (Pont 2021: 21), which appear in the third criteria for practising. Stabilising these improvements requires a continual commitment to repeating the repetition of the practice of CI.
According to Boullosa, relationality opens a shared space in which the body changes as it is created. Deleuze views teaching and learning as an opening space related to repetition: ‘To learn is indeed to constitute this space of an encounter with signs, in which the distinctive points renew themselves in each other, and repetition takes shape while disguising itself’ (Deleuze 1968: 23, emphasis added). This repetition allows for new layers of complexity to continuously emerge, rather than foreclosing change. Pont emphasizes Deleuze’s point that, ‘repetition is, for itself, difference in itself (Pont 2021: 193, citing Deleuze 1968, 117-8). Consistently repeating the repetition through training allows the body to achieve new levels of fluidity and complexity, leading to a more diverse relationality. By sticking to the learning process, I can inhabit a new body and reach new states, exploring diverse connections with others and the space.
Fully embodying the four criteria for practising (structural form, intentional repetition, relaxation, and repeating repetition) requires a long-term commitment. Completing the training at EspacioFCI, as Boullosa emphasises, marks the beginning of the practice. Engaging in CI practising can enhance our ability to transform movement patterns and relational dynamics. Attending sporadic classes and jams is not enough for me to truly feel that I am opening myself to the practising of CI. Achieving the state of repeating repetition in practising requires stability and a supportive context that fosters the emergence of transformative experiences. Learning spaces like EspacioFCI offer a stable space where making this commitment becomes attainable.
Conclusion
Celebrating fifty years of CI and the passing of Nancy Stark-Smith marks a significant transition in the practice of CI. The availability of stable practising spaces serves as a crucial factor in the widespread dissemination and consolidation of CI as a fusion of community building, dance, and somatic training. This article has presented the CI practice developed at EspacioFCI in Madrid as one possible approach to contribute to this objective. The diversity and richness of approaches to CI are imperative for its ongoing evolution as a dance form, a language of somatic expression, and a politically conscious community.
This article has presented Cristiane Boullosa's teachings on the practising of CI. Boullosa strongly believes that the practice of CI emerges through the balanced repetition of its somatic, sensitive, and attitudinal principles, which hold political implications, rather than focusing on its formal aesthetics. Within her methodology, the embodiment of principles such as self and collective responsibility, non-judgment, acceptance, non-expectations, democracy, and non-hierarchy constitutes the physicality of the practice. At EspacioFCI, somatic relationality between bodies is fostered through long-term training that incorporates various key practices, including physical preparedness, body sensitization, the five energy movements, and the spheres of relation. Boullosa aims to create a non-discursive CI practice that enables somatic relationality as a shared space for bodies to undergo transformation. This transformative process leads to the embodiment of the practice's principles. Teaching and learning practising CI requires a commitment to refining our ability to transform patterns of relationality in partnered movement.
CI has an undeniable political dimension. The teaching of CI requires a profound respect for the principles that underpin its practice, including the acceptance of each student's learning stage. While this principle holds true for various teaching practices, it is particularly crucial in CI, where the practice itself is formed through the embodiment of its guiding principles. A sustained commitment to these principles yields two significant outcomes: a dancing practice that transcends formal aesthetics and a non-judgmental approach that makes CI accessible to all. This commitment cultivates response-ability, respect for boundaries, and fosters freedom and curiosity in dance.
The teaching and learning practices at EspacioFCI exemplify Pont's ideas of practising, characterised by a structured repetition over time leading to increased ease. EspacioFCI's goal is to equip students with resources for lifelong learning and continued exploration of the practice. A sustained commitment to CI and its principles opens up possibilities for repeating the repetition of refined skills and dynamic relationships through movement in space. Originally conceived as a mutualistic practice between teachers and practitioners, CI today keeps opening new potentialities for bodies. Engaging in research-based CI practices that embrace repetition and difference continually unveils new possibilities in movement and relationality for human bodies and the art of dance. Boullosa's understanding of CI as a shared space can foster the emergence of ‘an anarchic place within humans where there is a way to find order within chaos’.
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