Dance and Improvisation

​Movement explorations​

 

I love to dance, and have fallen in love with contact improvisation (CI) – a playful, physical and energetic dialogue between two (or more) moving bodies. Contact improvisation originated in the  United States in 1972. It was developed by dancer and choreographer Steve Paxton, drawing on influences from modern dance, aikido, and somatic practices.

 

From my experience, it's taught me trust, grounding, deep listening, and creative awareness through touch, gravity, momentum, and shared connection. Of course, having a curiosity and a willingness to move in new and interesting ways helps.

 

This dance form was recommended to me by a fellow movement practitioner while on my level 2 Kundalini Yoga residency in Germany in 2018. I became curious to explore how dance, somatic movement, and kundalini might share common ground.

 

When I returned to Scotland, I took my first steps into a contact improvisation ‘jam’. I felt very much out of my comfort zone. Engaging with unfamiliar bodies and getting up close was not part of my usual repertoire. It took just one session for all that to change. 

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The Edinburgh CI community welcomed me warmly and demonstrated a few basic principles around a rolling point of contact and how to safely enter the dance. From then on, I found a new felt sense of freedom from within. An ability to express parts of me that had somehow become masked over time. An unfolding of deep layers.

 

I searched out the CI community in Glasgow, The Glasgow Jam, which back then was a small group of around half a dozen regulars running as a not-for-profit dance collective. I now volunteer my time to help organise and facilitate events for The Glasgow Jam. The community has grown considerably over the past few years, sharing our love for dance and social connection, without barriers.

 

Those tentative steps into contact improvisation have led me to seek out and explore other movement forms. 

 

During the coronavirus pandemic, I mused myself with regular online Feldenkrais sessions with two exceptional teachers, Adalisa Meghini in Berlin and Alan Caig Wilson in Edinburgh. 

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I also started improvising through imagery with regular Butoh sessions, a form of Japanese dance theatre, again with two inspiring international dance artists and teachers, Paul Michael Henry and Minako Seki. 

 

I continue these practices along with Body-Mind Centering® techniques, which help release tension from my body, elevate feel-good hormones, and balance and harmonise the body systems. These benefits I also recognise and experience in my Kundalini Yoga practice.

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A cosmic dance

 

Before entering a dance, I offer this proposition: Is kundalini moving us, or are we moving kundalini?

 

Yogic texts describe Shakti as the primal, creative force of the cosmos. It’s the pulse that flows through everything – from the stars to your heartbeat. 

 

Kundalini is a potent form of Shakti energy that lies dormant at the base of the spine, coiled like a serpent. We can use practices to gently awaken this energy and attend to its divine flow – spiralling, rising, falling, and landing softly in the body. 

 

When kundalini moves us, we dance with the whole universe.

 

To me, kundalini becomes the choreographer, the impulse. Improvisation is the expression.

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Here's one of my favourite poems, The Sacred Dance for Life, by Sufi poet Hafiz…

 

I sometimes forget that 

I was created for joy.

My mind is too busy.

My heart is too heavy.

Heavy for me to remember 

that I have been called to dance

the sacred dance for life.

I was created to smile

to love

to be lifted up

and lift others up.

O sacred one

untangle my feet

from all that ensnares.

Free my soul 

that we might dance

and that our dancing might be contagious.