Teaching Contact Improvisation in times of Corona
Practicing and teaching Contact Improvisation (CI) is a challenge in times of Corona and depends a lot on the pandemic situation and restrictions. Dieter Heitkamp presents a lecture on teaching CI in the context of the pandemic.
Contact Improvisation (CI) is a duet movement form which has been evolving since 1972. Ways of Communication are explored that develop through possibilities of moving in pairs – rolling, walking, wrestling, falling, carrying while constantly maintaining the contact- spatially, energetically or physically.
In his lecture, Dieter Heitkamp discusses the use of various objects, methods, and materials in teaching/practicing, to overcome the lack of contact in the pandemic time. The lecture is a part of the “U can’t touch this” symposium organized by The Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts (HfMDK).
“We can never touch just one thing; we always touch two at the same instant, an object and ourselves, and it is in the simultaneous interplay between these two contiguities that the internal sense of self- different from the collection of body parts and the collections of external objects – is encountered. My tactile surface is not only the interface between my thought process and my physical existence as well. By rubbing up against the world, I define myself to myself.”
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