Faking It With Gravity

Faking it With Gravity creates a space of inquiry to explore presence in

our improvisation dancing. We ask ourselves, what is presence? How do I

experience the falling part of falling? Or, the sensation of letting go into the

unknown even for a brief timeless moment? Am I still improvising in this

present moment? In Contact Improvisation we dance with gravity. That

sensation, our first handshake-touch with the earth, dances us through its

field for our whole lifetime. When we turn our attention to it, what

happens? This is the basis of our practice.

As co-facilitators Nica and Karen teach together, each supporting the

other’s voice, as the material shifts through numerous somatic and

compositional approaches to essential aspects of the touch-based partner

communication style of dancing known as Contact Improvisation. Prompts

for training will include the “small dance” of standing which shines

awareness on aspects such as simple embodiment, the natural dance of

the reflexes, and the ability of the body to balance in a constantly shifting

relationship to gravity. The intention of the workshop is embodying

presence. It is to distinguish between our concept of ourselves including

our goals, and our actual felt experience in dancing. Scores that apply

choice making and redirection, or surrender and instinctual reflex response

will challenge or excite our habitual expectations of dueting and ensemble

play. Material for the Spine* practice will illuminate the double helix spirals

thru the body, and energy extension beyond our finger prints as we travel

through space. Exploring both stillness and movement as in the work of

Tuning Scores* will highlight the ever-changing active dance of our senses,

confound and illuminate our patterns of survival, and allow natural delight

of ordinary compositional choice to reveal wonders of dancing in a

dancing world.

In Faking It With Gravity we work with looking at our patterns and making

choices. Previous workshop participants noted such inquiry and

commentary:

• When do I know I am faking?

• Is faking bringing me into realness?

• When I fake caring for someone elses safety, it quickly becomes

actual caring.

• I have been faking myself (identity) all my life.

Karen Nelson and Nica Portavia met exchanging dancing and love for

gravity. This meeting between different human beings and generations

creates a space to dance, to hope, to remember, to fall and to be together.

Contact Improvisation is our common strategy, our vocabulary, our home.

The workshop is open to all bodies, all identities. We are making efforts to

create a more diverse space for practicing, we encourage queer and

racially diverse identities to join this workshop.

*We thank Steve Paxton (1939-2024) for his ground breaking practice of

the “small dance” (1960’s), and his instigation to collectively discover with

many others the ongoing and evolving partner dance practice called

Contact Improvisation (1972).

*We acknowledge Lisa Nelson for her proposal of Tuning Scores which

reveal much including communication through the senses, compositional

choosing, communication through action and call, and deep respect for

individual experience as the part of the whole.

*MFS underlies so much of the movement discovered in CI. This body of

work was articulated by Steve Paxton and points to deep anatomical inter-

relationship emanating from the small dance, and beyond.