Contact Improvisation Levels

Copyright, ©Nita Little ++ Oct 4, 2024, Everett, Wa, USA. ++ This is a living tool, being updated regularly.
Please ask permission before reproducing or printing for distribution. 

A Nite From Nita: I wrote this list up in order to help myself think about the levels I teach and what material I think is appropriate for different levels. This list comprises abilities and skills one might learn or attain in the study of Contact Improvisation. It informs the level of material dancers are ready to engage with. Students may not have attained this level of material comprehensively, indeed they likely are working on some aspect of this material or these capabilities  – even at the teacher level. 

1. Beginning Level needs no explanation

2. An Advanced Beginner is awakening to these ideas and (is still a beginner)

1. is comfortable meeting a variety of bodyminds in a duet. 

2. can protect themselves and Is capable of physically deflecting weight and/or verbally saying, “No,” especially when injury of some order is a potential and for any myriad of reasons such as they are no longer able to maintain focus for that kind of movement.

3. Is able to monitor their level of focus in relations to the speed of the action and the needs of the physical relationships. They recognize the need to move at the speed of their attention – and can engage this way from time to time.

4. has rolling skills that allow the legs to function separately, finds spirals.

5. can begin to pour weight from body parts into the floor. 

6. is capable of giving a variety of percentages of weight to their partner.

7. Is capable of “hearing” a physical “no” and can redirect their flow without stopping the dance. 

8. Easily engages in single point of contact flow around bodies meeting in touch – without needing to jump. the point of contact – can follow through or replace the point of contact.

9. Is exploring modes of falling, 

10. Rises to meet their partner’s weight.

11. Is capable of seeing while in motion with diffuse focus – redistributing the balance of sensory dominance.

12. Engages in the world proprioceptively without visual dominance.

13. Is able to find many physical orientations to their partner.

14. Understands and avoids physical manipulation.

15. Respects their partner’s independence and agency.

16. Has 360-degree spatial awareness some of the time. 

1. An Intermediate Dancer

1. No longer seeks dances that depend on equivalence and sameness. 

2. Moves at the speed of their attention most of the time. Notices when they move faster than their attention. 

3. understands states of flow and can find various modes of physical organization and movement to potentiate consistent engagement with their partner.

4. Is becoming capable of attending to their partner’s needs as well as their own – attends to their partner’s mode and speed of attention. 

5. Is responsive to their partner’s communication. 

6. Is capable of shifting weight anywhere onto surfaces (bodies, floors, objects) with control.

7. Has falling skills including falling together with another person without thinking about it. 

8. Has control of their pelvis and takes responsibility for it.

9. Can engage pelvis to pelvis contact.

10. Understands that balance is dynamic and that counter extension supports balance.

11. Begins to experience the floor beneath their partner’s body, so that the path of weight exchange and support is physically recognized and utilized. 

12. Begins to understand and practice ongoing states of readiness. 

13. Has tonal capacities and beginning musicality.

14. Is comfortable with inversions and utilizes the weight of the head, freeing the visual field. 

15. Is capable and comfortable moving throughout spherical space, without looking visually at where they are going. 

16. Knows their forward moving edge and is attentive to their spatial pathways extending into space before the material form arrives.

17. Understands that the material is physical but also that the mental has a kind of physicality while not being material. So, this dancer is learning to move their attentional physicality – touching the world.

18. Is in a state of communication with their partner/s. 

19. Is able to engage in a duet and a trio.  

20. May occasionally engage their capacity to play.

21. Is comfortable with solos

22. Shows capacities to move co-creatively. 

23. Has 360 spatial awareness most of the time. 
    

1. An Advanced Dancer 

1. Is able to consistently keep their partner’s well-being in mind.

2. Has musicality and creative capacity in their solo movement and partnered relations. 

3. Understands and experiences their time practices – chunky time to thin slicing.

4. Their physical relations hold a gamut of modalities ruled by their space/time practices from reflexive action to states of communion. 

5. Can engage pelvis to pelvis contact through distal points of touch.

6. Consistently engages in physical communication as they build a dance co-creatively.

7. Is attentional, tracking their own and their partner’s attention. 

8. Is able to fall in any direction.

9. Has touch that adheres to their partner. And touch that travels through their partner: fascial level touch. 

10. Capable of acting through a variety of states of awareness and attention – understands states. 

11. (The following are dependent upon other physical/attentional skills and are not to be engaged until communication flexibility and capacities are in place). Plays together with their partner throughout the dynamics of relationship on levels that may include informed acts of power – dominance to surrender, acts of concurrence and accord, concession and refusal, parallel play, and dynamic range of states of mutual flow and dissonance. 

12. Always acts with communication and agreement. Knows the limits of play.

13. Moves from movement principles rather than defined pathways. 

14. Moves in states of readiness at all times: Expects the unexpected. 

1. Teacher level

1. Understands that the body is a mind just as the mind is a body. 

2. Creates milieux of safety and care and identifies lack of care where it exists.

3. Understands how to create states, especially learning states, trance states, and the states of relational and material entanglement. Can identify boundaries when they limit states.

4. Embodies curiosity within the dance and within lived experience. 

5. Thinks through the dance on theoretical and practical levels. 

6. Understands what a principle is and can locate a principle(s) within a skill. Can dance principles over skills. 

7. Can walk into class and begin at the beginning as a beginner: Has beginners mind.

8. Instills self-trust in students. Understands that the point of trust is for the student to have confidence in themselves. Teachers are able to take themselves out of the equation. Instill self-trust in students.

9. Are training their ability to put experience into words. Notice the words they use with specificity. 

10. Can identify and avoid words that have too many meanings to be used clearly.

11. Able to identify physical physics and have a working knowledge of Newtonian physics as motion and felt movement.

12. Teach from experience and not belief. 

13. Can identify and address time practices, space practices and attentional practices. 

14. Has physical access to all available body parts and can engage them uniquely in the dance.

15. Trusts themselves and realizes there is always somewhere to go. 

16. Can both set limits and break limits. 

17. Acts honorably with respect to differences in all its forms.