Where contact improvisation came from, and what its 1972 origins mean for a Miami jam

A men's class at Oberlin, a gallery in New York and a 1975 decision explain why a jam has a host but no teacher and no certificate

*Image: Contact Improvisation Trio Dojo Florence by Koyaanisqatsi12, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.*

Contact improvisation began in January 1972 as a teaching experiment, and the problem Steve Paxton was working on was how to crash into other people without getting hurt. In a talk at the CI36 gathering in June 2008, he put a men's class at Oberlin College first, a piece called *Magnesium* second, and duets third. One habit a newcomer meets at the weekly Friday jam near Miami, rolling out of falls instead of bracing, goes straight back to that class. Early accounts disagree on a few details, such as how many people were in each group and who first approached whom.

A men's class at Oberlin, January 1972

At CI36, John Faichney, who had been an Oberlin student, told Paxton that the dance teacher Brenda Way invited the Grand Union to the college for a residency. Paxton added that the residency was in January and that the improvising collective numbered about nine people at that point. Every member taught classes over three weeks and the group gave three performances. Many of the students were men, so Paxton taught a men's class and set out to smash the students together the way physicists smash small particles. The result was *Magnesium*, which he remembered as involving "maybe a dozen people."

The headcount varies. Oberlin's dance department gives twelve young men, and a short history from the SARMA archive gives eleven, who threw, caught, flung, collided and fell among one another for ten minutes and then stood for a few minutes. Oberlin places the work on wrestling mats laid out in a gymnasium, and records that a student who watched it, Nancy Stark Smith, later approached Paxton and told him she was interested in what he was doing. The Miami site's history page reverses the direction: Paxton had already asked Stark Smith to stay in touch if he ever worked this way again. Paxton found that "the concept is so complex with that many people," so his next attempt used duets, and those duets became the study of contact.

Landing and rolling were the first problem

Paxton traced his motive to a solo whose premise was throwing himself off the earth without caring what happened. Teaching the men was his attempt to find out whether that could be taught. He watched them "like hawks" to keep them safe while exposing them to enough danger to see what a body would do. They crashed into each other softly, with a concept of yielding in the crash, and practised how to land, how to roll and how to widen peripheral vision. "How to survive what we were trying to do ended up being contact improvisation," he said.

He also admitted he did not know how dangerous the work was. He chose students in their twenties, who were used to falling, because he was afraid of hurting colleagues his own age, and he remarked that a form invented in three weeks misses connections that make it safer.

The Miami site's safety and consent page lists three sources of most injuries in the form: bracing against a fall instead of rolling, taking weight you are not structurally placed to take, and dancing tired. The form's own habits address each one, including keeping your own feet available to land on and rolling out of a fall. Paxton's account of landing and rolling covers the first of those habits.

June 1972, a gallery and a name

The event that carried the name took place that June. Contact Quarterly's history of the form records that Paxton invited about 17 students and colleagues to a two-week project, presented at the John Weber Gallery in New York City. Stark Smith was among the named participants. SARMA counts about 15 people, with the first week spent rehearsing and the second week a public showing of the working process, five hours a day, called Contact Improvisation. Paxton himself put the number at seventeen.

SARMA also describes a tour in early 1973 that took Paxton, Curt Siddall, Stark Smith, Nita Little and Karen Radler to the West Coast. The work in performance stayed informal: no music, special lighting or costume, and audiences seated in the round. Duets and trios were mixed with solo dancing.

1975, a name nobody owns

In 1975 the dancers working with Paxton considered trademarking the term "contact improvisation" to control how it was taught and practised, for reasons of safety. They dropped the idea in favour of a way to communicate, the Contact Newsletter that Stark Smith edited. Wikipedia's article on the form gives this account and cites her 1998 *Contact Quarterly* piece "A question of copyright - some history," and the Miami site's history page tells it the same way. Contact Quarterly's history confirms the newsletter itself: it started in 1975 and became *Contact Quarterly* in 1976.

The practical result for a newcomer is that no body certifies teachers. The Miami site's page on classes points out that you cannot check a licence and suggests checking behaviour instead: a teacher should state their consent framework in the first ten minutes and demonstrate as much as they talk.

A host, a circle and mostly silence

Contact Quarterly defines a jam as a leaderless practice environment where dancers practise with whoever gathers, friends or strangers, experienced or new. On the Miami site, jams are unguided, and the person hosting is responsible for stating the protocol and acting on violations. Its first-jam guide describes a short opening circle where the room's rules are stated, no coaching unless you ask for it, and a normal option to sit at the edge or leave. The Friday session adds a taught start: the events page lists a class from 7:00 to 7:45 and an open jam from 7:45 to 9:00, "a short class to warm up the tools, then an open jam."

Paxton was not always pleased with where the form went. By the mid-1980s he was displeased to see it treated as recreation, his New York Times obituary reports, quoting him: "In just 15 years, it had gone from an art exploration and a performance thing to a recreation, a dating game."

The Miami site's safety page sets out its own present-day house rules on the same ground. Contact Improvisation is not a sexual practice and not a dating venue or pickup scene. It is also not a therapy session, though it can be restorative.

On music, a jam musician writing in 2014 on the Contact Improvisation Blog holds that the form "can exist perfectly well without music" and recommends avoiding strong rhythmic pulses. At the Friday jam there is sometimes quiet music during the warm-up and usually none in the open jam.

Coming to a Friday

Arrive before the opening circle so you hear the host's rules. Sit at the edge for as long as you like, roll out of falls instead of bracing, and end any dance when you want to. The first-jam guide walks through the evening in order, and the events page lists current sessions.