CI – Technique – Patterns
“I got the technique but I’ve lost the dance.”
So what is that technique, I wonder. We are talking about CI here again. There is no technique? or is there? Uh. The whole dance is based on sensations of forces, touches, levers, frictions, surfaces. So you need a technique to make yourself aware of these things, that you can sense them, read and react and alter your reaction as your reaction alters your sensation. So how can the technique come in between the dance, when dance equals sensing and moving with it?
Probably not, the problem more likely (I don’t know the case so well) is in the misunderstanding of “technique”. Often people seem to think patterns, movement patterns, as technique, but they’re not, they’re just patterns. They are useful yes, but only with your senses open. That you can sense when to use the pattern, and through that sense you start to sense how to alter the pattern so that it will work better in the circumstances, and soon you’ll be altering the pattern all the time and eventually, hopefully, you are not even aware of the pattern but you are moving the best suitable way according to your senses and your energy/feel of the dance happening.
So repeating pattern doesn’t necessarily open up your senses, thus it is not a technique that you need, it’s only a pattern. Pattern connected with sensing can become a part of the technique, when by repeating a certain movement you start to sense smaller and smaller changes in the actual happening, how the weight transfers, how my body parts connect, how by altering the movement, or place of my hand, a small changes happen in the action of my legs.
And becoming aware of this, these, you are in the actual moment, you are in the dance, you are dancing. Yes, you might be stuck still from time to time, but we are all stuck from time to time, it will pass.
Patterns are problematic because there is a sense of “right” in there. “To do something right, it has to happen like this.” “this is the right way to react to this happening” “this is the right movement”. But there is no right movement, there is several right movement and there is several wrong movements, they can even be the same movement, the key is sensing. What is happening right now? Movement, pattern made with sensing the gravities, forces, bodies is always right. Movement without sensing is easily wrong, and what is wrong after all?
So patterns are problematic but they’re also useful, because by repeating a movement you can start to sense smaller and smaller changes in the movement, action, structuring, everything. We are not learning patterns to learn them, we are learning them so we could learn something through them: Sensation of the weight of the head, how is it to be head down, how it is to align yourself on someones back, how the tone of body effect the movement.
It’s ok to get stuck in patterns, after all, we all have them, habits, and when we learn out of them we will get new ones, we are never without them, so it’s ok, but by starting to see them, and through them we learn more, and we are still/again dancing, making every moment alive and singular, not countless repetation without change. (there is never repetation without change, but if we dont’ feel/sense it, it will feel like repetation without a change)
Every dancer, musician, painter is training, doing the same thing over and over again, countless repetations, but learning, maybe slowly, maybe suddenly fast, but learning, changing. Do not think that dancing CI would be different. Only difference is that there really isn’t “right”.
When we get stuck with patterns we often also get stuck with ideas of good and bad and right and wrong. We want to be better, who wouldn’t. By making ourselves more aware of what we sense, what are our other possibilities in this moment (instead of prelearned pattern) we will get better.
I’ve been dancing CI about 7 or 8 years now. Within last two years I felt that there is all the time new routes, new sensations to be found. It might be that in the two hours of dancing, there is one glimpse of some new pathway. But the whole two hours is needed and the whole two hours is full movement and joy. And after all that, that small glimpse isn’t anymore precious than the rest of the dance. It’s all the same dance, It’s all valuable, it’s all joy.
I don’t dance to get that new pathway. I dance because I dance, because I enjoy it, because I want to, and those new pathways come out from that.
This post is related to my previous post, I got feedback that didn’t finish the though, but actually I did. this is just for help, talking just about CI, trying to make some of the things written already even more clear.
Hope this helps.
