Converted from Claris Works to HTML by Jim Davis, July 16 1997.

Ming-Shen Ku is a dancer and choreographer from Taipei, Taiwan, the Republic of China. She has traveled to America, this time, for the express purpose of attending the CI 25 event here in Ohio.

I asked Ming-Shen how she got involved in Contact Improvisation..

M-S K:: When i started to do CI, I realized that I had been using contact for years in my choreograph. More than 10 years ago, I was using people and touching and rolling but with set choreograph. One day at ADF, I jumped into a jam. I was dancing for the whole night and a man said - how long have you been doing Contact? i said - doing what ?

In 1991, I quit my job in the dance department of Chinese Culture University. I had lots of questions - questions about my dance, about my body. I made a solo but people kept asking me about my style... It was time to think about this and it seemed better to leave (China). I got grant to go to New York City to live and dance. At first I studied many different things but then I spent more and more time involved with Contact people only. I got more involved with release technique toward the end of my stay.
Americans say I'm so Eastern. My people tell me I am so Western. Who cares about Eastern or Western? What I know is that something in my blood began to appreciate my roots more. lt's not necessary to show that I am Chinese or Oriental but something more international. I have been dancing since I was walking and spent all this time training my body. Now I am going through a process trying to undo it. My body has changed a lot in five years during this "untraining".

Even before New York, something about this Contact experience is so natural for me. It has been very easy for me to slide into this form. But going through the more formal learning process, I started to clear up a lot mentally - a changing game between the mind and the body. Usually, the mind dominates everything. Body is slave. But doing CI, I start to let go of my body and the mind starts to follow. After shaking up this whole system, I start to witness my body through my mind. I start to make this whole thing (the practice of CI) more and more into my life. When I do other dance forms, I can be in the Life or be in the Dance. In CI, it becomes more of one...

I don't have to change myself to be in this form. I don't even feel like I have to try to do much in order be a dancer. I also sorted out a lot of philosophical thinking in the course of pursuing CI. The philosophy is strongly related to Eastern thinking but when my people look at dance, it's very analytical.

This trip is very important for me and for my people. When I returned to China from New York in 1992, my biggest worry was - noone to dance with. So I started to create a community in my country. So for the 25 years anniversary, I am taking that step back here to become a joint force. I am making a bridge back here to this celebration. It's been 25 years for CI, but my people are just getting to know it. It's taken this much time for the form to go that far.

I have been teaching Contact at university level for several years. I opened the class to everyone in the school not just dance people.
What I really love is a group outside of school, a weekly public workshop. Every Saturday afternoon, all these people peeking in, trying the form. The space is donated. The class is free. I love the openness. No obligation, all free...

CELEBRATION : My people eat and sing and drink at a gathering but for celebration, we seldom dance. And this is too bad for our culture. People are too concerned with the proper way to do things, with making things too formal. When I am with Contact people, I feel like I have found my tribe. But I believe that there are people like us everywhere.

---------------------over and underheard

child : what are they doing?
adult :they are dancing

child : it looks like they are fighting...

"If we had tried 25 years ago to be here, we wouldn't have been here."
--Steve Paxton

"I came into it (CI) and found in it a textbook for how to live my life..."
--Elizabeth Zimmer

"Contact Improvisation entered my life and destroyed everything - in a good way..."
--Riccardo Morrison

This 'form'
by
bindi

Guiding my cells into pathways of sensation in motion...

sensing the weight of the world within me

I release it towards the earth...

Feeling the depth of support

rising and helping me to rise/out of the anchoring that developed for security reasons.

At least I've always known where the earth was

and is and will always be to rise from...

to rise up from; fly from

caress with my body, weight

pouring my heart and sweat into floors around the country -- across state lines while the lines on our faces dig deeper into the skin

as time deepens the form...

fellow kin and skin commune with hard wood floors around the world

all lines gather/converge on Oberlin.

As we age and ripen and roll and play

and dance - dance - dance.

Growing up in this form, in the world of - and of -and in - and outside of the inside of

the duet ... that meets moment to moment

to kiss the floor

to meet the kin

to stream, with skin afire

hair flying, limbs reading poetry in midair

with artful collisions,

beholding the fellow touch revolutionaries.

Dancing Around the World -

What is the Contact Scene Like Where You Live?
(Lori Miller)

Thea, Colorado -- I live ten miles outside of Boulder. We have a weekly jam with six to fifteen people. But when Martin Keogh came to do a workshop, twenty people showed up! I wanted to grab them, sit them down and have them commit to dancing every week.

Jacky, Eugene, Oregon -- When I visited Eugene before I moved there a year ago, there were five or six people at the jam max. Now there's 20-25 people. An organization called TApRoOT (it spells Tarot too), whose artistic director is David Koteen, sponsors the free, weekly jam, which is on Wednesdays from 6 to 8 pm at Agate Hall on campus. I've been teaching there, Steve Paxton has been there, and Alito's DanceAbility is based in Eugene.

Natalia, Rosario, Argentina -- Rosario is four hours north of Buenos Aries. We hve weekly classes and jams, and go to Buenos Aries twice a year to dance. Our jams are on Wednesday nights from 8 pm to 11 pm at 3 De Febrero, 1845. About 20 people come to a jam. Christina Svane, among others, have come to Argentina to teach.

Caroline, Brighton, England -- Since the European CI Teachers Conference in Yorkshire last year, there's been a resurgence of CI. We have rotating national jams throughout the country which go for three days, and every two weeks there's a jam in London. There's 12-14 people at the London jams. The national jams are every two to three months, and these have just started in the last nine months. So far we've had two in Devon and one in Cambria. Ten people came to Oberlin from Britain. We have a national publication called the Contact Connection which keeps people informed.

Robert, Seattle -- We have weekly jams with ten to twelve people. We have an annual festival which is now in its fourth year, with a wonderful array of teachers including Karen Nelson, Shari Cohen, Scott Smith and other teachers in the area. The jam is currently on Tuesday night - it has been going about twenty years but on different nights. It's at the Seattle Mime Theatre in Oddfellows Hall, 10th and E. Pine, on the top floor.

Milene, Brasilia, Brazil -- There's a studio run by my husband which has regular jams, once a month. We send out postcards, but it's the only studio in Brasilia which does CI. Daniel Lepkoff was there last year. We have a program to bring US teachers to Brasilia. There's about 10-15 dancers, and seven made the trip to Oberlin.

Jordan, Columbus, Ohio -- I'm a grad student at Ohio State, getting my MFA in dance, specializing in choreography. There's a jam about once a quarter. We post a notice and anywhere from 3 to 17 people show up, with an average of seven. This includes both dance department students and students from other departments. I've taught a CI class for the last three quarters.

Tayoko, New York City -- There's a jam every Monday at PS 122, it was formerly a public school and now it's a performance space. About 25 people attend. The people in the New York jam have diverse careers - from professor to construction worker, and a lot of musicians. There's about ten students and 15-20 people all together here at Oberlin.

Body

I have one
mirror and two windows in my room
This way I can hear the passing cars, see the sky in three geometries.

If the body is itself a window
then it is also a mirror,

if a hand, then also a breast,
if a shirt, a shack; a tool, a toy.

11:45. Rain. An arrest taking place at the gas station.
Two police cars are parked at angles, another arriving fast.

The body, we know, is a temporary companion,
a borrowed bed;
silent child, slung over
the back of the soul.

Also a garden;
flower, dirt, dumb stone.

The cop's hands shiver down the caught man's ass,
thighs, shins.

He pulls from the man's pocket
an asthmatic's plastic breather.

Locked in steel, the body is steel.
Touched by water, the body is water.

A body will run to regenerate its hungers,

to chase after
the forward charging mind.

But in stillness
the body is honey,

waiting to be sucked from its intricate comb.

CI 25 Jubilee Performance I:

Contact Improvisations

by Snippy Roger

(One sentence capsule reviews and curatorial comment)

1. What a virtuostic place to be: "Passing Through," heading into planetary orbit around the shoulders.

2. "Pegged" on second: The effect of program order on Contact Porcupines -- deadly; do they ever mate?

3. "A Duet in Three" proves the old adage - one is always upstaged by puppies and babies.

4. "A Score with History": Does contact age like fine wine, or once opened, turn to vinegar?

5. A duet of solos, "bivection"ed by karma, turning the wheel of bodily dharma, whipping and leaning.

6. "Improvisation": Much ventured, few perches gained, dusted with Mexican jumping Felice.

7. The success of their outrageousness is yet "to be determined."

8. "6 Women, 1 Man and a Jew's Harp": Suffering from program disorder (the last shall be first), listening score plus large group unknowns make for tentative dancing.

Curatorial Comment : Forsooth, what hath the curators wrought? An evening of "strictly contact"? Me thinks not. Many a mote of theatricality sticks in the eye of pure physicality. Lights, action, blackout. Open the curtains, let some air in here.


WHO WE ARE
DEMOGRAPHY OF CI 25

what i saw the other night -
performance peripherals
lori b

bald feather
bristle snake
caterpillar stuck in a tree.
bite my support baby,
you define harassment.
two headshapes in a dwayning light

rubber boxers
bright at the edges.
a bug in a tailor shop
wrestles his mate for a stolen child.
they win the tiniest partner award -
Atlas and his family values

two men on holiday with their cat
volcano territory in a heart storm too far out to sea.
green fatigues me even on visionaries.
two men on holiday with their cactus.

italian ices
soda boys on safari
barbers introduce an oreo glue.
a skullular emancipation, boned and skinned.
jigging X, silicone launched
followed by a true true believer.