Martial Dance is a contact play and sensory study framework developed out of the explorations of a group of dancer/martial artists in California in the early 1990s. It’s foundation is the playful touch practice of Toishou (“push hands”) from the Chinese Daoist martial arts (eg. Tai Chi, Ba Gua Zhang, etc), mixed with explorations from contact improvisation. It’s practices and techniques could fit in the world of contact improvisation, but it is more specific. It borrows practices, principles, and techniques from martial arts, but it is not a fighting form.
It is somewhere between a gentle sparring practice, partner dance/acrobatics, and sensory meditation on physical listening, body mechanics, and complex adaptive alignment. We listen through touch, perceive ourselves in mechanical relationship, and play with adapting that relationship while our partner does the same. We participate in shaping our partner’s movement while our partner does the same with us. Following curiosity and a sense of play, we oscillate between playful mutual challenge and pure following/adapting/sensing. We expand 3 dimensionally on traditional push hands work through taking movement into and out of the floor and through the air with supports and lifts (a gentler take on “throws”).
The basic premise of the frame is to practice self awareness, continuous physical listening, and keeping healthy physical integrity in dynamic contexts. We study the relationship of intention to attachment (reactivity).
To paraphrase a Daoist principle from Lao Tsu, we are never fully in control … accepting this, we become more present with what actually is and thus better adapt in the flow of what actually is. By releasing our tight grip on control, we become more present, and, paradoxically, this release of control and reactivity grants us more influence over what is happening than forceful intervention ever could.
The martial side of the work gives a kind of “testing framework” that rigorously and sensitively challenges us to develop as aware humans. We cultivate physical listening to our own and our partner’s structures and weight, accepting the inevitable influence from the other that comes with physical contact as we play with directing, accepting direction, and redirection. We play with mutual manipulation and influence, balancing and off-balance, adapting to circumstances.
The fully developed framework is very open, with a playful modulation of openness and intention in a context of adaptive physical listening. Physical listening is understood as a dynamic physical activity. We play in contact with each other, working with more or less specific intentions held with more or less attachment. In one moment, we simply listening to the other’s structure in motion. In another, we carry a more or less specific intention in relation to another’s movement or our own movement… offer support, seek support, lift or be lifted, direct or redirect, blend with each other. We study the affects of intention on reactivity, working to be gradually less reactive. (“Reactivity” is understood in the technical sense as in the passive sequencing work.)
The introductory training sequence to develop this frame usually includes the following steps. They accumulate, so, for example, the release work of Cloud Arms continues and develops into Sticking Cloud Arms.
The end purpose is to be able access to a more 3 dimensionally articulate availability for interaction, with physical safety and soft power, so we can interact in a wider variety of ways with different bodies.
Some initial elements and stages…
Cloud Arms Study: floating the arms slowly through space, keeping the elbows and shoulders dropped (releasing excess tension), self studying the mechanics of shoulder socket and sterno-clavicular joints in relation to arms. Expand from here to spinal movement (especially twisting motion), then to shifting weight from foot to foot, then to floating a leg up and articulation independently of standing and floating leg hip sockets, all in relation to the movement of the arms through space. Note that the rotation of the floating leg’s hip joint moves the leg; rotation of the standing leg’s hip joint moves the body. This walks through the space with the emptying and filling of the legs and the articulation of the hip sockets. Throughout, there is a scanning for movement glitches and arising tension, minimizing excess tension, and allowing breath to be unrestricted by gripping of spinal muscles or other forms of reaction. This is related very much to explorations of Tai Chi/Ba Gua, Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, etc.
Sticking Listening Cloud Arms: two partners connect their arms around the wrist and follow very immediately and quietly any subtle shifts in pressure, each arm independently. Stick to the other and follow any subtle push, yield, or lateral motion. The body is continuously reorganized to keep as easy as possible while sticking: feet move where they need to, arms stay relaxed and within peripheral vision, elbows stay dropped, etc.. If attention gets riveted in one arm. Switch attention to the other arm, attempt to alternate, then attempt to hold full attention in both arms at the same time. After the exercise is established, try subtly to proprioceptively feel through the contact the partner’s structure, to their feet and skull. This will inevitably involve a certain amount of probing pressure, but one tries to minimize these probing forces, using the minimum necessary or using only incidentally occurring pressure shifts to feel through the partner’s structure. Our sense of proprioception works through interaction and shifting pressure. One needs to interact in order to sense. However, this interaction can be quite small; one only needs grams of shifting pressure to feel the partner’s entire muscular/skeletal structure. The trick then, is that while it is necessary to come into interaction in order to sense, one tries to keep the force of interaction as slight as possible.
Center Line: A simple game used to orient onto an evading partner and evade while orienting. I want to touch my partner’s center line. I don’t want my partner to touch my center line. I want to move no faster than my partner or even move a little slower. I want to use less muscular effort than my partner, relying instead on movement intelligence, density of awareness, and skeletal structure. When contact is made, hold it as long as you can (staying slow and soft), as opposed to “tag and withdraw”. This allows your partner to work out how to evade, and it also keeps your mind n ongoing process rather than fixating on moments. This is primarily a study in reactivity… we tend to get hyper attached right when we are about to touch or be touched, blacking out at this point and initiating blind reactions. This is what we are looking to find, to breathe through. We maintain intention without losing presence.
Circle Game: I stand near my partner and imagine a circle around us, with my partner at the center. My partner does the same. Our circles are in our own minds and are different. We do not communicate them to each other. I want to move my partner outside of the circle, and I want to stay inside the circle. I want to move slowly and no faster than my partner. I want to stay soft, pliable, and present, and use less muscular effort than my partner. When I succeed in moving my partner out or am pushed out, I simply start over again with a new imagined circle without interrupting our connection. This game can be expanded to include putting my partner on the ground and avoiding being put on the ground.
Open Circle Play: We start with Sticking Cloud Arms. At any point I or my partner switches to Circle Game. We switch back and forth whenever we want. We might both be in the same score or in opposite scores. again, this is not about passive vs active. Cloud Arms and physical listening are NOT passive. Active listening is constant adaptive rearrangement of the body into easeful integrity, unconcerned with the goals of the circle game.
Open Play: We keep the spirit of Open Circle Play, but let go of the circle and give ourselves a more wide palette of intentions. Maybe i want to direct my partner through a specific trajectory, lift them or find a ride on them. Maybe i want to organize our bodies as a two-body system through interesting dynamic compositions. Maybe i return to the physical listening of cloud arms, but expand it to cloud body and add elements of movement into and out of the floor or spiralling patterns through space. From here it opens up into many directions, following the curiosities of those exploring with each other. While learning specific movement vocabulary, partnering moves, and lifts is part of the training, the work is more about principles and playful adaptive awareness than about replicating and specific moves.
Notes
In open play, where i am moving from game to game, it can be interesting to avoid switching games at “convenient” moments … this can itself be a form of “reactivity”, a reactive avoidance of the feeling of “failure” or awkwardness. For example, if I am playing the circle game and am about to loose (or win), I don’t switch at this moment to sticky arms. I’m curious to stick with it through awkward moments, notice how fear and attachment cloud awareness so i can work on being more present.
Again, this is not a fighting training. Some martial artists interested in combat or combat sports have said they find very useful things in the practice for that application, for example working on staying non reactive through vulnerable moments so we can act with more intelligence under pressure or at least see when movement habits take over and we lose presence. However in the Martial Dance practice we are NOT actually training fighting.
