DIALOGUE WITH LISA NELSON

Some see Contact Improv as an art project emerging from the aim for

“advanced but non-elitist” culture as Robert Morris put it. Some (like Adalisa

Menghini) answer back: “no, it’s not an art work, it’s a social movement!” Is

there a cultural politics to CI?

Lisa Nelson – as an artist and in what she calls “service to the field” – has

been one of the key figures behind Contact Improv in all its dimensions.

Contact Quarterly – the publication Nelson has with a few others organized,

edited, and published for decades – served as both an organizing vehicle and

cultural meeting ground where Butoh, Body-Mind-Centering, Simone Forti’s

Logomotion, and of course Contact Improvisation could meet and were

described, documented, theorized and made public. What is the nature of

this work of hosting, facilitating and nurturing without which CI as we know

it would not exist?

In this dialogue Nelson has requested questions from Contact Improv

organizers in advance and she will respond with a focus not on the dance but

on the self-organized cultural work that has been behind CI.

As a pre-jam discussion, it is an experiment in linking the space of the dance

with (slightly) different space of connecting through discussion and

reflection.

Lisa Nelson (1949, New York City) has been a key figure of „New Dance“ as a

performer, teacher, organizer, writer and publisher.

“Supported by the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK – STEPPING OUT, funded by the Minister of State for Culture and Media within the framework of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR. Assistance Program for Dance.”