Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture

by Cynthia J. Novack

    In Sharing the Dance , Cynthia Novack considers the development of contact improvisation within its web of historical, social, and cultural contexts.  This  book examines the ways contact improvisers (and their surrounding communities) encode sexuality, spontaneity, and gender roles, as well as concepts of the self and society in their dancing.
    While focusing on the changing practice of contact improvisation through two decades of social transformation, Novack’s work incorporates the history of rock dancing and disco, the modern and experimental dance movements of Merce Cunningham, Anna Halprin, and Judson Church, among others, and a variety of other physical activities, such as martial arts, aerobics, and wrestling.

Genres: Theatre

280 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1990

Reviews

[Kennedy Butterfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually enjoyed this book even though it’s one of the worst books I’ve ever read. It might be fun and informative for someone who doesn’t really know anything about dance, but it’s extremely redundant, loose thinking, and no developed arguments.

This was written a long time ago so I try to have grace, but the historical analysis on social dance is so glaringly white washed, and it’s just hard to excuse this in a book that has “American culture” in the title.

I enjoyed reading about the group working with Steve Paxton after magnesium, mixing dance and life for a few weeks with no agenda. The amorphous nature of contact improv is really appealing to me and this was fun to read about in the early stages. Fun also was using the contact quarterly newsletter instead of trying so hard to codify the technique.

What I LOVED thinking about (and someone should write a book about this instead) was the conflict over emotion, theater, and spirituality in contact improv. I’m obsessed with this idea of pure physicality with the physical being the most real or the most true. The thing this book is best for is Steve Paxton quotes haha like “I’ve never seen anything occur which was abnormal, para physical, or extra sensory. Personally I think we underestimate the extent of the “real.” Yeahhh I love thinking about the physical this way.

And “if the only way you can communicate with with somebody is to stop and chat, or stop and laugh, you basically get away from what you’re there to study, and you’re back into the verbal world. I feel like you’re working through the wrong set of senses to understand what the work might reveal” this idea is very fun to me. Being extremely intentional about which senses to tune into, but then later he talks about these other senses emerging from concentration on the physical body, which is also interesting to me. So this is what I loved and think the book should have been about haha. I’m honestly not sure what the book was really trying to be about. Too many things, most of them sort of mundane about dance generally.

[E · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read this book for an improvisation class, and I have to say that I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I would give it about 3.5 stars if I could. It’s a good examination of the cultural factors that led to the rise of contact improv, as well as providing a nice history of the dance form. I didn’t know much about contact improv as a form coming into this class or this book, but this gave me a lot of useful background, as well as some ideas to incorporate into my physical practice. Overall, I’m glad I read it.

[Yue Corner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Al parecer, el siguiente paso será probar a hacer Improvisación de Contacto 😁

[Jade · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for class.
Agree with another review that it reads a bit like a dissertation. Still, contact improv is fascinating and I’ve truly enjoyed learning about it and practicing it.

[kyle]

I'm glad I finally read this one but overall I found it a bit disappointing. It's a very useful history of contact improvisation and I imagine it was cutting edge in its time in terms of applying anthropological research methods to a contemporary dance form. Now though it reads like the re-worked Columbia Anthropology dissertation it is in the bad sense (i.e. predictable, dry format and style). I was hoping that it would turn me on to lots of work in the field of anthropology that I was not familar with in addition to enriching and deepening my perspectives on contact improv, but I don't think either was accomplished. The best part is actually the profusion of pictures and almost worth picking up for that alone.
I'm glad the groundwork was laid in this book but dance studies is definitely ready for work that is just as grounded in history as Novack's is but takes more chances in writing style and structure.

[Lauren RM · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is very informative of the history of and philosophy behind contact improv, including sections on modern and social dance and what it has in common with them, social philosophy and makeup of the group, movement philosophy, founding etc. It read more like a dissertation paper than I was expecting, and that made parts of it really dry. I skipped a few sections of it in the name of actually finishing the book, but I liked what I did read and the pictures are great.

[Boris]

Classic read. Contact improvisation history.

[Anton Daneyko · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was not that interested in anthropology or any other sort of cultural analysis, however the history part was interesting. I also learned something about modern\contemporary dance.