Authentic Contact: the Art of the Encounter.
(by Soraya Jorge and Guto Macedo)

Translated from Portuguese by Nastassja Pugliese
Revised by Kristofer Gryte

 “A corporeal practice, a learning process, a daily creation of the self. Language that draws itself in the collective and personal web of experience. From afar or close, we spin affects. On this flux, others evolve, tiny cells transformed, new constant memories of entire presence. That we name Authentic Contact.”
- Soraya Jorge.

From a lovely encounter, from a necessity to see the other, to share, to have complicity, and even from the pleasure in fighting for the differences in anxiety for conflicts and discoveries, arose a research proposal. A proposal of great love.

The Authentic Contact is an encounter. An encounter between two people, between two practices of movement full of thoughts in ebullition. Two people which contain in themselves many of their experiences and the generation of many others when they decide to share a process.  This encounter between our eyes, bodies, movements, our encounter with the theories, reflexions and proposals of experimentation is not separated from anything.

Before this research started, each of us were practicing a style, The Contact Improvisation (Guto Macedo) and the Authentic Movement (Soraya Jorge). Despite the differences, we were both worried about many questions related to the practice of those styles in the fields of arts, health, and education. In 2003, due to a project from the Choreographic Center of Rio de Janeiro to support research on dancing, Guto proposed a trans-disciplinary exploration in the pedagogical field of Contact Improvisation, confronting it with the Authentic Movement that was being introduced by Soraya Jorge in Brazil.

This was the beginning of the research process in which we could develop what we call today Authentic Contact. On March 30,  2003, our journey began. Since then, years full of exchanges, gifts and difficulties allowed us to deepen and expand many folds presented to us by the research. The Contact Improvisation, as well as the Authentic Movement, help us look beyond ourselves and broaden the possibilities of authentic contacts, spontaneous, good encounters – like the sharing of those practices are, each day it will be.

The Authentic Movement

The Authentic Movement is a corporeal approach that has the goal of the development of an accurate listening of the impulses. It explores the question: “What makes me move?”. It can be a thought, a sensation, a desire, a sound, a memory, an inner voice. The goal in the work of  the Authentic Movement is to provide a contact with those impulses for, consciously, one is able to express or contain them. As the person goes on hearing its own chain of internal movements, it will suit better the relations it establishes with itself and the world, will nourish the vital flux that crosses its own body and will establish new and evolving relations in and out, between its own body and the world, between its own body and other bodies.

The structure of the Authentic Movement is the following: one (or many) person(s)that moves and other (s) that witness, paying attention for the necessity to have at least one mover and one witness. The person that moves (the mover) closes the eyes in order to map its own impulses and decide if wants to transform them into movement or not. And the Witness, with the eyes open, observes the mover and also what happened with itself in the presence of this other. If, in the process of witnessing the other a judgment happens, this will concern only the one that sees, not the person who is being observed. Therefore it is a matter of, when seeing the other, the person starts to see Itself. This relation without judgment will make arise a third component: the Internal Witness, the one that welcomes and does not judge.

But how to potentiate the witnesses in the Contact Improvisation? How to go through the techniques so as the safety of Authentic Movement can be more in the Contact Improvisation and vice-versa? How the re-cognition of the personal physical limits can be a focus of amplitude of space and movement (intern and extern)? From those questionments arise the Authentic Contact.

A daring step is needed to bring the practice of Contact Improvisation, after a long experience of Authentic Movement, without the expectation that both be like how we know them, and also a daring step to, at the same time, search for new forms of those styles that can take us to fields of work that are not explored, yet. But as Roland Barthes said in a Lover’s Discourse: Fragments,  “on each instant of the encounter, I find on the other an other of myself.”

The Authentic Contact

The setting of the Authentic Contact is not the one from the Contact Improvisation, not from the Authentic Movement. It is a relation that is established between the forms, the intersection, the sharing, the hybridization. It is not one or the other. On the Authentic Contact, there is no loss of the point of view of each approach, although it  demands a detachment from its original forms.

In one of the procedures of our research, named by verbal sharing throughout witnessing, the following words had appeared:

“I am grazed by an infinity of stimulus and some sensations become conscious. Focus on them to enlarge the movement, expressing them in the lines of space – in large scale of displacement as in scheming states of presence – throughout corporeal pulsations that creates ambiences and atmospheres, it is the exuberantly beautiful field of study that I am surrendering to.” - Soraya Jorge.

“My interest is in how, from the principles of movement creation of Contact Improvisation, I can sustain and develop a living corporeal dialogue and authentic with you.” - Guto Macedo.  

The scientific tradition brings us the will for truth and judging eyes about what the other produces or creates. But in the Authentic Contact we are not interested in this judgment, but in the conscience of the sensations on the individual and collective grounds, an interest in a type of look that turns itself to the creation of the other as an opportunity to see him, and in him open its possibilities of existence, not only of production. To see not in an absolute sense, but as the emergence of a moment that is always in process.

How could the Authentic Contact have its power raised as a system of non-verbal communication and of corporeal expansion development? What would be the actions in the relational ground of the Authentic Contact that will summon a “pre-language” in the game of certain improvisers/movers?

From the Authentic Movement, we bring the concept of witness and the appropriation of the judgment as part of the work in Movement Conscience. From Contact Improvisation, we bring the exploration of biomechanical possibilities of the improvisers (touchers), the process of combining its masses and weights as part of the way to improve the perception of the other: new dovetails, flights, rolls and falls are not compulsory; they are only possibilities.

 Jam- Roda Viva (Live Circle)

On this experiencing we had observed our interest in developing specific proposals for the investigation of the improvisation from the direct experience with movement exploring the dialogue between memory, imagination and will. Aiming the creation of a safe continent so that different intensities could be expressed, we developed a practice emphasizing the movement inside a circumference, a circle, with the same liberty and compromise that we establish in the working bounds inside the small groups – pairs or trios. 

With the purpose of spreading the rooting and the fluidity of experiences, the participants are encouraged to bring their gestures and movement to this structure. This work we named Jam-Roda Viva (Live Circle).

On this investigation from a collective body, it is recurrent the happening of a spontaneous form of relational dance. A movement on which the touch is not only the unique principle that generates the continuum of movements, it permits the arising of different qualities and textures of contact. A combinatory flux of approximation and separation makes the line of forces of the encounters pulsate, and generate a field. All are included on this organism without organs, and the happenings are physical reflexes of confidence, intuition, and creativity of all.

Unfoldments

The research has increased our interest for the language of performance, and because of that we had created a Nucleus called Sogu (Soraya and Guto) and the Human Garden Group of Performance.

• Sogu: Research Nucleus that produces theoretical and practical studies searching for movement dramaturgies that embrace the relations in its intensities and transformations.

• Human Garden Group of Performance: aims the interaction between Contemporary art and Authentic Contact. It develops an aesthetic on which the construction and deconstruction are in the performatic body by the time of creation. To search for new paths of investigation of the expressive gesture in the practice of dance within the contemporary art scenario is one of our goals. Throughout the Jams Roda Vivas (Live Circles) and the Workshops,  we are experiencing the exchange, the relations in movement, the spontaneous gestures in a ludic aesthetic: the Authentic Contact.

Who are we?

SORAYA JORGE is a journalist, dancer, corporeal therapist, teacher and movement researcher.
soraia@movimentoautentico.com
soraiajor@gmail.com

Specialist in Authentic Movement by the Authentic Movement Institute (EUA/1998) and studies with Janet Adler (creator of the Authentic Movement – 1994-2000). Degree in Contemporary Dance by the Angel Vianna School (Rio de Janeiro/1987) where she teaches in the technical course and in the university. Degree in Social Communication/Journalism by the Helio Alonso Faculty – Rio de Janeiro. Also a teacher at the Estácio de Sá University in Rio de Janeiro.

Post-graduation in “Advanced Studies in Contemporary Dance” and “Therapy Throughout Movement, Body and Subjectivation” where she also teaches.
She works with Body Expression and Movement Awareness, Primitive Dance, Improvisation, Authentic Movement and many massage techniques.

She has been developing with Guto Macedo a research for the integration of Contact Improvisation and Authentic Movement – Authentic Contact.

This research had been presented, by the invitation of the organizers, at the Contact Improvisation Festival of Freiburg, Germany, on the International Encounter of Authentic Movement in Vienna, Austria, in August 2008 and in the Contact Improvisation International Festival Contact in Rio in 2008 and 2009.

GUTO MACEDO is a director, choreographer, dancer/actor, corporeal therapist, teacher and movement researcher.
guto92@hotmail.com
artegutal@gmail.com

He had been initiated in Contact Improvisation by Nina Martin from Channel Z (NYC/1986) and had a scholarship from the Jeniffer Muller & The Works Foundation (NYC/ from 1985 to 1987). Degree in Scenic Arts-Theatrical Direction by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro/2006. He was a dancer on the Coringa Grupo de Dança with the direction of Graciela Figueroa (from 1980 to 1984), on the Cia. De Dança Débora Colker (1996), on the Intrépida Trupe where he also worked as a choreographer (Rio de Janeiro/ from 1999 to 2001) and on the Grupo  Profissional de Pesquisa do Ateliê Coreográfico do CCRJ (Professional Research Group from the Choreographic Atelier from CCRJ) directed by Regina Miranda (Rio de Janeiro/ from 2003 to 2004), among others.

He works teaching classes and workshops of Contact Improvisation, Contemporary Dance, Modern Dance, and Corporal Expression in festivals, groups, dance companies, private classes in Brazil and abroad. He is developing with Soraya Jorge a research integrating Contact Improvisation and Authentic Movement – Authentic Contact. This research had been presented, by the invitation of the organizers, at the Contact Improvisation Festival of Freiburg, Germany, on the International Encounter of Authentic Movement in Vienna, Austria, in August 2008 and in the Contact Improvisation International Festival Contact in Rio in 2008 and 2009.

A poem:

Gods, touching everything human

In the authentic movement much energy is moved
in simple, godlike ways
Nothing is wasted, every condition used
contacting the furthest reaches of human beauty

Every single gestalt is beauty
never is anything off the track
The crawling the walking, the snake and the prey
the shivering life of an innocent sinner,
unfinished gestalts, almost deepest of all

A being tries to crawl, but cannot fully
a spear is in its side
We see gods, touching everything human
turning it to perfect beauty

From this is all and every art derived
every drama and poem, any dance or display
are like stills, humbly pointing at the actual movie

This illumination of souls
this abundance of energy
where God's beauty emerges in human form
in time will call forth, the willed love in every witness

    (Stig Hjelland, in the "1st International Peer Group
      Meeting", Vienna, Austria, august 08)