[Slide 1.

Blank]
[Slide 2. Hands that don’t want anything.]
[Slide 3. Video – P1020019small.mov, 1.53min]
I see her there. I remember her there. I feel her here: boisterous, giving, warm,
inevitably smiling; going … going … going.
This woman I am dancing with is Kirstie Simson. We are finding our way together:
noticing, listening, consenting, resisting, and offering each other moments in a
dialogue that is at once overlapping and discrete.
We mostly drift from dancing to talking to dancing, the discussion is constant, its
form migrating from recognisably ‘dance’ to pedestrian actions, to simply talking
[Slide 4. and back again.]
She has been doing this a long time, but what I find remarkable is that after 30 years
of working, performing and teaching, Kirstie still walks into the studio or the space,
focusing on not knowing what it is that she is going to do.
[Slide 5. Video – P1010994small.mov, 0.43min]
The differences in our practices are significant. Mine is predominantly dancing solo,
working on finding and refining alternate movement patterns, and improvising
through exercises in consciousness, mobility, and neuromuscular and kinaesthetic
provocations.
Kirstie’s practice is steeped in the world of contact improvisation [Slide 6. CI]. She is
second generation CI, influenced by—and having danced with—Steve Paxton, Nancy
Stark-Smith and Lisa Nelson. But she also chooses to distinguish herself from CI as a
singular approach.
[Slide 7. Blank]
Whilst maintaining the value of the presence of an other to facilitate what Kirstie calls
“deep listening”, her work is not predicated on maintaining or working towards or
around a point of contact. Instead, her systems afford multiple exchanges between
outer and inner worlds – small dances between and within individuals.
It is as if for Kirstie that in the simple (and often fleeting) act of physical contact we
might register some of the possibilities of the moving self, or perhaps even the [Slide
8.] “tremendous intelligence”(Simson 2008) of presence.
[Pause]
To be present implies (whether we mean it or not) knowing where one is located. But,
at the same time, dancers tend to refer to the temporal—of being in the now for
example—as being a critical aspect of presence. It seems to have considerable overlap
with Csikszentmhalyi’s (cheek-sent-me-high’s) concept of flow (1990), in which
[Slide 9.] “detailed attention” and the [Slide 10.] “non-verbal particular” (Clarke
2007) are foregrounded. It is when the [Slide 11.] “wandering, roving mind grows
still, when fragmented craving grows still” (Laird 2006 p.23). The state of presence
strips away the extraneous, integrating a heightened level of awareness …

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[Slide 12. … deep listening.]
[Slide 13. But what is heard?]
[Slide 14. Video - attending.mov, 0.34min]
I suspect being present is actually a mystical experience in the sense that it is
transcendent of everyday consciousness (whilst being inclusive of it), as well as being
esoteric and enigmatic. This creates a problem. Steve Paxton—who was responsible
for beginning contact improvisation practices—writes that “mystical positions are not
subject to analysis” (Paxton and Lepkoff 2004 p.45).
[Slide 15. What are these hands that don’t want anything?]
Two years ago Kirstie shared a very simple exercise with me. In it, she asked me to
roll or move slowly and gently down the studio space. She placed her hands on me
without wanting anything.
[Slide 16. That’s it].
The exercise is designed to open the senses and the awareness of the person receiving
the touch; to build and then sustain a unique quality of support for the dancer. It
reveals to them possibilities, engenders quiet attention and reduces anxiety.
Unneeded judgment recedes into the background, and—implausibly—I felt as if I
were granted a sense of the edges and substance of my being.
[Slide 17. For a limited time my body is that flimsy coating which serves as a
boundary between the outer and the inner universe. Like the surface of water in which
the sky is mirrored against the depths. Beyond question. Faced with the vastness of
nature I am filled with humility (Lilja 2003 p.10).]
[Pause]
[Slide 18. Blank]
Hands that don’t want anything is a simple activity, yet embedded in this simplicity is
a radical resistance to the political, psychological, sociological and economic
foundations of our culture.
When do we ever touch someone and not want something? When do we ever not want
anything? How might such an exchange—free from expectation and desire, filled
with waiting, patience and care—affect our corporeality … our sense of self?
[Slide 19. Commercial break].
[Slide 20. Video – Samsung.mov, 1.01min].
Hands that don’t want anything sits at the nexus of uncertainty and certainty, where
unknowing is touched by the substantial. In the smallness of the unwanting contact,
the courage to enter the unknown is gifted, and the vital uncertainty fundamental to all
improvisation (and perhaps understanding) is welcomed.

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For Simson, this is the power of the touch in her work. It acknowledges our
subjectivity whilst relying on—and celebrating—the other; [Slide 21. “union
differentiates” (Johnston 1973 p.13). This work launches the dancer into a forgiving
unknowing. It is silent, free of doubt and aware. Yet for all its strength, it is based on
a delicate exchange.
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle puts limits on how much an observer can ever
know about the position and velocity of a particle. The more you know of one, the
less you can know of another.
The uncertainty of improvisation generates a similar problem for both the dancer, and
how the experiences are articulated. It is knowing and welcoming the uncertainty that
underpins the work, whilst at the same time having the potential to unravel the
experience. It is a type of [Slide 22.] corporeal koan … the unanswerable question.
And this is where, once again, my work and practice as a dancer-performer collide
with the conventions of the academy.
Recently, in an effort to talk to and articulate the experience of improvisational
presence, I’ve turned to contemplative literature. It has a long history in
acknowledging (to borrow from the Buddhists) that, [Slide 23.] “language is only a
finger pointing at the moon and not the moon itself” (Johnston 1973 p.3).
[Slide 24. “Improvisation is pretty close to mystical thinking, and in its unique
revelations it may well be at the mercy of collective impressions in language since, in
using language, one assesses the improvisation with afterwords …” (Paxton and
Lepkoff 2004 pp.48-49).
[Pause]
[Slide 25. Blank]
The trouble for our logocentric systems of thinking and communicating is that
experiences that tend towards the mystical, or that approach ekstasis—the ecstatic—
are, by definition, imprecise. These moments in which we “step outside the prism of
ego” (Armstrong 2009 p.5) are analogous to [Slide 26.] silentium mysticum: a state of
consciousness in which there may be no words or images (Johnston 1974). They are
apophatic [Slide 27. – unsayable.]
[Slide 28. “Some things cannot be defined, or clarified, or explained. No answers can
be made out … why must everything be explained, or be possible to translate, why
pick it all to bits – as though it were only a camouflage for something else?
MADNESS. We hide too easily behind all the words” (Lilja 2003 pp.10-11)]
Efva Lilja—the Swedish choreographer and academic—is right, but at the same time,
the resolve to articulate is critical, because it is only by attempting it that we might
find the edges of our work and understanding, and therefore be able to make the
decision to not articulate, or leave the concern alone. This is preferable to simply not
writing—or speaking of it—as the default response – a practice that runs the risk of
making a virtue out of a phantom necessity.
[Slide 29. Blank]

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It is vital—in the exchanges between bodies, between inner and outer worlds—that
we enter deeply into experiences that are far more than a camouflage for some
(discursive) other. These experiences in the [Slide 30.] “cloud of unknowing”
(unknown 14th Century) mark the limits of our discourse and, as such, demand more
rather than less of our attention.
[Slide 31. Blank]
[Pause]
I would like to acknowledge Kirstie’s absence, and how she has not been able to
speak for herself in this matter. It is a conceit on my part to begin to even pretend that
I know Kirstie and her work well enough (and in particular what it is that she doesn’t
know, or is uncertain about) to present this [Slide 32. “____”] analysis.
When her presence is not corporeal my dancing is altered. It is not necessarily more
limited, it is just that how I listen, and what I am listening to is utterly different. The
oscillations of her presence in my memory take on a fragility that I think are worth
attending to …
[Slide 33. … now]
[Slide 34. Blank – whilst I dance]
[Slide 35. The video materials in this presentation were shot by Katrina McPherson
and the dancing was by Kirstie Simson and me.]
[Slide 36. Hands that don’t want anything (dancing with Kirstie Simson),
www.skellis.net]
Thank you very much.
[Slide 37. Blog links: www.slightly.net/improv, improv09.posterous.com,
www.skellis.net/research07]
[Slide 38. Blank]

References
Armstrong, K. (2009). The Case for God: What Religion Really Means. London, The Bodley Head Ltd.
Clarke, G. (2007). "Mind Is As In Motion." Animated Spring.
Csíkszentmihályi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York, Harper and Row.
Johnston, W. (1973). Introduction. The Cloud of Unknowing and the Book of Privy Counseling. W. Johnston.
New York, Doubleday.
Johnston, W. (1974). Silent Music. Glasgow, William Collins Sons & Co Ltd.
Laird, M. (2006). Into the Silent Land: The Practice of Contemplation. London, Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd.
Lilja, E. (2003). Words on Dance. Stockholm, Katarinatryck.
Paxton, S. and D. Lepkoff (2004). "Between the Lines, Re: presenting improvisation." Contact Quarterly
Winter/Spring.
Simson, K. (2008). Interview with Kirstie Simson. S. Ellis. London.
unknown (14th Century). The Cloud of Unknowing.

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