THE POINT

This website [under perpetual construction] aims to provide concrete means of information and action for anyone confronted with relations of domination and the violence that accompanies them, in the milieu of contact-improvisation [and associated practices: somatic education, contemplative practices, etc.].

We are gathering >>> here resources and initiatives generated in activist and/or dancing circles as we discover them and check their 'micro-political consistency' (+ some tools for taking care of yourself). If you would like to contribute to the further development of this list of resources, your suggestions for additional references will be carefully considered.

We've noticed, through experience, observation and study, having been immersed for several decades in the worlds of arts and culture, and dance and contact-improvisation in particular, that it can often be difficult to situate oneself among the multiplicity of discourses, practices and discourses about practices generated by the many players in these worlds of expression and interactions.

By dint of frequenting contact-improvisation practice spaces, we have regularly noticed that the 'mutualist' values often referred to in this 'contact-improvisation culture' tend to be misused.

At certain times and places, instead of being placed at the service of the invention and creative regeneration of our bonds of 'mutual dependence', these values and this concrete work are appropriated by individuals who have access to numerous privileges and who remain blind to the interactional dynamics that they bring into play, maintain and tacitly impose as the prevailing model in our dancing commons.

We must be able to discern, in our spaces of collective practice, congruent and non-congruent attitudes in and around us. This seems to us an essential means of protection, neither defensive nor offensive, and necessary, if we are to deploy our agency in the spaces and practices that concern us - in fact all of us without exception - beyond any privilege of gender, class, race, etc.

The intention underlying what's being written on this website is to move forward by taking as much care as possible of all those who make up our shared spaces [for improvisation, action and reflection]: taking care of everyone, without exception. Taking care of ourselves and others necessarily involves opening our eyes to certain dimensions of our interactions with one another, and therefore also saying what's dysfunctional.

The consequences of physical, psychological, sexual, verbal abuse don't always go away simply by continuing to dance, but neither should they force us to stop dancing.

The work we'd like to continue doing with all of you who roll and fly on dance floors is not to bypass difficulties when they arise, and not to remain stuck in them either. We need to identify our individual and collective operating patterns, and then work on them in the flesh, the real world. Not just in theory.

By continuing to invent together everywhere locally and globally this network of mutual aid, information and action, we slowly overcome the possibility that predatory behaviors continue to be tolerated and passed over in silence in the world of contact-improvisation. We are giving ourselves the means to empower each other, and collectively. We are developing, one step at a time, one testimony after another, an increasingly broad and global view of the landscape of power relations in the international CI cloud: together, slowly and surely, we are generating a discreet observatory of systemic violence in contact-improvisation.

JOINING THE NETWORK

Are you or have you been a victim of sexist and/or sexual violence in a contact-improvisation environment?

Are you going through or have you endured rejection, discrimination, violence based on your appearance or your physical, mental, sensorimotor functioning, your social or cultural belonging, etc. in a contact-improvisation practice space?

You're not alone.

You don't know exactly which category to place your experience into, but you feel troubled, confused, very tired, persistently disoriented, no longer sure what's real and what's not, etc. after one or more interactions in or around the dance space, in a contact-improvisation workshop, jam, festival, etc.?

You may be dealing with the consequences of a situation of abuse (psychological / verbal / sexual harassment / assault) without yet being fully aware of it.

Not all violence leaves visible marks from the outside, not all aggressions are explicit (micro aggression, passive-aggressive behaviors, etc.). The consequences of violence not identified as such by the person enduring it can be just as unsettling, destructuring and destructive as 'explicit' violence.

There are still [too] many of us who think we are isolated in these experiences of systemic oppression in contact-improvisation environments.

The 'circulatory' nature of our 'international cloud of contactors' invites us to link up with each other on a global scale: nationally and transnationally, not just locally. For example, sexist and/or sexual violence may be experienced by people on different continents, and yet be perpetrated by just one and the same person, circulating at the pace of events on the CI planet.

Over the past years we have begun to come out of our silence, and we need you to continue this work.

You can contact us at the e-mail address at the foot of the page, to communicate with us and/or to be informed of upcoming dates for the 'Mutual Support and Activation Group' 's online meetings.

online meetings of the 'Mutual support and activation group'

These meetings, anchored in mutual attentive listening, are designed to put us in touch with each other and let our experiences resonate, in a 'safe and brave' setting. Anyone who is not a cisgender male is welcome* to the sessions.

*Let's state the obvious:

a) the issues of systemic oppression also concern a part of the cisgender men population (racialized, gay, with disabilities, neurodivergent, etc.) and their experiences, their points of view as allied, are welcome in our collective reflections. However, the MSAG aims to focus on the issues of systemic oppression experienced in 'plural feminine' [extended to transgender men], taking care not to homogenize our 'necessarily different' points of view, formulated in 'necessarily different' bodyminds.

b) not every white cisgender man can be placed in the 'oppressor' category individually, and the perpetrators of aggressions are not exclusively cisgender men. These categories do not define us as human beings. However, they do highlight the social constructs that, regrettably, have real consequences on the lives of real human beings. These categories are essential for thinking within and beyond the system that produces and maintains distinctions between individuals, holding them in power relations that are often left untouched.