Ready
Intensive with Ray Chung (US)
What does it mean, and what is necessary to be ready to engage in CI physically, mentally, emotionally, and creatively? What level of mobility, agility, and flexibility can widen the spectrum of possibilities in one’s practice? Which cognitive faculties, both conscious and unconscious, facilitate a wider range of choice making? Could one’s level of experience be a deciding factor on how and what one wants out of their practice? How do we inform our practice via our experience?
These and related subjects will be the focus of this intensive. We will delve into various practices to activate and enable new ways of engaging in habitudes. The act of practising can tend to form habits and patterns of movement that repeat themselves. Such habits or patterns may be undesirable, but by totally embracing these movements that arise from such improvisations, one is embracing the unconscious and trusting in it.
Biography
Ray Chung has a passion for dancing which he likes to share with other people. His main focus is improvisation and he has worked with Contact Improvisation since 1979 as part of improvisational performance practice. He integrates other movement forms into his work, including martial arts, bodywork and Authentic Movement. Ray has worked with the leading proponents of Contact Improvisation and has also been influenced by collaborations with others such as Chris Aiken, Martin Keogh, Lisa Nelson, Nancy Stark Smith, Karen Nelson, and Katarina Eriksson. He has also trained as a shiatsu therapist and instructor with Ryuho Yamada, Wataru Ohashi, and the Shiatsu Education Center of America. Also trained as an engineer at University of California, Berkeley. His work has been featured at numerous national and international festivals and venues.
Ray first met Steve Paxton at the Breitenbush Hot Springs CI Jam in the 1980’s. This jam was hosted and produced by Alito Alessi, founder of Danceability whom Steve also worked with. Ray’s work with Paxton brought them together on a few occasions in performance, notably at CI25 (1997), The Improvisation Project (1998) curated by Chris Aiken with Kirstie Simson, Ka Rustler, Steve, Chris, and myself. Rehearsal and research at the NY Improv Festival (2007) was an occasion where we focused on improvising how to improvise.
I’ve had occasional visits to Steve’s home in Vermont to help with gardening, cooking, conversing on almost anything except dance. For many years we had the opportunity to jam together at the Breitenbush Hot Springs jam every March. Over the years we had email exchanges to share thoughts on biotensegrity and related body movement topics. These exchanges influenced his decision to recommend Ray to teach CI at the Swimming in Gravity project in Brussels (2019).
Steve was an inspiration in how to approach learning through transmission by example. He inspired me to approach learning auto-didactically (self-taught) as he had done so himself with CI. This influenced me to learn by doing, using the jams as a laboratory for practice, and research related to teaching and learning.
Historically the development of CI was a collaborative effort with other dancers and students and was an excellent example of social learning, nowadays referred to as crowd sourcing.
