Improvisation: Dancing with Complexity

Improvisation: Dancing with Complexity This is an abbreviated version of a longer paper written for a Diplôme Universitaire (DU): Danse Improvisation, Créativité & Intervention, University of Lille, September 2018. Ann Lenore Moradian perspectivesinmotion@gmail.com (+33) 689 70 2358 Key Words: behavior, body studies, coexistence, consciousness, creativity, cybernetics, dance, ecology, eco-feminism, eco-somatics, embodiment, evolution, improvisation, mindfulness, mindful movement, somatics, somatic psychology, systemic health, systems thinking, wholeness 1 Improvisation: Dancing with Complexity Both Albert Einstein and Gregory Bateson agree: the mind that created the problems we are facing is not the same mind that can solve them. Introduction Movement improvisation is an embodied, transformational practice that can aid in understanding complex systems and relationships. Group improvisation helps develop a capacity to respond to complexity with increased creativity and cooperation. These are the kind of “creative, complex and collaborative competencies” (Montuori, 2014, p. 20) that are needed for systemic health today. Mindful movement is a term used by somatic practitioner and scholar Martha Eddy that can embrace the full gamut of movement practices which unite awareness and the moving body, including dance, yoga, somatics, the martial, energetic and healing arts, and life practices. Shared movement improvisation demands this heightened attention and, because it is based on relationships and situated in context, it extends the practice of mindful movement to include the embodied Other and the environment in dynamic interrelation. This type of practice offers powerful ways to establish and affirm, in the flesh, an ontology of mind that embraces integrated, interrelated dynamic wholeness. Wholeness, in this sense, is not only saine,1 but also provides access to information we need to navigate the challenges of co-existence in the 21st century in ways that support life, and honor our highest potential as intelligent, sentient and social beings. Mindful movement is one of the critical ‘technologies’ needed in these “liquid times” (Montuori, 2014, p.1), and shared movement improvisation is worthy of particular attention because it offers the opportunity to experientially study, research and explore complex relationships and ecologies. This knowledge can be transferred and applied for improved systemic health at every level. Le Problematique In the industrialized, northern hemisphere, devaluation of the body, and fear of its feeling way of knowing have become problematic, driving behaviors that are destructive to species survival. In the “Industrial Growth Society” (Kwaloy cited in Macy, 2014, p. 2) an endemic, and generally unconscious response to existential discomfort is to disconnect from it (Brown, 2010). Johan Hari, in his research on addiction in the US says “we have created a society where a significant number of our fellow citizens cannot bear to be present in their lives” (Hari, 2015). This great unease is evident, with record levels of anxiety, depression, behavioral disorders, suicide, and violence (Brown, 2010). There 1 French: healthy 2 are many things that motivate disassociation from embodied being, including boredom, worry, disappointment, confusion, disgust, pain, overwhelm, trauma, despair, or simply trying to survive in a world that demands highspeed performance, and relentless multi-tasking. It can be a great relief to feel less, particularly in a world where competition, and the violence that can often accompany it are constantly at play. Nevertheless, shutting down physical, bodily awareness, and with it responsiveness to the information it provides, is not a healthy solution. Psychiatrist R.D. Laing, who coined the term disembodiment, describes this as a state where “the body is felt more as one object among other objects in the world than as the core of the individual’s own being,” and saw it as a pathological problem (Laing cited in Sheets-Johnstone, 2018, p. 9). Maxine Sheets-Johnstone sees it also as a social pathology, where the body is experienced more as an object “than as an animate form of life integrally bound to other forms of animate life,” including our own “common creaturehood and common humanity” (Sheets-Johnstone, 2018, p. 9). There are a myriad of ways to disassociate from the body, including numbing, over-intellectualization, the vast array of addictive behaviors, mental disorders, and ‘spiritual bypassing’ where spirituality is used as a way of avoiding embodied discomforts, like emotions (Brown, 2010; Stromsted, 2017; Eddy & Moradian, 2018). According to Brené Brown, it is not possible to disconnect from feelings selectively. At the same time one disconnects from anger, shame, fear or overwhelm, one also disconnects from joy, love and delight. Yet it is only through felt experience and the emotions that come with it that one can care, connect and feel a sense of belonging, which “give purpose and meaning in our lives” (Brown, 2010). As it currently plays out in the industrialized world this creates a double bind, a situation “in which no matter what a person does, he can’t win” (Bateson, 2000, p. 201). Gregory Bateson identified the double bind as a root cause of schizophrenia, or splitmind (from the Greek skhizein, ‘to split,’ and phren, mind). It would be simplistic, however, to say that detachment is ‘bad’ and attachment is ‘good.’ There is an appropriate time and place for connection, for distance, for detachment, and varying degrees between. In living systems, a complex dynamic balance is always at play. In peeling back the layers of thoughts, feelings and sensations that drive unhealthy human behaviors, fear is often the underlying culprit. According to economist John Maynard Keynes, the creation of the “religions, rituals, rules, networks, and conventions of society,” are driven by people’s search for courage “in face of the unknown and unknowable” (cited in Skidelsky, 2010, p. xix). Fear of the unknown is often expressed as deepseated resistance to change, or a relentless effort to deny, organize, define, predict or control. Human systems, institutions, modes of education and behaviors continue to be driven by the idea that the human being can understand, predict and control the natural world as if it were an object apart. Within this framework, fear has been used as a compelling force for economic gain, political persuasion and control (Curtis, 2012), and while many have profited from this, in the larger perspective it has become clear that healthier 3 approaches which recognize the interconnectedness of complex living systems are called for. Although useful, we have outgrown (or perhaps overgrown) conceptions of a singular, unifying and absolute ‘answer;’ binary polarizations; ideas of independence; the separation of man from nature; survival and ‘success’ through competition and exploitation; and the dissection of wholes into parts and pieces. It is becoming ever more evident that these are old ideas no longer serve human thriving and, indeed, threaten human survival. Life is inherently a voyage into the unknown, yet the human brain “craves certainty” (Montuori, 2003, p. 4). Racked with fear, it is difficult to enjoy the absurdity of this paradox. Environmental educator David Orr lucidly points out that ignorance is not a “solvable problem” but, rather, “an inescapable part of the human condition” (Orr 1991, p. 52). Fear and Trembling Disassociation and devaluation of the body, its intelligence and wisdom is an expression of the greater dis-ease between humankind and nature itself. The body, like nature and chaos, is a wild place, “not out of control, but out of our control.” David Abram reminds us, “wildness is what we are made of, and we cannot escape it” (2010). Embodied being weaves together the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, but also the “glandular” (Tharp, 2018). While humans have the remarkable ability to create real and astonishing wonders, to envision ideals, and progress toward an ever-advancing conception of perfection, the human condition remains entrenched in the raw animal drives of nature, impermanence and decay. Much of the anguish, self-hate, and existential grief humans are prone to come from this seemingly unreconcilable contradiction between creature and ideal. This is another paradox worthy of note because, like the need for certainty in an inherently uncertain world, it is a foundational construct of the human condition. Fear and stress can trigger the fight-flight-or-freeze response which bypasses cortical parts of the brain where decision-making happens, connecting directly to the limbic system, one of the earliest and most primitive parts of the brain to have developed in human evolution (Minton and Faber, 2016; Sapolsky, 2017). The limbic system is designed to react instantly, rather than consider expansively. In an emergency, this type of reaction is appropriate and necessary for self-preservation. But as a default mode of operation, it can become debilitating not only in terms of health and behavior, but also in terms of possibility. The more often synaptic patterns fire together, the stronger those connections and patterns become. As habitual patterns become more entrenched over time, alternate possibilities become less evident, and less likely. Repeated patterns become patterned responses that bypass conscious awareness or choice making: they become habits. Habits that at one point in time are useful and constructive may become counter-productive or destructive in another context, or at a later moment in time. 4 Situating Systemically In systems theory, the “material universe is seen as a dynamic web of interrelated events,” processes, and relationships (Capra & Luisi, 2014, p. 39). The terms systems thinking and cybernetics are sometimes used interchangeably, in spite of their different origins. The conceptualization of cybernetics was the result of discussions between a group of mathematicians, neuroscientists, social scientists, and engineers who participated in the Macy Conferences in New York from 1941 to 1960. Norbert Wiener, who coined the term,2 defined cybernetics as the science of “control and communication in the animal and the machine” (p. 51). The focus of these researchers was primarily on communication patterns in closed loops and networks, and was connected to military funding for aircraft tracking. Systems theory was developed by organismic biologists, Gestalt psychologists, and ecologists. Its focus is on the interdisciplinary study of complex, non-linear relationships within and between systems. Studying organisms led to “thinking in terms of connectedness, relationships, and context” (p. 79). Ludwig von Bertalanffy, an Austrian biologist who introduced the idea of ‘flowing balance’ within living systems in the 1940s, “believed that a general systems theory would offer an ideal conceptual framework for unifying various scientific disciplines that had become isolated and fragmented” (p. 49). Informed by the life sciences, systems thinking recognizes the self-organizing, self-regulating aspects of living systems, which defy the second law of thermodynamics (that entropy always increases). Living systems are inherently open systems, biologically dependent on metabolic processes. Rather than moving toward entropy, the living world tends to evolve toward increasing complexity, from disorder to order. Whether a cell, a coral reef, a human being (or according to Fritjof Capra and Gregory Bateson, a social system), living systems use information from within and from without to selfregulate, using cycles of feedback, processing and response. At times, feedback loops can become complex enough that they push a system toward a point where it must either ‘break down,’ retreating to a lower level of organization, or ‘break through’ to more complex levels of organization. This is called a bifurcation point. Inherently creative and self-making (or, according to Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, auto-poietic), living systems generate novelty, and often emergent properties that are not present in the individual systems alone, but are a result of the interaction between systems. Fritjof Capra and Luigi Luisi contend that life itself as an emergent property (2014). Evolution According to historian Yuval Noah Harari, humankind is currently in the process of transforming itself into a new species, breaking the “laws of natural selection” and replacing them with the “laws of intelligent design” (2011, p. 445-46). He argues that human evolution will now be determined by our capacity to imagine how we might wish to become. “The prevailing feeling is… 2 From the Greek kybernetes, meaning ‘steersman’ 5 that our ability to modify genes is outpacing our capacity for making wise and far-sighted use of the skill” (p. 450). Harari asks: “Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?” (p. 466). Yes. Dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who not only do not know what they want, but are also frightened and lack imagination. Alfonse Montuori believes that “we are in a transitional moment,” with “an opportunity to shape the emerging world” (2014, p. 2). To navigate this moment well requires developing, embracing and using our complex, creative and collaborative competencies. It also requires learning to manage fear and discomfort with more awareness and intentionally. Habitually shutting down awareness to the information the body offers is not constructive, and it impedes optimal response. To navigate the complex challenges ahead demands we transform our emotional and behavioral relationship with change and the unknown – with life itself. Embodied, transformational practices like movement improvisation help do just that. Body Sense Far from calm and orderly, the feeling, breathing, moving, changing body brings with it far more than education for the Industrial Growth Society has prepared us. For example, the imagined construct of five senses, codified in Aristotle’s De Anima (On the Soul) over 2000 years ago (Jarrett, 2014), is currently being expanded to include additional perceptions of autonomic functioning (interoception), voluntary activity (exteroception), and the relationship to gravity and balance (graviception) (Eddy, 2016). According to the World Economic Forum, scientists now suggest the possibility of as many as 33 senses, including thermoception, chronoception, electroception, and magnetoreception (Gray, 2017). These senses were present in us before we brought our attention to them, or gave them names. While definitions, models, and frameworks of understanding are useful in rendering knowledge conscious, retrievable and communicable, they become counterproductive when they impede, rather than enhance, experience and learning. In the mindful body, one ‘listens’ deeply, consciously receptive to sensory information and layers of psycho-physical activity that are often ignored. According to improvisation veteran Nancy Stark Smith, “the use of the senses is important in reading the environment, internally and externally, and therefore knowing how to proceed” (De Spain, 2014, p. 105). From a systems thinking perspective, this refers to a feedback system that not only helps us read our selves, but also orient in relation to and navigate through a shared world. Deborah Hay says “There’s no time for sensing” in improvisation, which suggests that our bodies process information faster than we can consciously register or track (De Spain, 2014, p. 105). Experience in both dance and the martial arts confirms that the body’s responses are not only faster than the mind’s, but that ‘thinking our moving’ can slow it down or even impede effective response. The body is our primary dwelling place, in and through which we explore, discover and express our being. It serves as “a vehicle through which we 6 navigate, learn about, and act with/in the world” (Eddy & Moradian, 2018, p. 5). It is also a complex system, made up of other complex systems3, embedded within and in relation to yet other complex systems4 (Maturana & Varela; Capra & Luisi, 2014; Goodenough, 1998). The body affords different ways of knowing than the intellect in isolation, and because of this, offers access to different information, understanding, ideas and capacities. Opening to embodied aspects of inter-being is opening to life itself, and to the ongoing process of change and transformation. This is almost guaranteed to disturb, if not outright petrify. Time and care are needed to sense and feel, but also to temper and grow our capacity to deal with the unknown. Creating New Patterns In dance improvisation, particularly in groups, the dancer is constantly confronted with the unknown and ‘unforeseeable’ (Latin, improvisus). The practice of improvisation is one of which responds to the unknown and unforeseen with ‘Yes, and…’ One develops an animal-like awareness, and capacity to respond to the unexpected creatively. S/he practices honing in to the fields of perception; ‘listening’ with every sense available; putting things together in new ways; learning to rely on intuitive, embodied intelligence, intellect and imagination simultaneously; and developing the abililty to stay alert, calm, conscious and creative in the midst of uncertainty, and what Montuori refers to as ambiguity. Improvisational movement practices groom the practitioner to be consciously engaged in, and relatively habituated to this process of interweaving self, other and environment in relational conversation. Movement improvisation offers an opportunity to practice responding to the constant shifting of and between interior and exterior landscapes. It offers an opportunity to practice responding creatively and constructively to the discomfort and fear the unforeseen can invoke. Practicing encountering the unknown does not make the unknown familiar, but rather helps to make the state of not knowing more familiar. It does not alter the process of change, but can decalcify our resistance to it, and nourish our ability to respond creatively. In this way, improvisers become highly attuned to the many threads at play in the moving moment, and to the interdependent ecologies of self, other and “more-than-other” (Abram, 1997). Over time, the unknown can become an invitation to dance with transformation and change, to participate in the creative moment of becoming, to explore, to play, to discover and invent. Mindful movers learn to mesh together awareness, breath, sensation, memory and imagination within the moving body, unearthing depths of unconscious knowledge, often allowing information and intelligence to become insight, sensibility, creativity, understanding and even wisdom. Over time, this awareness can expand, stretching into territory that becomes difficult to capture in language. Nervous, cardio-vascular, endocrine, musculo-skeletal, etc. (which are themselves made up of complex systems, such as organs, fluids, tissue, bone (which are, in turn, made up of complex systems (cells, molecules, etc.)). 4 Social, physiological, environmental, etc. 3 7 Practice Movement improvisation is not just about meeting the unknown, but also about how we meet it. Life itself is the most evident improvisational practice we have available to us, yet it can feel overwhelming and the stakes can be too high to relax, to play, or ‘go with the flow.’ Improvising together is a great way to practice dealing with the entanglements and synergies of interrelation, interdependence, and co-creation. It is a way to practice dancing with complexity. We are both informed and formed by our practice. Our practice, whatever it may be, and our habits establish patterns of thinking, doing, being and interbeing in the world that seep out into our lives. Each approach or form we practice has its particular areas of focus, or inquiry. The principals and strategies specific to the models, or framework we use to give shape and order to our lives, has potent ramifications on how we see and understand our world, our role in it, and the possibilities available. Somatic5 approaches suggest that humans develop, learn and evolve through movement and our moving bodies (Eddy, 2016; Sheets Johnstone 1999). Current neuroscience indicates “new information, new experiences, and changes in the environment develop new brain networks” (Minton & Faber, 2016, p. 37), which supports this idea. Many forms of physical movement with ancient histories, like yoga and tai chi, for example, have been explored and refined so thoroughly over the centuries that the practice itself becomes more reliable in many ways than intellectual analysis, which can be limited by the need for logic and certainty, by its language, or by the technological tools available. Looking through the lenses of the logical mind clarify understanding from an analytic perspective. At the same time, to discount the learned and lived knowledge harvested over centuries, even millennia, would be a gross injustice to years of dedicated research and expertise from within the field. E-motion Maxine Sheets Johnstone says that at the most primary level of life, a cell is motivated to move either toward or away from what it encounters. This could be interpreted, in emotional terms as desire or aversion, and in terms of survival, as predator or prey (Ehrenreich, 1997; Sheets-Johnstone, 2008). We are “moved to move in feelings of trust, feelings of fear, feelings of joy” (Sheets-Johnstone, 2008, p. 11-12). Anna Halprin considered emotions to be the “motivation of life itself” (Halprin, cited in De Spain, 2014, p. 146). Emotion can be activated through direct or indirect brain signals. Direct signals, as noted above, register information from outside, through the body and its senses, to the amygdala, where it flows down the brain stem and directly to the muscles, activating a reflexive response. Indirect signals, on the other Defined by Thomas Hanna, who coined the term, as “the body as perceived from within” (2015) 5 8 hand, flow first through the cerebral cortex, where they are modulated by data and memory, before moving on to the amygdala. This slower response pattern allows time to reflect, deepen understanding of our experience, and develop “emotional awareness and more measured emotional responses” (Minton & Faber, 2016, p. 64-67; Sapolsky, 2017). Sometimes, it can feel like emotion is “wrestling with focus and balance and reason for control,” moving us closer to chaos (De Spain, 2014, p.145). According to dance educators Sandra Minton and Rima Faber, emotions can, indeed, distract from taking in information or content (Minton & Faber, 2016). When we dampen or shut down emotions, we also stifle the living experience of our bodies, our world, and our place in it. This is understandable: as Steve Paxton says, “It’s a minefield in there” (De Spain, 2014, p. 143). Nevertheless, as Kent de Spain points out, emotions play an important part in making us human (2014). Along with many others, DeSpain finds improvisation can develop a capacity to be both attached and detached at the same time, which is often useful in managing “emotional content.” Comparing improvisation to meditation, he says we become accustomed to letting go of things that do not serve the moment, while being open to the ever-emerging present, full of new possibility. Emotions are embodied, and “include alterations in how we move and feel and think and react (2014, p. 143).” Because emotions are primary drivers of our behavior, and because many of them are unconscious or suppressed, this is an important area for both research and practice. As mentioned previously the comments on practice, intellectually understanding how emotions work is useful, but not the same as practical and practiced experience dealing with them. The intellect is only one layer of the mind, and is not particularly helpful in dealing humanely with some of our deeper discomforts. The interplay of relationships, at every level, triggers our emotions, and interaction in an improvisational setting inevitably challenges us and conditions us to meet our emotions without being waylaid by them. Motion and Cognition Cognitive neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, who pioneered the field of embodied cognition, suggests that full consciousness is not possible without the body (Pontin, 2014; cited in Eddy & Moradian, 2018, p. 10, 15-16), and Maxine Sheets-Johnstone proposes that “animation is the foundation for understanding consciousness in its entire multiple and varied forms” (p. 463). Human movement begins in the womb, before birth, and accompanies functional and social development (Eddy & Moradian, 2018, p. 9-10). SheetsJohnstone, along with Edmund Husserl (who founded the field of phenomenology) and Hermann von Helmholtz (physicist and physiologist of the 19th century), see movement as central to perception and, through perception, inextricably linked to cognition and behavior. Von Helmholtz highlights how our movement in space changes our relationship, perception and perspective, and Sheets-Johnstone summarizes, saying that “recognition of, and attention to movement opens our eyes to the complex reality that is animation, a reality that defines the multiple facets of a subject-world relationship.” She encourages us to “begin thinking in terms of dynamics,” 9 rather than focusing only on behavior or action (2018, p. 462). Movement, she says, “opens paths to multiple dimensions of animation” (p. 457-58). Cognition, according to Barbara Dilley, is “a fundamental resource for finding our way forward, in moving and in life” (De Spain, 2014, p. 141). At the risk of being redundant, our survival as individuals and as a species requires opening our cognitive understanding to include all of the information – all of the feedback – that our moving, breathing bodies offers, including the emotions, senses, instincts, imagination, the interpersonal, and the transpersonal, or spiritual. Paying Attention Movement improvisation demands and develops attention and awareness. De Spain describes attention as “intentional focus on a specific ‘thing,’ or closely observing the relationship and interaction of more than one ‘thing.’” Awareness, he says, “is a state of being open to stimuli, of being receptive to what comes our way” (2014, p. 168). Neuroscientists see attention situated along a continuum of consciousness, and recognize it as “an executive function that controls behavior”(Minton & Faber, 2016, p. 39). De Spain says that what distinguishes dance improvisation from other activities is not movement, but rather, “the nature” of our attention. There are places that we can go in improvisation that are not in the realm of the conscious mind,” and “not all attention is in the mind (at least not the ‘mind’ as traditionally understood).” To cultivate a state of mind that is “interactional without being dictatorial” can “transform(ing) the everyday world into a playground for the creative spirit” (2014, p. 167-168). Remaining as conscious as possible in this immersive state of body-mind in space-time (and therefore in motion, and an ongoing process of change and transformation), demands handling fear less reactively, and more responseably. We dance with a vast unknown as boundaries disappear and re-form. Movement improvisation offers an opportunity to practice dancing with chaos feelingly, and to participate creatively in the unfolding of the moment. This type of physical practice is, or can be, rigorous on a psycho-emotional level. In order to thrive in ambiguity, contradiction, and/or apparent chaos, one can develop a particular type of ‘resilience’ that hones the courage, strength and capacity to focus and act without resorting to panic – to stay open, aware, responsive and creative in moments of both terror and delight. Educating our selves through embodied practice to deal constructively with our conscious and unconscious fears, drives, instincts, senses, and emotions, we discern a larger array of possibilities, making us better able to choose, or create an appropriate response in any given moment. Over time, the reactive fight-flightor-fear reaction is no longer the first, or only, ‘go to’ for handling discomfort or fear. De Spain says that when we focus our improvisational awareness long enough on sensing, depth and detail increase, making ”more profound information available through the senses than we are taught what to do with in our workaday lives” (2014, p. 102-3), making it difficult to conceptualize or 10 articulate. In addition to being useful for movement and choice making, attention “can also begin to bring the unacknowledged structures of our interior world to the edges of consciousness… Like meditation, improvisation is a contemplative practice, a tool for self-discovery and self-awareness” (De Spain, 2014, p. 171). Imagination Images and imagination link to possibility and creativity, where we call into being something previously inconceivable. This is the realm in any creative practice that feels magic. Images, DeSpain explains, come from the combination of sensation and memory, and can “create a new reality of their own” (2014, p. 128-29). He extends the idea of image beyond the visual to include any of the senses, or combined senses, and considers imagination “one of our most profound capabilities as humans.” Imagination, he says, gives us “the power to affect, even fundamentally alter, the nature of our reality” (p. 134). Harari goes so far as to credit imagination as the distinguishing factor between humans and other species. He describes a “Tree of Knowledge mutation” wherein new ways of thought and communication appeared, somewhere between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago (2011, p. 23). When put to collective use, Harari says “We can weave common myths such as the biblical creation story, the Dreamtime myths of Aboriginal Australians, and the nationalist myths of modern states. Such myths give Sapiens the unprecedented ability to cooperate… in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers” (p. 27-28). He points out “today the very survival of rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as the United States and Google” (p. 36). Montuori highlights the role of imagination and creativity in our lives as our only way of “dealing with complexity, contradictions and chaos. Imagination is… the only tool, which takes us from simple reasoned analysis to higher synthesis“ (Sardar cited in Montuori, 2014, p. 13). De Spain acknowledges movement, emotion, sensing and memory as layers of the mind at work when we imagine. “Without memory, we can only ever know it is ‘now.’ We cannot build a world, or create a form, or even know that we are repeating something” (2014, p. 156). Imagination is how our whole-bodied-being- incontext plays with possibility. Ambiguity Creative people tend to share certain characteristics, including tolerance for ambiguity. They share an outlook that accepts and incorporates complexity, independent judgment, receptive and integrative capacities. Creative people have the strength to stay open to input that can challenge and destabilize their assumptions, ways of thinking and functioning. Linking ideas together through synthesis, they seek partnership and ways to bring together diverse ideas and elements (Montuori, 1992). But tolerance for ambiguity seems to be an essential characteristic shared by creative individuals, and the ability to either 11 suppress or manage anxiety seems to be a significant factor. “Ambiguity creates a kind of inner tension which demands resolution. Avoiding this tension, this oscillation, and falling back on predetermined answers is the mark of a closed human system; a willingness to explore the ambiguity, attempt a synthesis or simply allowing oneself to live with it and struggling for integration on a daily basis reflects a creative attitude” (Montuori, 1992, p.197). The experiential universe of body and breath in motion is vast. Stark Smith points to the “sense of being influenced by each other all the time, and being able to recognize that experience of being influenced” (De Spain, 2014, p. 141). One of the great gifts of improvisation is that it teaches us to hold the question and live the question of possibility in an extended state of uncertainty with an expanded openness. Montuori points to the powerful role fear plays in creating what he calls “authoritarian dominators” who are compelled to “decide immediately – without thought… by maintaining a dominator system in place, we are keeping a fear based system in place which prevents creativity from blossoming” (Montuori, 1992, p. 206). Barbara Dilley refers to the space of not knowing as a gap, with few reference points. This causes panic for some, she says, and a state of utter “bliss” for others. She describes this space as “an open dimension” with “an energetic response and an energetic presence available at all times,” and reminds us of the potentially shamanic aspect of improvisation (De Spain, 2014, p. 82). Simone Forti highlights the ability to be aware of, and influenced by what we are focusing on, and “everything else” too. “Some people just have those two awarenesses going on at once, but a lot of people are not used to having both working at once. I sometimes think you almost have to make some new connections between right brain and left brain, or between front brain and movement centers, so that it slowly falls into place” (p. 56). The Transpersonal Addressing the transpersonal, Dilley says “art is essentially about spirit or about the integration of all the many dimensions of what it is to be a human being: the emotional, the psychological, the physical, the mental, and the spiritual,” and about how you actually “live awake in the environment that you find yourself in” (De Spain, 2014, p. 83). Ruth Zaporah finds herself always in both a transpersonal and a personal state” (p. 85). And Paxton says, after so many years dancing improvisation, he no longer believes in the idea of the individual. “Maybe spirituality has something to do with bringing things to consciousness but not in a willful way. So instead of being a “self” willing a thing to happen, I become more an interior kind of plurality that’s observing what happens and then… tipping balances a little bit one way or the other with your consciousness.” This approach not only articulates the “transpersonal,” but also demonstrates “the way experienced improvisers learn to engage with the world within and beyond themselves.” Anna Halprin sees this type of “spirituality” as essential to survival, and speaks of the strong need for compassion, to “create a circle that’s big enough to hold all of us.” (p. 88-89). 12 Improvisation, like ancient wisdom and movement practices, help us understand, experientially, that we are a part of the world. “There might be no human activity that more thoroughly destabilizes the classic mind/body dualism” (De Spain, 2014, p.53). “To avail yourself to the transpersonal is to be open, permeable,” which is in almost direct opposition to the state of mind needed to define and communicate this type of embodied knowledge and experience (p. 89). The nonverbal aspect of movement improvisation allows for “complex and/or ambiguous states that the verbal would collapse into defined categories.” The linguistic mind, like the tracking and intentional mind, is too slow to keep pace with the improvising body-mind (p. 57-58). Perhaps language is simply too coarse or too static to translate our bodies’ intelligence and ‘thinking’ processes. Creative Evolution The suspended state of not knowing that we encounter in any type of improvisation is a sort of void that calls upon imagination, and invites possibility and creativity (Fiadero, 2017; Bigé, 2017). From a systems thinking point of view, improvisation allows us to practice encountering the unknown, meeting bifurcation points that invite creative exploration and the generation of novelty, while developing confidence in shared creativity and the unforeseeable synergies that create emergent properties. The creative process is centered around “the ability to shatter the rule of law and regularity in the mind” (Montuori, 2014, p. 3). “A system with high ego-strength or systemic coherence,” what we think of as ‘resilience,’ can recover readily from challenges and setbacks (1992, p. 196). And this is precisely what improvisation grooms us to do. With practice, the capacity to respond without shutting down or imposing unnecessary force or control increases, as flowing with the unforeseen becomes less alien. Change and the unknown become potential sources of inspiration, interest, interrogation, discovery, amusement, invention, transformation, play and, sometimes pure delight. These are some of our most endearing qualities as human beings, not just characteristics of creative people. “Evolving human systems are, by necessity at some point, creative systems” (Montuori, 1992, p. 193). Montuori calls for transformative practices in which one “sees beyond one’s own fixed position to engage in a constant evolutionary dialogue between inner and outer.” Rather than camouflaging our ignorance, or rejecting other perspectives, we open to the unknown and to the continuous process of self-transformation because we find in it an opportunity to learn and grow – to “dialogue with uncertainty” (2014, p. 11-12). Conclusion Harari argues that, “significant changes in social behavior cannot occur, in general, without genetic mutations” except in the case of humans, through our “imagined myths.” He challenges us today to imagine anew, and in doing so to take responsibility for how we wish to evolve. Our imagination, he says, has given us the ability to “imagine collectively” (2011, p. 36-37). When we improvise together in our full-bodied being, awake to all that is available in this 13 state and process, we may be about as close as we can get to practicing what this means, imagining collectively. When we dance, alone and together, getting used to the flow of our creative juices as they meet the void of not knowing, we allow ourselves to move, be moved, to transform and be transformed. When we find ourselves stuck, stunned, or stupid from time to time, which happens often enough in both improvisation and in life, we might notice that we are not alone. And sometimes, miraculously, someone else has a wisp of an inspiration just then that can help us take the next step together in the almost utter darkness of this unfolding dance. Martial arts masters tell us that in the darkness of the unknown, each step moves us toward the coming light. As in improvisation, martial arts practitioners train to be alert, receptive, and responsive in this state of not knowing. They train to assume nothing, and allow conscious and unconscious sates join together to inform response. They practice staying open to the shifting possibilities, as encounter, action and response arise. There are many similarities between movement improvisation and the martial arts, and much to be learned from both. In Aikido-based forms, for example, we make room for The Other, welcoming the gift of their energy, and searching for contact and connection where shared pathways emerge in which neither partner need be injured. Born of conflict, the martial arts address a limited, albeit important scope of human interaction, with many of its principals common to both improvisation and living life itself. Dancing with complexity is a creative act – a way of participating in the construction of the shared reality we experience and the paths of our evolution, as individuals, couples, groups, communities, species, living organisms, and as a part of a larger living ecology. In these fast-paced and unpredictable times, life demands every capacity we have access to, and the ability to know when which of them is called for. Acting assertively and aggressively can be a brilliant response at certain moments in time, and horrifically destructive at others. In the same way, to yield to or accommodate what arises can be a generative and generous response to what we encounter, yet might be inappropriate and outright depraved in certain situations. To dance with complexity constructively and creatively demands the reintegration of body-mind-heart-and-soul as an integral and interrelated part of the larger world, at every level, so we might know and understand, whether consciously or otherwise, our “radical and irreducible pluralism” (Abram, 2010a, p. 126). Reintegration of the body-mind within and as a part of the living, animate world is not a “new” ontology of mind, nor is it a “new” epistemology. It is not a new idea or a new way of being. It is simply reclamation of a way that has been lost in the flourishing of the Industrial (over)Growth Society. It is a re-gathering, and re-assembly of the many fragments we have dissected ourselves into, weaving them back together and gently, insistently blowing breath, life and movement back into our selves, and through our selves and our interactions, back into the animate and interdependent worlds we are a part of. It is simply a necessary and fundamental step in bringing our selves back to life. 14 REFERENCES Abram, David (1997). The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vingtage Books. Abram, David (November 5, 2010). “The Ecology of Perception and Language: Explaining Sensing,” a naturakedmin learning lab seminar. Stockholm. Retrieved March 31, 2019 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed44p94_B0k Abram, David (2010a). Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. New York: Vintage Books. 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