Improvisation - Dancing With Complexity Fear and Trembling

Movement improvisation is a transformational practice that offers embodied understanding of complex systems and relationships. Group improvisation helps develop a capacity to respond to complexity, the unforeseen and the unforeseeable with increased creativity and cooperation. These are the kinds of “creative, complex and collaborative competencies” (Montuori, 2014, p. 20) that are needed for systemic health today. When we practice improvisation together, not only does it promote mindful movement (Eddy, 2016), it also offers powerful ways to establish and affirm, in the flesh, an ontology of mind that embraces mind, body, heart, soul and world as one interconnected and unified whole. Wholeness, in this sense, is not only saine (French for healthy) but also provides access to information we need to navigate the challenges of co-existence in the twenty-first century in ways that support life, and honour our highest potential as intelligent, sentient, social, and creative beings. Mindful movement may, in fact, be one of the critical ‘technologies’ needed in these “liquid times” (Montuori, 2014, p.1). Movement improvisation is worthy of particular attention because it offers the opportunity to experientially practice, study and explore relationship, ecologies, and creative engagement.