More information about Charlie Morrissey

Charlie Morrissey
Dance Artist
Charlie Morrissey has been researching, directing, performing and teaching nationally and internationally for fifteen years.

He continues to work with the body as an expressive container of its experiences and perceptions of the world, and initiates research and performance projects on a regular basis.

He is fascinated by the potential and the challenge of the live event. He has made performances involving thousands of gallons of water, ice, pyrotechnics, projection and fire, and performers have danced on, in, and under water, and in elaborate installations housed inside and out. His performances range from these complex large-scale works, to intimate and highly physical performances involving one or two performers, on bare stages in theatres and galleries.

His work is informed and inspired by ongoing collaborations with dance artists including: Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson, Scott Smith, Becky Edmunds, K.J. Holmes, Kirstie Simson, Henry Montes, Gill Clarke, Lindsey Butcher and many others. And with composers/sound artists including: Philip Jeck, Kaffe Mattews, Thor MacIntyre – Burnie, Brian Duffy, Barnaby O’Rorke and others.

Charlie also works closely with a variety of visual artists, lighting designers and pyrotechnicians including Graeme Gilmour, Walter Bailey, Mike Roberts and The World Famous, Michael Mannion, Phil Supple and many others.
One of the places he locates his practice is within the dance genre of contact improvisation.

What is contact improvisation?
Contact improvisation is a dance genre.

It got its start in the United States in the early 1970s when a group of young gymnasts, under the guidance of the dancer Steve Paxton, began investigating the expressive possibilities of the body outside of the codified predefined schemes of a classic approach to movement.

In the early 1970s Steve Paxton staged a series of improvisation dance performances in the United States. In 1972 he presented the première performance of a piece called “Magnesium” in which he and eleven of his dancers performed on wrestling mats for an audience in a large gym.

Many who were present wanted to learn, and contact improvisation is now a form of dance practiced throughout the world. It soon became the key experience for “Postmodern” and “New Dance” and, at the same time, a vital form of social dance, with potentialities for developing a strong sense of communion among the participants.

A fundamental characteristic of contact improvisation is “improvisation”, that is the possibility of moving creatively within rules, either predefined or worked out in the process, shared by the participants. The skills involved in improvisation do not necessarily correspond to the individual levels of proficiency in the field.

Contact improvisation can be thought of as a global approach to the body, which examines the creative processes and perceptive motors, the significance of the message and of communication and the interpretation of the performance. It crosses many boundaries and is capable of uniting heterogeneous persons.

It gives persons with different physiques and places of origin the chance to move together. It is an exploration and an experience; the dancers are no longer simply performers, but are the dance itself.

Practicing contact improvisation means sharing a language that makes it possible to dance together, respecting individual differences.

A basic aspect of contact improvisation is an awareness of the physical sensations between two or more partners as they move in relation to each other and in contact with the ground.

Contact improvisation is based on the physical contact between dancers, which makes them concentrate on the flow of energy that results from the pressure and shifting of weight as they touch each other.

The dancers remain in contact during the entire performance and, moving with the flow of energy, form a surprising variety of body links.

Dancing with another/others opens a territory full of surprises. It is an invitation to face up to the limits and perceptual habits, with the realization that in order to exploit the entire range of possibilities presented by the body, thought and action must go hand in hand. This is why it facilitates listening, enhancement of differences, of cooperation, and can also represent a form of dance therapy. When the skill of listening and answering is properly tuned, then the dance is enriched.

Practicing contact improvisation demands, and at the same time furnishes, a relaxed and open state of the body and of the mind. Persons with a professional or personal interest in achieving a syntony with their bodies - dancers, doctors and movement therapists, actors, musicians, young people and the elderly, able and disabled - think that contact improvisation is a way of exploring its meaning.