CURATOR’S NOTE Practicing improvisation has been one has had one idea but, incapable of

of the trends. But as a philosopher, I expressing it directly, spend their life

Philosophies in movement
Philosophers have been moving
since the highest Antiquity. Greek
schools mostly advocated the practice
of walking (especially the Peripatetics,
literally “those who walk around”), and
already Diogenes the Cynic enjoyed
street performing in the nude (having
made a vow of poverty, he spent most of
his nights in a ceramic jar on the town
square), while 20th century philoso-
pher Henri Bergson practiced fencing
and Jean-Paul Sartre was famous for
boxing. In the last decades of the 20th
century, a new category of movers-
philosophers has emerged: philoso-
phers for which movement is more than
a sideline of their practice of philoso-
phy—philosophers for whom moving,
and especially dancing, is ground from
which thinking is developed.
I seem to be part of these dancing
philosophers. Trained as an academic,
I discovered dance in my mid-20s. I
vividly remember the perceptual shift
that occurred, as I started sensing
patterns of movement in the street,
noticing rhythms in the continually
changing composition of the world
around me. In a way, I’ve spent my life
since then trying to sustain this activity
of witnessing the world in its making.
have also found myself desiring to
explain how this shift occurred and
wondering if my academic training
had paved the way for it, in one way or
another.
One aspect I discovered is that a
great number of philosophies in the 20th
century prepared me to think about and
from the dancing experience. These
philosophies (from Henri Bergson, to
William James, to some currents of
phenomenology) acquainted me with
the idea that the world is made of
becomings, rather than of things. As
biologists became accustomed to think
that there are no species and only
processes of speciation (lines of evolu-
tion towards “human” or towards
“chimpanzee,” in constant mutation), as
sociologists started to no longer think of
genders and rather of genderizings
(“one isn’t born a woman, one becomes
a woman” asserted Simone de Beau-
voir), philosophers came to inspect the
idea that really, there are no trees—but
treeings, no rooms—but roomings, no
bodies—but embodiments.
My own dance experiences—and
those I could read of, talk about with
other dancers—have been my interces-
sors to understand the way movement is
world-making. Henri Bergson famously
said that a philosopher is someone who
confronting this intuition with other
modes of thinking (sciences, arts,
spiritual practices…). Dance is such a
mediator to me. And more than that, it
is a place where I find myself training
in thinking in movement, practicing the
same level of receptivity involved in
writing or talking about philosophy.
The philosophical essays gathered
in this folio and continued online in CQ
Unbound offer a view of how contem-
porary philosophers have mediated
philosophies through their own experi-
ence with improvisation in the dance
studio. Different styles and methods are
presented, from academic writings to
conversations between dance improvi-
sors and philosophers, to juxtapositions
of glimpses of writings by philosophers
and dancers. A parallel melodic line
appears in dance artist Mandoline
Whittlesey’s photographic essay, offering
different scales to enter world-making
through moving and seeing.
All point to the inherent conceptual
depth of the movement practices CQ
has been supporting and illuminating
for several decades. This philosophy
folio is an attempt to continue this work
of carving spaces for movement to
inhabit our concepts.
— Romain Bigé

CONTENTS
Maxine Sheets-Johnstone | Thinking in Movement plus ONLINE at CQ UNBOUND
Alice Godfroy | The Eloquent Torso www.contactquarterly.com
Charlie Morrissey and Romain Bigé | Mind-fucking and Romain Bigé | Tonic space
other uncertainties Elizabeth A. Behnke | Contact Improvisation and the Lived World
Philosophical Glimpses | Romain Bigé (ed.) Ernst von Glasersfeld | Seen from the Outside
Mandoline Whittlesey (photo essay) | seeing is being Steve Paxton and Romain Bigé | Open Gardenia (On Vulnerability)
touched is being changed is being seen is being moved and more

EDITORS Romain Bigé and Lisa Nelson
DESIGN Lisa Nelson
THANKS This collection wouldn’t exist without the dedication of Lisa
Nelson’s sharp eye and mind to edit and organize the philosophical
thinking. I am deeply grateful to have shared with her this practice of
expressing oneself through what we love in others. Thank you to the
dance philosophers and artists who responded to the call and
accepted to publish and tune their words for this edition. [R.B.]

6 CONTACT QUARTERLY SUMMER/FALL 2017