I’m Jonathan Lilly, a movement researcher and improvisational dancer currently based in Connecticut. I practice, train in, and teach a dance form called contact improvisation. The centerpiece of my teaching is Constellations, a rigorous and systematic presentation of the fundamentals of contact improvisation. Prior to encountering this dance form, I trained in the martial art of aikido for more than two decades. My movement and teaching styles are also deeply informed by a period of in-depth study of the Feldenkrais method of somatic education, as well as by a daily meditation practice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
Photo by Homer Horowitz
Background
If you have not danced contact improvisation before, it might seem crazy to say that you could meet a stranger on the dance floor and spend the next hour telling each other stories about your lives, laughing, crying, maybe visiting other planets or other dimensions, and end up with a new dear friend whom you feel you have known for many years, all without exchanging a single word, not even a name. If you have danced contact improvisation, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about. Such is the mysterious power of this beautiful dance form, my favorite way to spend time.
I was introduced to contact improvisation in 2013, and for me it was love at first touch. I had been training seriously in aikido for many years and had, for various reasons, been growing increasingly disillusioned with the martial path. With contact improvisation, a whole new universe opened up for me. Here was an activity with the same level of physical rigor and depth of skill that I loved about martial arts, but oriented towards cooperation, creative expression, and ultimately joy. After this, I didn’t really have the heart for attacking and being attacked anymore. I threw myself into this new path, and have found it to be incredibly rewarding.
Synthesis
Since coming to contact improvisation more than a decade ago, I have sought to get to know this movement form on its own terms while at the same time transforming the skills I gained in martial arts into tools of peacefulness and healing. After all, improvisational dance and martial arts share the common foundations of movement, awareness, and spontaneity, even if the application is different. This line of investigation, which I call Synthesis, has led to an understanding of movement that integrates martial arts, dance, and somatic research. In this view, the primal foundation of movement is the flow of energy through the body, or between bodies, a recognition that has important implications for the ways in which movement is taught, learned, and executed. Whether I am teaching solo or partner-based movement, it is always from this perspective.
Training
Since 2013, I have taken weeklong or multi-week intensives in contact improvisation and improvisational dance with senior instructors such as Chris Aiken and Angie Hauser (three times), Mark Young (four times), Andrew Harwood (three times), Alicia Grayson (twice), John Faichney, Ray Chung, Jori Snell, Elia Mrak and Martín Piliponsky, Stuart Phillips, and various instructors at the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation or SFDI (twice). In August 2019, I participated in the Nomadic College, a monthlong immersion into the Axis Syllabus with Frey Faust, Francesca Pedulla, Baris Mihci, and others. I have also participated in dozens of weeklong or weekend jams at Earthdance, Breitenbush, Seattle, Portland Oregon, Bellingham, Salt Spring Island, Lasqueti Island, Moab, Toronto, Burlington Vermont, Montréal, Ottawa, Boston, and Trondheim, Norway. At present I am studying the naftali method of improvisational dance with Brianna López and character-driven improvisation with Lara Marcin.
Photo by Nick Woolsey
Prior to transitioning to dance, from 1990 to 2014 I trained in the martial art of aikido, amassing approximately 10,000 hours of training during that time. This included a year in a kenshusei, or intensive training, program at Portland Aikikai in Portland, Oregon during 2002–03 that involved about twenty hours of training per week. In 1996, I helped co-found an aikido dojo in Seattle, and served as co-chief instructor for most of the next two decades. In 2012, I was granted the rank of yondan or 4th degree black belt by the Aikido World Headquarters in Tokyo. I retired from martial arts training in 2014.
About Ciera
When I teach Constellations, I am usually assisted by Ciera Cleary. From an early background in ballet, Ciera trained intensively in yoga for a number of years. She now trains in Pilates and a hybrid movement practice called Range, and is an avid practioner of ecstatic dance. She has been present for nearly all times I have taught this material and now plays an essential role as an assistant instructor.
Photo by Emily Battaglini