Banding Encounters: Embodied Practices in Improvisation

In this chapter, nine improvisers reflect on their encounters improvising while literally connected by large rubber bands. The practice of “banding” is an experimental exercise in movement and sound improvisation Tomie Hahn developed in 2008. During the 2010 Improvisation, Community and Social Practice Summer Institute in Guelph, Canada, over a dozen improvisers explored new ways of connecting, communicating, improvising, discussing, and writing about their embodied banding improvisations. Nine diverse voices, in addition to Hahn’s observations, serve as examples of embodied experiences of improvisation. Here, banding is employed as a case study on the interconnectedness of bodies through objects during improvisation, and as a profound, mindful practice of embodied expressivity.