I’ve been involved in CI for nearly 15 years. When I started to teach it for adults here in BUDAPEST , HUNGARY , it was not difficult to do. But three years later, I got a job in secondary school and I started to teach teenagers. It was a dance school—they studied contemporary dance, ballet, acrobatics, and from that year CI too.

                From this time everything became much more difficult. I had to use new ideas and find another perspective in my teaching style. It was very strange for them that I didn’t use fixed forms, and they hardly believed that dancing their own movements could be interesting and inspiring.

                At this age—when they really feel that they are mature—it’s difficult to play with them and teach in a playful way. Touch has another meaning for them; it has become more sexual and it has lost its neutral way.

                Because of these difficulties, I had the idea to use images to lead them to this “strange new world“ of CI. This way it is not too personal and they can use a little mask to relax their boundaries more easily. Touching and giving weight, moving with eyes closed becomes no longer embarrassing. (But of course later they realize that is still about them...)

                After finding this solution, I had to create some CI pieces for them to show in performance. I decided to use something from “normal life“ which could make it much more understandable, “edible” for the audience. (Because I imagined how the parents would react seeing their kids in tight body contact with someone else without their knowing anything about CI.)

                So we performed a whole recipe; we showed how to cook “Ratatouille a la Contact.” A speaker—like a chef—read aloud the ingredients we needed for 120 people (the number of the audience): 30 kg of tomatoes, 30 kg of paprika, 10 kg of onion, and 100 pieces of egg… And she explained the whole procedure of making the dish.

                All the ingredients (the dancers) came to the stage (which became a saucepan) and started to roll on the bottom of the pan—getting oily on their whole body and fried smoothly. Then we showed how two vegetables could meet—touching, rolling, and sliding on each other’s surface. After adding the eggs, the food elements stuck together, lifting and mingling while some feisty onions nearly jumped out off the pan…

                In this way, we were able to show all the elements we use in CI. Then we just had a little time to cook it for awhile…and a real group improvisation started where all ingredients met each others and flavours melted into each other.

                Finally at the end we created a delicious meal for the audience. And they enjoyed very much the spicy ratatouille—the Hungarian ”Kontakt L’ecsó.”