In my 30+ years of teaching Action Theater™ improvisation, I have trained hundreds of dancers/performers on how to use language as a body-experience and hold back on the incredibly strong attraction towards meaning. Very quickly we forget that language is a physical experience. It is a combination of breath and movement that has a dance all of its own. We do not need to fall into the limitations of its content. We can stay focused on the form. Here are some more tips for dancers beginning to use language in their improvisations:

• DO NOT ask questions and expect a response. DO ask questions if they generate more images and add more information to what is occurring in the improvisation.

• DO NOT answer questions with language — falling into the trap of responding to the language content immediately disengages you from the body experience. DO listen to the question as if it is a piece of music, notice its melodic structure and respond musically with movement, voice or gesture. If you must use language, then respond with one word only and repeat that one word answer for every question that comes your way, creating sub-text and multiple meanings with how you say it. Stay focused on how you say the word not what the word means.

• DO NOT complete your ideas of what should be said next. DO self-interrupt, put pauses into what you say so that you remember to sense your body. Take inventory of the resonance of what just happened inside of you, sense the physical experience of each word and allow that dance to create the next one.

Keep improvising!