Is it dance? Is it sport? Find out at the city's first contact improv festival.

What's contact improv? It's a valid question. Because, even though contact improvisation has been around for more than 25 years, no universally accepted definition exists.

But the local dance community may soon have a much clearer idea. Over the weekend of Feb. 18-21, under the auspices of Philadelphia Dance Projects, the city will host its first Contact Improvisation Festival, a series of performances, classes and discussions about a remarkable body of movement which, though still somewhat elusive, has been an important influence on the evolution of American dance over the last quarter-century.

First, it might be a good idea to describe what one actually sees at a contact event. One of the festival's featured performers, Chris Aiken, performed here twice last year. We'll likely see him, Andrew Harwood and Nancy Stark Smith (the other headlined dancers) move sinuously over and under and across one another, sometimes supporting weight and sometimes having their weight supported, and always using the entire 360 degrees of movement space. There probably will be music, although some pieces may have no accompaniment; compared to other forms of dance, entrances and exits will seem casual, with participants just walking on and off; some of the movements may seem to peter out because the improvisation stops rather than comes to a conclusion. Although I don't know whether these three have danced together before, at this professional level the dancers trust their partners completely, and even though they may be executing specific movements and sequences for the first time, they move with utter confidence. In many ways, then, contact is anti-dance as performing art.

Two longtime practitioners are coordinating the event: Francesca Genco, a dancer and educator recently arrived from California, and Leah Stein, a performer, choreographer and teacher who has been a fixture on the Philadelphia dance scene for years and who has long used contact in her rehearsals. Stein points out an important distinction: If true dance "style" can be said to have a widely taught technique, then improv, she says, is better described not as a style but as a "practice."

And there's another important difference between improv and all other kinds of dance. Sometimes the improvisers clearly have a sense of the audience, and may, for example, explicitly refer to moves they have made earlier in a piece. Other times, however, their obviously heightened awareness is directed entirely inward and they seem not at all to be "performing"—i.e., "projecting," "creating a character," or establishing any other kind of self-conscious connection with the audience (think of the "professional smile" that is automatic and universal among ballet dancers).

All this adds up to a body of essentially contentless movement that is, at least so far as the audience is concerned, not narrative and not psychological. Indeed, in some ways contact seems halfway between art and sport—that's why "practice" seems such an appropriate name—with a kinetic feel quite unlike that of any other. It is a quality that some find enthralling in its mysterious spontaneity, while others consider it flat and boring. Because the performers lack a script of steps to be performed, they must instead be completely "in the moment" and respond to a multitude of inner and outer kinesthetic cues so that their movements emerge naturally and organically from what has come before.

What is not always understood, however, is that in the same sense, the audience too must suspend its preconceptions about what dance "ought" to be, give up its desire for instant legibility and for a statement of a theme before the variations begin, and likewise focus its attention "in the moment" on the unique movement taking place. Although one may be profoundly stirred by an improv event, it seems fair to say that conventional aesthetic criteria don't apply.

From a wider perspective, one can see that contact improvisation is part of a larger tendency in 20th-century American performing arts, one that values spontaneity over premeditation and equality over hierarchy, one that wishes to deny or blur the distinction between "dance" and nondance and between the "genius" choreographer who creates the dance and the humble dancer who is the instrument by which the great man or woman's visions are realized.

Contact was also part of the '60s tendency toward androgyny, which in dance terms, denies the necessity of distinguishing male from female dancers by the steps they perform (or even by their clothing). Even though modern dance rejected the narrative conventions and physical restrictions of classical ballet, it accepted the underlying heterosexual code embodied in the primary form of the pas de deux—always a man and a woman, always the man gallantly supporting his partner, who displayed the appropriate "feminine" attributes of lightness and delicacy. Nowadays, however, scarcely a company (modern or ballet) exists that does not include same-sex duets, that does not have women lifting men, and that does not perform in "uncostumes"—anonymous baggy practice clothes rather than skintight leotards or tutus. It seems fair to say that contact, and the impulse that inspired it, has had an important part in this transformation.

Marcel Duchamp said that "art must not look like art." He would have liked contact improvisation.

Contact Improvisation Festival: Chris Aiken, Andrew Harwood, Nancy Stark Smith in performance, Trinity Church Community Life Center, 22nd and Spruce Sts., Sat., Feb. 20, 8 p.m. Opening orientation at Susan Hess Studio, 2030 Sansom St., 3rd floor, Thu., Feb. 18, 8 p.m. Showings of work in progress by festival participants at Susan Hess, Fri., Feb. 19, 7:30-9 p.m., followed by open jam. Techniques classes and jams will be held throughout the weekend at Susan Hess, Trinity and U Arts Dance Studio, 309 S. Broad St., 2nd floor. For details, call (215) 849-5734.

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