Escuchando el juego de la vida: el juego como metáfora de la improvisación

Abstract

The text reflects on the relationship between play, improvisation, and artistic creation, taking as its starting point the observation of an art teacher who finds more spontaneity in soccer than in contemporary dance. From this, the paper questions the role of spontaneity as a creative driver, highlighting that it is not limited to play but has also been essential in diverse artistic expressions such as painting, music, and dance. Authors such as Stephen Nachmanovitch and Eugenio Barba are cited to point out that improvisation and spontaneous acts are not directionless chaos, but rather develop within rules and structures that allow them to give shape to intuition and creativity. In this way, both the soccer player and the improvising dancer draw on experience and knowledge of their rules to be able to create freely and flexibly in the moment. The research suggests that improvisation in dance can be understood as a game with its own laws, in which concepts such as limits, risk, chance, intuition, and freedom are intertwined. Throughout the analysis, the contributions of various thinkers and artists (Huizinga, Caillois, Gadamer, among others) are explored to construct a conceptual framework that allows us to understand improvisation as a living and open creative space. The text concludes that improvisation and play share mechanisms and that both are fundamental to contemporary art, especially dance, by opening paths toward new forms of perception, bodily exploration, and collective creation. Finally, it is proposed that improvisation in dance becomes a conscious, flexible, and transformative practice that fosters creativity and keeps spontaneity alive as the essence of the human being.