Experience and Expertise

This chapter explores how free improvisers trust in and rely on experience and expertise to contribute in the most constructive way. Specifically, the chapter focuses on listening as a fundamental aspect of exercising agency in a collaborative context. It examines the duality of trusting oneself to have agency in the process of free improvisation – both in terms of trusting oneself to be proactive in initiating ideas and trusting oneself to be reactive in improvised moments – and how improvisers make creative choices between the two. The chapter also addresses the reliability of experience and its intersection with innovation. It concludes with a response to the question of whether free improvisation really is free, and what role experience and expertise play.