Week Six – Monday 3rd November 2014
Couldn’t make the lesson due to illness.
However, in the lesson plans for today’s lesson, it said we were learning how to go up into lifts. In the reading for this weeks class it was about gravity and how to balance and where to know where your centre of gravity is. It relates gravity in dancing a lot to physics. In the source book by Woodhull she asks ‘What does this balance stuff have to do with the centre of gravity?’ (Woodhull, 1978-79, 41) In my short words, it is to know where your full body kinesphere weight is being placed, so if your falling to the side it could make aware that your centre of gravity is off placement. Woodhull asks us to do an experiment in the text.
As you can see in the picture I cut and odd shape out and had to see which sides would balance. When balanced you drew a line and when you had two lines that crossed over you put an X in the middle and that is where the centre of gravity was. When you put the shape off the centre point you could see it flopped to one side. This exercise can be linked to when doing partner work. However, when doing partner work you share your partners weight. In the picture below it shows the male supporting the female. However, if you look deeper at the weight distribution, her weight is uneven, her torso and head are to the left. This would make her fall over and lose balance. But because her legs are to the right, her centre of gravity cancels out the floppiness and losing balance.
Woodhull also talks about ‘body segments’. In what I can relate it to in my head is that you in your limbs have different segments and these segments help cancel out the off balances in the body. This is what I get out of this section, if you say your working with someone and you come to a balance moment. If one person is slightly lighter the other person has less weight to work with. However, the lighter person has more weight to hold. So the centre of gravity might change so the lighter person is balancing their segments on the heavier person, so the weight/centre of gravity balances out. In the picture below, the wall is acting as an object. So the person is leaning on the wall, and he has friction when applying his hand to the wall. The wall then resists and the persons centre of gravity is pulling him down. Same as the wall, the floor is resisting the feet and there is friction going along the floor. Woodhull states ‘all the other forces, acting at angles to one another, and how they tend to push and pull and turn the body.’ (Woodhull, 1978-79, 47)This had made me realise that when doing Contact Improvisation your body shifts weight all the time. Meaning your weight changes automatically a lot. In the jam on Wednesday I would like to play with this idea of weight taking and giving and seeing how far I can go with it.
Wednesday 5th November 2014 – Jam
In today’s jam it was only a small group, which was good in a way as I could fully connect with the small amount of people and what I was doing. We started off with our pow-wow, talking about what we want to achieve out of the jam and if there were any current injuries in the group. My aim for th jam was to become more confident with being the under and over dancer and to be able to take and give weight to people. I also wanted to try out some lifts, as I missed the lesson on Monday due to illness. After that we got into pairs and did an exercise to kick start the jam. One person in the pair had their hand on the other persons pelvis and was giving them a mid forceful push to walk/stop/run round the room. This then led to hand holding and the person was leading the other around the room. The end one was to hold the shoulders of the person leading and again use different dynamics and speeds to go round the room, the person leading then went onto all fours and the other person had to be the over dancer. We then did this exercise again from the start but swapped roles. The next part was to keep improvising, but in our pairs we both wanted to be the under dancer, so we were fighting constantly to be the under dancer. We then swapped over and did this again, but both wanting to be the over dancer this time. These exercises I found fun, but tricky at the same time just because you were constantly trying to find gaps and edges to find a way to either be the under or over dancer. After these warm up exercises, we began the jam and in today’s one the task was to do solos, duets, trios and to sit out once in a while to take in and see what was happening in the space. For me I think it always helps starting off as a solo, as it gets me into the right frame of mind. After a while and I become settled in the space I let my movement take me across the room and if I bumped into people I would stop and have a play with improvising with them. I felt I became a lot more free with my movement quality and I wasn’t always thinking about what am I going to do next and who am I going to dance with. Although some occasions I did do that in the jam, I felt I didn’t do it as much in today’s session. When working in pairs and trios I became relaxed then I have been in previous weeks, this helped me push past my boundaries and experiment more with giving and taking weight. So I was becoming a good balanced of the two, over dancer and under dancer. As I wasn’t in the lesson on Monday I felt a bit restricted on doing lifts. However, there was one moment when Kelly lifted me and I felt a sign of relief, thinking to myself I can do this if I have the confidence in myself. Overall, the jam for me on a whole went well and I feel like I have become better at being a varied over and under dancer. On another side I think I do need to work on lifts, but I think that will come with practice over time.