Week Three – Monday 6th October 2014
In today’s session we looked at loosening the head and neck. This was done by first energising the room to get in the right mind set. The movement exercises that we did were very useful in that it gave me more range of ideas when doing the jam. The exercises we did involved pair work. My partner Kayla and I felt more relaxed and safe working with her. The first exercise we did was moving across the space, but you had to keep your head connected to your partners. At first it was hard to find ways to move across the floor, but once the flow of the movement kicked in it became easier to move around the space and find different ways to move in and out of different levels. The second exercise was again in pairs. However, this time partner A (Myself) laid on the floor on their back whilst partner B (Kayla) sat behind them clasping their hands together. Partner A gave all their weight in the head to partner B. For the first few minutes you just laid there and let all your weight go into your partners hands. Once you felt all your weight being given to your partner, you could then start moving around the space. The key point with this task was to stop moving every so often so you could release the weight of the head back into your partners hands. After a while when used to the heaviness of the head, partner B would release their hands away and partner A would keep moving. When moving without Kayla holding my head, I felt much more heavy in the head and felt the exercise helped my head move in a more stable, but effortless movement. When giving feedback Kayla said, when watching she saw my head, neck and chest move in one, meaning I had more movement/freedom in what I was doing. When doing the exercise with Kayla it was, for me, quite challenging because Kayla has such a long spine. So the distance between her head and the end of her spine was a challenge for me to keep up with her when she started moving. The exercise helped me keep in engaged in what was going on in our space, but also the space in general, making sure you don’t collide into other couples. The point of these exercises were to learn about sight and have a sense of knowing what’s going on in the space around you and own space. We then came into different pairs. This time we just improvised with what we had learned in the lesson. During this short improvisation we had three different awarenesses: Spacial awareness, partner awareness and your own awareness. During this I felt I was more spacial aware as I was cautious hitting other pairs and it gave me a decision on where to move next. When being aware of you partner, I found that our movements became more intimate and close, as our focus was on each other. When having your awareness on yourself, for me I found that I moved away from my partner and there wasn’t as much contact. It’s weird to think that three sight awareness’s can change the mood and feeling of the jam. Near to the end of the session we started to play with basic low level lifts. This was quite challenging for me in the sense that my right wrist isn’t that strong, so when I was the base for the lift I had tension going into my shoulders. This could have been uncomfortable for the person being lifted.
In the jam on Wednesday 8th October 2014, I felt more relaxed in being able to move freely throughout the space. Although it was a small group, I did find it challenging trying to interact with everyone. I think this could be because I felt annoying to people to keep going back to them and trying to improvise. When relating my question to what we had done in the jam, I found myself frustrated. My question was ‘What ways can I move with using my unhabitual movements’. During the jam I tried to use different parts of my body to help me move across the space. For example I used my bum and head a lot to help me move across the space. I tried to use what we did in the lesson before to help me move more freely across the space. However, I did feel I resulted in going back to my habitual movement patterns, using my hands and feet to initiate the movements for me. This week was an interesting and frustrating one for me. Because the lesson on Monday was successful for me, as I connected my thoughts to what was happening in the body. Whereas in the jam I felt my mind was backtracking a bit, I felt less confident.
Questions:
What happens if the sight is taken away during improvisation and the other senses have a more important role to do?
Why is it hard to let the head and neck go?
Why does sight change the awareness of our sessions during improvisations?
In more context what does sight have to do with improvisation?
Why is awareness so important?
What ways can I move with using my unhabitual movements?
Relating to the Reading:
Going back to Weeks One reading, Heitkamp talks about skinesphere and how the skin has three functions. One of these functions I can relate to, number three, Heitkamp states ‘…site and primary means of communication and development of meaningful relationships.’ (Heitkamp, 2003, 25) Through the jam and the class this week I can tell that the skin plays a huge part in Contact Improvisation as when handling bodies the skin is the main organ your touching throughout. He also states ‘…skinesphere and contrasts it with the kinesphere.’ (Heitkamp, 2003, 27) For me skinesphere is the same as kinesphere, yet you move more close to the floor. This might be because for me I can connect my skin to the floor more easily.