Contact Improvisation

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.

http://imgur.com/gpITP21

 

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.

http://imgur.com/WBomb17

http://imgur.com/UWXyQCq

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.

Week Five – Monday 20th October 2014

In today’s lesson we had our research lab. We divided into groups. I was with Anya, Charlotte and Georgina. And our question we were researching was ‘how can we experiment with our eyes?’ This ranged from having eyes closed to initiating movement with the eyes. With this experiment we did four stages of exercises in partners, to lead us to the main stage where all four of us improvised together. This was to see any similarities and differences and to get feelings. My partner was Georgina and at first I felt hesitated towards working with her, because I had never worked with her before. The four stages in partners were, 1) both people had eyes open 2) one person had eyes closed whilst the other person had theirs open 3) swap roles of stage two 4) both people have eyes closed. In our findings we discovered that having our eyes open became more awkward as we could see and judge before we made movement. However, when our eyes were closed we became more reliant on other senses like hearing, touch and voice. When me and Georgina had our eyes closed we counted more on touch, so we were feeling for surfaces and for each other. Whereas, Anya and Charlotte kept giggling and talking, so they were using speech more when their eyes were closed. In partners I think we all felt more conscious of the space, whether people in the room were watching or not. Moving onto the second task, where all four of us were moving in the space. We all felt more relaxed and comfortable in the space when our eyes were closed. Also it gave us more freedom of what to do with our bodies so we weren’t going back to our habitual movement patterns. We came to a conclusion that it’s hard to know ho your dancing with when you have your eyes closed. This is a strange, yet good feeling as you can try to do stuff you never really do eg, taking weight. At one point I was improvising through the space and I came across a leg and this turned into a improvisation with someone. Turns out it was Anya, this was strange for the both of us because we never have really improvised together when in class or in the jam. However, in this situation it has made me much more comfortable going up to people and initiating movement. Overall, I feel this research lab has given us time to reflect not only on our question, but on how we judge situations when when actually improvising. We also noticed that during the tasks in task one we all stayed grounded to the floor, and there wasn’t much levels being used. However, when moving to having our eyes shut we all became more confident and broke away from the floor and started using levels like standing.

Wednesday 22nd October 2014

In tonight’s jam, I wanted to reflect back on our research question from Monday and see how I could merge the things I found out into the jam, using the advantage of having more people to improvise with. When actually doing the jam I found closing my eyes helped me getting into the mood. I felt during the jam I initiated movement with people I don’t usually improvise with. And I felt I gave my weight more in this lesson. I felt I could take my hands and feet off the floor which meant me balancing on their back. I felt more relaxed and comfortable this week seeing as I played with being the under and over dancer.

Readings:

What is Release Technique?

Student of Mary Fulkerson – 1970 – 1974 – referred to work as ‘Anatomical Release Technique’
Studied with (student) John Rolland and Marsha Paludan.
In order to change your habitual movements, you first need to address the functioning, whole organism. (The mind as well as the body)
Mind = ‘by the time an intention has become realized in physical action, it is too late to alter how the action is played.
Seed of an action is embedded between intention and subsequent launch.
Seed = body’s ‘image’ – physical preparation = body’s image → ensuring action.
Mary’s classes – development movement as basic vocab. (source)
Mary studied/practiced, rolling , crawling, walking, running, falling, and transitions between these patterns.
Anatomical images to map out pathways through the structure of the body → indicated structurally sound line of compression and support → sequence flow of action → underlying development patterns.
Draw the body closer to challenging its actions along pathways. This would align the body so that weight was supported through the centre of the bones as well as re-flow of energy, so that the muscles were initiating the movement.
→ release outer muscles of holding weight and free them for what they were meant to do.
Constructive rest position – receive/respond to new physical images → easy to rehearse muscular activity and not fall.
Re-patterning the bodies response to an intention to move.
Centre-line.
Student found Steve Paxton’s work with Contact Improvisation.
→ Changed/new ideas with anatomical images.
→ Mind use as lens – power of alertness, observations.
→ Exposed body to higher levels of physical stimulation.
→ New insights into internal process of working with image.
Mary’s images = Maps for seeking and interpreting physical actions.
→ Dealt with image too much and not linking it with physical sensations = brainwash your body.
→ image come between yourself and body – open new images.
Contact duet, weight, force, response, soft quality.
→ Imagination, mind, act of dancing.

Conatact Improvisation: A Question?

Contact Improvisation seen as an art to the public view.
→ Respond physically to its enviroment.
Level of physical functioning that is ordinarily unconscious and material that is typically avoided in performance.
Steve’s ideas → put dancers body into unusual, disorienting and emergency situations.
Rather than the usual, predictable, familiar environment of support → you have to be ready for anything.
Bones, muscles, organs, nerves, brain.

Monday 13th October 2014 – Formative Assessments 1 and 2

In today’s lesson we looked at a range of exercises and how they related to the readings and to our body’s kinesphere. In the movement activities we mainly did partner work so for the first exercise we did we were working on our own. We looked at standing in parallel position and closing our eyes. Now at the beginning of the class we looked at Steve Paxton’s small dance video. The small dance means it is mainly an internal dance so its mainly the organs that are moving inside. We stood for a good five minutes just to connect our minds to our bodies. Whiles the eyes were shut, I could definitely feel some movement happening in the body and I think I swayed back and forward a lot, not dramatically, but there was a sense of swaying involved. Once establishing the small dance, we then played with this idea of letting gravity pull our weight somewhere in the space and not reacting to it but letting our body go with the suspense/movement. When letting gravity take us on a movement, you have to be sure you are relaxed and have your knees bent a bit. After getting used to this sense of being pulled through the space by gravity, we then went on to do more stuff with this sense of gravity being the bigger force. We were still letting ourselves be pulled by gravity but this time we had to let the gravity pull us all the way to the floor so in other terms we shouldn’t stop ourselves from falling to the floor. During the exercise l couldn’t let myself fall forward to the floor because I was scared of the way I would land. For this exercise and in contact improvisation, for myself, I have to tell the voice in my head to let the barriers down and to be confident in myself to do the majority.

Moving onto the next exercise, this was in partners. We had to hold one hand of each other and run. However, one person would take the lead first and have to drag the other partner around the space by using their own sense of gravity to lead their initiation of movement. We then switched roles and we both became the lead so we were interchanging roles. After a short break, we cam back to our same partner and started a new task. With this one we were learning ways to transfer weight onto another body. To understand it more, we used the terms cat and cat owner. The first time I was the cat owner and I just stood there and moved into stable positions so the car could move around me and give me their weight. We then swapped over. Once feeling comfortable with this sense of movement, we then became interchangeable between these two roles (cat and cat owner). This exercise was nice to do as I had never worked with Stacie before so it was nice to move away from my usual partners and get to know someone else. I have to say it has made me feel more confident in working with other people I don’t really know so well. At first when starting the exercises we both felt a bit hesitant, we thought this could be due to us being new partners. Neither of us knew each other’s boundaries/weight limitations. Once we got into it, the more fluid it became and the easier it was to move. When we did the interchangings, we felt we went to the floor a lot, feeling more grounded. Together we felt we could do more stable positions/lifts. As the flowness was going well through the task, I felt we weren’t starting and stopping like we were in the first two exercises. We had constant movement towards the end. And again, in my opinion it helped by shutting off that voice in the back of the head, making my body make the decisions for me.

Ready for the research lab next week, we got into our groups, discussing what questions we want to research in next week’s lesson. Our two questions are:-

1. How can you use other body parts as effectively as your chest and back?
2. How many stable positions can we actually get into?

Questions 1 and 2:

How easy is it to give someone your weight when you’re conscious you’ve never worked with them?
What is the difference between giving someone your weight and taking someone’s weight?
How do you become comfortable interchanging partners with different weights?

Magnesium – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FeSDsmIeHA

Video – Steve Paxton – The Small Dance – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sJKEXUtv44

Steve Paxton’s small dance is a movement picture of a skeleton. The small dance is the inner movement we have in our body so when you watch from the frontal view, you can see the hands twitching slightly and the thighs also doing the same. There is also a slight twist in the ribs/torso, meaning the alignment is off centre. Although these are minor movements, these are what count as “small dance”. When viewing from the side you could see the thighs engaging, helping the body very slightly rocking back and forth. Looking from the top angle (bird’s eye view) you can see the head very minorly nodding. From the feet looking up (worm’s eye view) you can see the hands/arms moving a bit. All these minor movements make up the small dance. Thinking about this idea of small movements and the inner movement, the organs and nervous system could be part of this dance, seeing as those two things are working to keep us breathing and alive. This video relates back to the very first exercise I talked about, standing still with eyes closed, seeing where gravity takes us. When standing in neutral position, I could feel my weight in my body moving back and forth. This could be because gravity is pulling my body away and my body is balancing out the weight equally. Also it is trying to make me feel more grounded on the floor. And I had a few twitches in my hands as well. This helped me learn that even stillness isn’t really still because there is always something within us that is moving slightly.

Readings:

In Steve Paxton’s Magnesium (1972) he stated “is to discover, through spontaneous movement in contact”. He then goes on to say “there is no set choreography, no specific instruction”. In this sentence I can relate it back to the gravity pulling exercise. Mainly because in that exercise you should just let go of tension and see where gravity takes you, whereas I was thinking to myself where I could catch my weight if needed, was scared of falling and crashing. In the article ‘sensing weight in movement’ Susane Raun talks about 4 different techniques (ballet, contemporary, body-mind centering and butch dance). All four genres have different ways of using gravity and mass to sense where to distribute their weight evenly. For example, a ballet dancer will have to use their weight by pulling up through the centre, whereas a contemporary dancer would need to have more range of movement in the torso.

Wednesday 15th October 2014

In the jam today I was challenging myself to work with different people and to initiate movement. Through the course of the jam I felt more relaxed then I have been in the past jams. This could be because we had more variety of movement due to the Monday classes. Also the darkness helps me get into the right frame of mind, I feel more awake and free in my movement, like no one can judge me. When starting the movement I became more aware of who was around me and went back to my old habits, going back to people I feel more comfortable with. Once I became more relaxed and into the mood of things I started my challenge of initiating movement with people. I have to say although I could find it easy initiating movement I was scanning the room a lot of the time to see who I hadn’t worked with yet. Despite that glitch of planning where to go next I felt I moved with a lot more people then I would usually work with (worked with the majority of the class). This on its own has given me a confident boost knowing there is nothing to be scared about when working with people you don’t really know so well.

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.

Week Two – Monday 29th September 2014

In today’s session we spoke about the readings. In the ‘Touch: Experience and Knowledge’ reading it spoke a lot about how touch is a sensation that can be linked to the skin, to the nervous system, then up to the brain. It also talked about how you shouldn’t be afraid of being touched or touching someone else. At the start of the session I could relate to this, but in the opposite reaction. As I was scared of touching and being touched in the last session last week. However, when we started the practical work I kept thinking back to this comment of being fearless. This one word helped me break the ice a bit.
During the practical session we started by getting the room energised, by walking round the room using our bodies. We used our upper, lower and whole body kinesphere. This helped me get into a relaxed mind frame. We then went into pair work. We did rolls where you have an under dancer and an over dancer. This then led us into having new ideas of improvising round the room. Another interesting exercise was you had a partner A and partner B and partner A would improvise around the room. When partner B would say pause you had to stop and they would use there body to balance on your stable bodily position. I found this good, but I felt I was being too safe with both the situations I was in. All my stable positions were very similar each time. However, when I was the one balancing I felt I wasn’t being very adventurous with my positions, I would always be going on my back. I felt like I should of tried different body parts to start the balancing. At the end of the session we got given a task of improvising in pairs and using the exercises we did today. During these three minutes I gave myself one instruction – to be free and don’t care. This helped a lot as i’m usually tense. Afterwards I felt way more relaxed and into it.
I felt today’s session was a good one, as I connected my readings to what I was doing in the lesson. Also I thought going into the practical session with a positive attitude gave me a bit more confidence.

– Steve Paxton in a youtube interview we watched gave us questions we want to find out about and answers we know about.

Questions:

What is movement/what can it be?

Why does Contact Improvisation go back to the early stages of movement?

How do you make a Improviser confident in the space?

How is it possible to let go of any tension, in the head or the body?

Why does Contact Improvisation relate to a toddler/baby?