Did you think we can ever be still? ‘Small Dance’ a video by Steve Paxton, shows that there is no such thing as being still in the body. The video shows a skeleton, the lines on the video help you to see the small movements which happen either on the inside or the outside of the body, you may not notice these happening. The only time you begin to notice these movements is when you really channel into your inner self and focus on tracking through your body. I find this a really good way to relax the body and mind ready for this kind of lesson.

Our research question was ‘how does sensory knowledge impact the way we communicate through contact improvisation?’ this came from week two when we were exploring touch and how it effects our communication. “To explore the complex intermingling of experience, perception and knowledge in relation to our human understandings of touch.” (Bannon and Holt, 2012, 215)

Our first task for the group was the ‘Banana Roll’ (IntegrationTraining, 2013) we got this idea after researching different ideas of how to introduce touch in contact improvisation. We found this video helpful and that it related to our idea as it is all about sensory knowledge and how it can impact the way we communicate through contact improvisation. We asked the group if they found it challenging or easy to release the body and letting your partner control what you were doing, the response was challenging, because they knew what they were doing and tried to roll themselves, however they all enjoyed it. One pair stuck out to me the most as the person being rolled was really relaxed and just let themselves go which was the purpose of the exercise. The next question we asked them was ‘were you able to sense what areas of your body were making contact with the floor?’ and they said it was hard to concentrate on the touch of the floor and the touch of their partner rolling them across the room.

The final exercise we explored was called ‘Sensorium’ another word for sensory perception – “the area of the brain considered responsible for receiving and integrating sensations from the outside world” (Farlex, 2003). ‘Sensorium’ was used to explore different ways of moving whilst in contact with someone with a large area of the body, the areas we used were shoulder to hip, hip to knee, knee to ankle and the try exploring connecting other ideas such as shoulder to knee, hip to ankle. When we asked if they and what sensations they felt when tracking through their bodies they said they could not do it as they were too focused on not separating from their partners. Our final question was, ‘do you have a better awareness of how sensory knowledge transmits through the body?’. Some people said yes as they found it difficult, but if they feel themselves going into habitual movements then they can think back to this task and try to explore it in more depth, however other people in the group said no as they found it hard to read each other’s movements so did not know where they were going.

I feel that we explored our research lab well, as we challenged the class and pushed them to find different ways of moving especially when they got stuck in certain places, they tried to carry on exploring them. This also helps to move away from habitual movement as you are unable to do them whilst connected to another body as you have to take them into consideration.

During our third Thursday night ‘improv jam’ session, we started out by learning weight bearing movements, however during the warm up for this I hurt my back, so was not comfortable to lift or be lifted. Once we had learnt different ways of weight bearing we started the jam…For me I really struggled to get into the jam because I felt like when we came into contact with someone they just wanted to lift or be lifted and I was struggling to do that, so unfortunately I did not go in to the jam as much as I had hoped to. Another reason I felt set back was because of two third year students being there, this is because they do not know about my back and also I have never danced with them before so I did not know how to move with them and this made me uncomfortable. I know I have to overcome the fear of dancing with people I am not used to dancing with but it is hard when you do not feel confident in a certain area or style of dance.

 

Bibliography:

Bannon, Fiona; Holt, Duncan. (2012) Touch: Experience and knowledge, Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices Vol. 3. (pp. 215-227)

IntegrationTraining (2013) Contact Improvisation Rolling Exercise. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ7WLqpR2qI [accessed 12 October 2016].

Farlex (2003) ‘Sensorium’. Available from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sensorium [accessed 20 October 2016].

Paxton, S. (2009) Small Dance. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sJKEXUtv44 [accessed 19 October 2016].

This week I was unable to join in, but to watch the rest of the class was interesting and influential.

The first exercise was used as a way to warm up their bodies from the inside to the outside, even though they were just laying on their backs they hand to keep their mind engage and active, whilst relaxed. They had to track through their bodies what parts were in connection to the floor. I could see people holding tension in their necks and shoulders, this is not good for the body as it can cause pain, however I understand how hard it is to relax them. The piece of imagery I use to help me relax those places is think that they are melting into the floor. The next part of this exercise they then had to think about keeping their heads in contact with the floor i.e. top, side or the back; when watching this you could see that a lot of the class were tense in the back of the neck and head. Throughout the whole of contact improvisation, you need to be able to release the whole of your body so you don not injure or cause strain to yourself.

Imagine trying to give the weight of your head to someone? I cannot think how hard it would be. Observing the class, you could see that for most people when exploring their different kinespheres, the movement became more experimental on the lower kinesphere as they said it was easier to give you’re the weight of your head to them at that level, I also noticed that when people started to get other body parts involved it became more explorative. From my observations I could see the partner holding the head was sometimes trying to control were their partner was going and what they were doing, but they were only there to support their heads.

Body connections…in contact we do not just use touch to connect we use our eye contact as a form of connecting to one another.  “While in contact, we attend to our reflexes, which have been stimulated by the other’s movements. Our reflexes move us, and this causes our partner to move. This is the cycle of movement responses is continuous and forms the basis of the dialogue.” (Turner, 2010, p130-p131). This relates to the idea of mutual communication, you follow your partner’s movements and then they follow yours, sometimes they can be experimental and other times you will fall back into what you have done before.

When the class started to travel across the room it was interesting as you got to see how different people changed their confidence, especially when learning the ‘aikido roll’, everyone learnt to do this on their own then doing it with a partner was introduced as the connection between the two had to remain throughout for the transfer to be successful. Another difficult exercise was the back to back connection with the leg extension, many people struggled with this whilst I was observing as they struggled to keep the contact throughout. Another observation I saw when watching this was the height difference is key you need to be similar heights to your partner, if not then you need to accommodate for your partner’s height. When I questioned people as to how it felt doing this they said weird as the positioning of your body on your partners body was hard as you were going backwards.

During Thursday night’s contact jam, I was really struggling to get into it, I think it may have been that I was unable to join in in the lesson on the lead up to this session. So I was behind everyone else at the start of the lesson and due to an injury, I am warier of putting my weight onto others and them putting their weight onto me. This is something I wish and need to overcome for this module, and it is very tough. After we had flicked back to the across the room activities from Tuesdays lesson, we then went into out ‘jam’. Personally this was harder than last week, due to the fact the music was slower, however when a more upbeat track came on more people entered the centre of the circle. Another point I noticed was that the energy level was not as high as last week, as the lectures were not involved. I am looking forward to both of next weeks’ sessions as we are starting to look at weight bearing, this will help us in our ‘jams’ from then onwards.

 

Bibliography:

Turner, Robert. TDR: The Drama Review, Fall2010, Vol. 54 Issue 3, p123-135, 13p, 5 Black and White Photographs.

“Touch is the mother of our senses” (Bannon and Holt, 218, 2012). It is a complex yet key sense used from such a young age, when we were younger we used it to explore our surroundings, the people we met and other things that got in our way. An issue with the idea of touch is that it can be seen as negative i.e. abuse and harm; this idea needs to been seen as a positive welcoming part of contact improvisation.

Throughout this technique you need to help and engage the trust of your peers, this is an important skill to have as “it brings a closeness and a sense of intimacy and community within the class” Bannon and Holt, 222, 2012). This is a key concept because if you do not trust your peers how are you going to perform in a contact improvisation jam, in which you have to make contact and do weight bearing movements.

Proprioception – “The unconscious perception of movement and spatial orientation arising from stimuli within the body itself.” (Dictionary.com, 2016)

The first touch exercise brought out my sensory knowledge, meaning that it made me more aware of what was going on within and around my body. When my partner put a hand between my shoulder blades and the other on the lower part of my back and pressed her hands away from each other I could sense my spine lengthening, it made me realise how much more I could possibly lift myself up out of my hips when performing. When my partner slowly moved her hands away I could still feel the connection she had made; this was using the concept of ‘not touching’, and proving that it has just the same amount of power as touching. During this same exercise we also focused on the idea of and over and under dancer, and how this is also a form of connecting; due to an injury I was unable to experience the full potential of this however I was able to feel and understand the main concept. For example, we used the breath to connect with each other, one pair in the group laughed, this was caused by one the under dancer laughing which then moves the chest of the other making her laugh. Throughout this whole exercise it made me think about my body awareness and made me realise where I had aches and pains.

How would you remake contact once it has been broken? At this stage we are likely to go to our ‘safe place’, for example the back to back exercise, due to injury I could not participate in this, so whilst I was observing I noticed that as soon as partners lost their contact with each other they would go back to the ‘safe place’- this being the starting position. Whilst watching this exercise I could see that some people struggled to keep communicating to their partners through the movements, and when this happens they tend to go back to their ‘safe place’ again. The second part to this task was to all sit in a circle and then everyone else could observe each other. This was interesting as you could start to see habitual movements creeping back in, to help with this you could try to move different body parts to help explore movement. Another thing I saw a lot of was when people ended up I to the over and under dancer was that the under dancer did not do a lot and expected the over dancer to move, however if the under dancer had moved it may have created something unique, that you may not have thought of before.

When I entered my first jam on Thursday night I did not know what to expect, especially because as a class we have only had two lessons on contact improvisation, so it was very new to most of us. We were told to get into a circle of trust, and just perform anything we had learnt so far from this module or anything in which we had learnt last year in our improvisation module, and there could be no less than two people in the centre of the circle. I was so nervous to go into the circle and jam, however if I had not have done it then I would never have overcome the fear of doing it. The best thing about this jam was that we were in a low lit studio so when I went into the circle I felt more comfortable and relaxed. The best way I felt to move into the jam was to walk in and either start dancing alone or go up to someone and help aid their performance, the music which was used throughout the jam helped as it relaxed you more instead of feeling like everyone could hear you breathing and moving around the space. When performing with a partner or multiple partners I felt like I was moving in more of a unique way and there were not many habitual movements I performed, however as soon as I was dancing alone I could feel myself fall back into them movements, and I also panicked and hesitated. When I stepped back to the edge of the circle it was really inspiring to watch other people move as it placed ideas into my head of what I could do the next time I went in and I can then experiment with their movements to fit with my own individual style.

 

Bibliography:

Bannon, Fiona; Holt, Duncan. (2012) Touch: Experience and knowledge, Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices Vol. 3. (pp. 215-227)

Dictionary.com. (2016). the definition of proprioception. [online] Available at: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/proprioception [Accessed 6 October 2016].

How would you feel walking into your first contact improvisation class? Excited or nervous?  I felt both. Excited to learning a new skill, which I will use in the future; yet I was nervous of being thrown in at the deep end.

What is the difference between contact work and contact improvisation? Contact work is choreographed movements which involve contact such as weight bearing, whereas contact improvisation is not set, however you have to be prepared to support each other and yourself, the movements are also very controlled when done correctly. Contact improvisation “has shifted: away from an experimental dance phenomenon and toward a physical practice…”. (Paxton, 2003, 175)

We watched four videos; two which helped us to understand what contact improvisation is and how professionals look when in a jam or performance and two which showed us what contact work looks like. Watching the video ‘Angela Donny & Athos – CONTACT IMPROVISATION 2009 IBIZA’ (two professionals) was really interesting as every move was performed with no communication and ease yet they were always there to support themselves and each other throughout all the controlled movements they did. The second contact improvisation video was ‘Contact Improv Jam – Berlin K77’ (non-professionals), during this jam you could hear the communication happening between the partners, which is good however you do not want to be talking about the next move as then it is planned and that is not how improvisation works. Another point from this video was that all the moves performed looked experimental. Once I had seen these two videos it made me realise how excited and ready I am to get stuck in and take away some of the fear I have when being lifted and lifting others as we will learn how to do this.

Impulse touch is a partner task, using the impulse of touching a certain body part to move using non habitual movements. This time round because we are now doing CONTACT improvisation, the touch had to be more powerful and meaningful than previous explorations, as now it was to guide your partner onto their next move, not them move their own body. Everyone tried their hardest to guide their partner into the next movement, but sometimes it can be hard as you do not know where they are going. Some more than others, went down to their partner’s level when they were on the floor and then moved with them, and when this happened it looked more like the contact improvisation from the videos.

How would you overcome contact improvisation, if you got dropped or dropped someone else whilst performing new experimental moves? For me it is easy! I would start from where I felt comfortable and build it all up slowly, and because I would have already done it before I would understand what the correct way to do it is and the wrong way to do it, once I had become more confident with them I would be able to perform more complex moves and I would also have my confidence back.

 

 

Bibliography:

Paxton, S. Drafting Interior Techniques. In Stark-Smith, N.  A Subjective History of Contact Improvisation. In Albright, A. C., & Gere, D. (2003). Taken by surprise: A dance improvisation reader. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan. University Press. Pp.175-18

Angela Donny and Athos. (2009) Angela Donny and Athos – Contact Improvisation 2009 Ibiza. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0OmQaLaj6c. [accessed 2 October 2016].

Juri Schmidt. (2010). Contact Improvisation Jam – Berlin K77. [Online Video]. 8 March 2010. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDhhKmCVVdo. [accessed 2 October 2016].