Your centre of gravity does not have to be within the centre of the body “(inside the pelvis, a little below the belly button)” (Woodhull, Vol.4, 45). For example, when you lift someone their centre of gravity will change slightly depending on how that person is being lifted.
Again this week we looked at the interchangeable role of the over under dancer, to see if we understood this correctly, we watched two videos and were asked about the similarities and differences between them. The first on was ‘the play of weight – Martin Keogh and Neige Christenson’, I will be referring to this as ‘1’ and the second video ‘Contact improvisation – Mirva Mäkinen and Otto Akkanen’, I will be calling this ‘2’.
Similarities:
- Both used the role of over under dancer
- Both used momentum
- Both used the lever and anchor system
Differences:
- In 1 the male dancer in the video was the under dancer most of the time, whereas in 2 the roles were interchangeable.
- The dancers in 2 both bounced off each other and the flow was consistent and looked a lot rawer.
- In 1 there was tracing used. By this I mean a lot of contact without touching.
- In 1 there were moments of stillness.
In this lesson we played with the ‘1, 2, 3 falling’ exercise but this time it was different as we had to give our peers the full weight of our body, supporting our necks and heads, to lower to the floor, the feeling and sensation I heard from someone in the class was that it feels like you are falling with control, also from watching you could see as a collective people became more confident and began to let themselves relax more so everyone had more weight to support.
When watching from the side of the room you get such a different perspective of when you are joining in with the class, however it is a good thing that we are able to sit and watch if we are injured or unwell as you think about things differently. I noticed that many people in the group do not release their body to its full potential and this can be quite dangerous for not only the person who is not released but the other as well.
Entering the jam during Tuesdays class, everyone looked so full of energy they all worked so well together, even when people do struggle to respond to the other person, they try to carry on, however if it did not work, they broke away and found someone else to create a connection with. Another thing I liked about this jam is you got to see how everyone worked with people they may not have worked with before and to see that new connection was really nice and it pushed people to the limits.
Thursday nights jam class was my best so far, even though the class felt really low going into the lesson! I did not manage to get feedback off my tutor however, I knew that it would be what she had been saying that a lot of the class had to do, which was ‘to enter the jam more’ and this week I believe I did. I really enjoyed this jam as we now know how to communicate whilst lifting and where the best place is to put your weight and how to recover if you fall. Normally in the jams I struggle to get back into them once I come out however this week, I felt like I struggled to come out as we all took on-board the comments from our tutor.
Going back to how we communicate in jams, I struggle to work with more than one person as most of the stuff we have covered in the classes is partner work, so when someone tried to work with Kayleigh and I, we did not pay much attention to her as we were so focused on what we were doing together and inviting someone else in was strange. But overall I loved this weeks’ jam.
Bibliography:
Neige Christenson (2009) The play of weight. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ltq6y06E8ew [accessed 11 November 2016].
Omegabranch (2011) Contact Improvisation Mirva Mäkinen & Otto Akkanen. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMLbWxujoGw [accessed 11 November 2016].
Woodhull A. Center of Gravity. Contact Quarterly/ Contact Improvisation Sourcebook I Vol. 4. Pp. 43-48