This week we started the session with a simple somatic exercise in partners. As I relaxed my body in to the floor on every exhalation I could feel all the tension leaving my body and concentrated on where my partner placed her weight , and where I could feel temperature changes or more pressure. I noticed that when her hands were gently pulling to lengthen my spine, I could feel tension start to build up slightly in my shoulders even though I was trying to completely relax. I found that I couldn’t get rid of this tension even though I was allowing my body to ‘melt’ into the floor, I could only relieve it slightly therefore it must have been something my partner was doing to my body, not what I was trying to control my body into doing. As the exercise went on and my partner ran her hands down my back to relieve any tension she may have caused, I started to feel light headed and over whelmed with a sickly feeling even though I was lying down. As I sat up to swap roles with my partner I found it hard to regain balance and I continued to feel nauseous from now until the end of the session. I feel this may have been because of how much I was controlling my own breathe, which isn’t something that I am used to, or because I was trying to control my body internally and someone else what doing the same to my body externally, which is also something new that my body isn’t used to.
Next we began to try exploring how to improvise and keep in contact with a partner. We started back to back and closed our eyes. At first I found this easy as having sight taken away made me feel a lot more comfortable as you are aware that nobody else is watching you, and equally you cant see anyone else to compare yourself to. This was also because we started the exercise by keeping all movement small and slow and on a low kinesphere, so we didn’t rush in to baring each others weight straight away, just balancing. I found that sometimes I had to open my eyes slightly in order to keep balance but whilst doing this I would find that me and my partner were in different positions/ making contact with body parts which was completely different to what expected it to be because of how it felt. The exercise made us react to pressure on body parts to initiate the movement, however this made me realise that the way movement looks isn’t always in sync with how that movement feels in our bodies. For example me and Hannah began sat up straight back to back, when I opened my eyes we had both beginning to lean to the side (the same way) but I had stopped after bending my elbow where as Hannah moved her body as close to the floor as she could. The reason I stopped because I thought we had already stopped in the same place because of where I could feel her shoulder making contact with my back. However this then did allow us to change levels slightly and start to move wore fluently rather than stopping and starting over and over, like what had been happening previously.
when we did this same exercise in a circle and observing other partners, it became apparent that anytime something unexpected happened the pairs would return to the original backs facing position and start again, rather than working with it in order to explore what could happen next or if that could lead to finding a new way of moving or connecting with a partner. I feel as though as a class we are all very nervous to explore movement to our full capability as we are aware that things may go wrong and that the rest of the class will see failed attempts, even though we all know that it is fine to try things and them not to work out, especially the first time.
We also tried improvising and pausing to create a frame for another dancer to make contact with a balance with your body. It was strange to improvise by myself again and observe others to the same because although we have began to improvise again, this is only week 2 and the majority of this module is dependent on us working with others. I was aware that a lot of my movements were extremely similar or even repetitive although I wasn’t falling into any habitual patterns that I identified in pervious improvisation sessions. However the repetition in movement, from both me and my partner, made it difficult to find new places to pause each others movement where they would be in a new position to find somewhere new to balance or take each other’s weight. This perhaps would have been more successful if we could have changed partners a couple of times through out the exercise just to work with a new body and mind and possibly explore weight baring more with fresh ideas from other people.
I find it difficult to keep my technique and alignment correct whilst improvising and making contact with another body whilst also trying to think of new ways to get in and out of awkward positions but still make the movement interesting whilst doing that. Doing some release based exercises in this session helped me to realise that the control I will learn to have over my body from release will help to control my body to get me in and out of awkward lifts. Although release technique, along with being lifted, panic me as I have a fear of forward rolls, being upside down and I find it hard to completely trust someone else to lift me and take my full weight. This is something I am apprehensive about for this module however I am looking forward to trying new things and getting over these fears to enable my improvisational skills.