Category: Uncategorized

With a week off from contact improvisation classes and jams, as expected the rescheduled class included more content in this session containing a high energy from the group at the beginning of the class, which developed from a group warm up. By starting with a body surfing, which we had done before, we were given the opportunity to explore different ways to move over each other’s bodies whilst keeping a connection. With this came the chance for the under dancer to experiment with creating different levels for the over dancers to move over, whilst keeping the connection and staying on a low kinesphere. Using rolling as the under dancer presents itself as the easiest and most comfortable option as it has been practiced several times within our sessions, which also means there is always something to go back to if we get stuck in something during a contact jam. However this allows the opportunity for this to become habitual movement, making the movement I create in a jam boring with limited room for exploration. Without exploring different bases and levels as the under dancer, it creates further problems between the two bodies and effects the conversation as the over dancer isn’t given the platform they need to try new things; facings, landings, where the weight is in relation to their under dancer. This also highlights the importance of the keeping a constant connection between the two bodies (as much as physically possible) and staying alert in order to listen to the conversation that allows the bodies to help and create new ways of exploring for one another. Each action has a consequence, whether that be positively creating opportunities and discovering new ways to move with in an exploration, or it be losing connection if things are not working smoothly or safely.

The first session playing with lifting people and completely releasing onto another body caused me to feel anxious before we had even started, however I found working with the right people was calming and made me feel more confident. Enjoying some of the lifts, including laying over someone’s back sideways or backwards, made me realise the difference between the physical and mental blocks, helping me to acknowledge that the problem is being scared to try things, not that I am unable or uncappable of doing so. On the other hand it is disheartening to bounce back and continue when lifts don’t work in the learning process as it causes frustration and creates belief that it would never work in a jam situation. Personally, this week I found it difficult to master finding the anchor point and swinging each other down the room. the problem I found was being able to do this slowly but the connection would break, leading to a problem trying this with other people as we were at different levels and I felt as though I couldn’t keep up.

This reflected in the jam at the end of this class. We started on the floor, warming up our own bodies, finding contact with someone and starting a conversation with them. I initially made contact with another body fluently but as things were not working and I was becoming frustrated, we moved away to find new partners however I found the same problem with any body that I chose to work with. Coming to the conclusion that I should take myself out of the jam for a while, I felt an immense pressure to go back in but the more I thought about it, the more attempts I made and the more I noticed the absence of bodies in the space compared to other jams we have been a part of, the more it became difficult to want back in. Once exiting the jam this week, unfortunately i did not re-enter, out of fear and resistance, not unwillingly.

As the weeks progress, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to enjoy a session, or feel confident within a contact jam, which I believe to be an unfortunate outcome of a fear of failure. The more I think about what would be expected of me during a jam, the more I panic that what I do won’t be good enough and that I will let my partner down either by breaking our connection, not following what their body wanted to do, or even worse hurting another dancer or causing an injury. My determination to get everything right puts me at a disadvantage as I start to tell my things I can’t do things, even when I successfully attempt something but is at a different standard to other people in the class. 

We started this class by exploring ‘small dance’, understanding the theory, what it looked like in a body and how it felt in our own bodies. As a obscure concept, and one I had never thought of before with in contact improvisation, I found it difficult to understand ‘small dance’ just from watching Paxton’s video, as it proved hard to see movement in a ‘still’ body in the for of the skeleton. Proving a big difference in the body, mind and aesthetics, I found the feeling of trying to stay still very different to what I expected. From the absence of movement that could be seen in the skeleton video, or from observing other bodies, I didn’t expect to feel a large amount of movement. Although my engagement with the space made me aware that my body wasn’t creating a lot of movement, I could feel an overwhelming difference between what I would usually consider a ‘still’ body and what I was experience. I particularly felt this movement in my hip and ankle joints as a rocked to the side and tried to control my balance to prevent falling.

This was the first Research Lab task that we had to run which proved challenging.

Our question was “How can we change our habits of defense during contact improvisation?”.

To collects the results to these question we decided to change the vision of the dancers to see if how comfortable they felt in the space effected the way they move and how they use their habits of defense in new or unfamiliar situations. We also created a series of questions to help collect the data which we planned to makes notes on by collecting feedback of the answers.

My role in the group was to observe the participating dancers and make notes.

Immediately I noticed that there was a lot of confusion by the meaning of our question and what we were asking them to do. There was also a lot of apprehension right at the beginning, which I believe to be a result of the uncertainty of the task, as the bodies became, noticeably, more relaxed towards the end of each task. When the option of starting back to back or weight baring someone’s head in your hands, every pair started back to back and went back to that as a starting position if they lost contact with their partner or if what they were trying didn’t work. The majority of people stayed on a low kinesphere and there was an absence of counterbalances or taking each other’s weight, which collectively we had been comfortable with in previous classes.

The feedback we received from asking the questions were reciprocal of the observations I had already made, in most areas.

We found that the dancers felt most uncomfortable with their eyes closed rather than with the lights off, due to uncertainty of where they were, trusting the people around them and that it was something that we haven’t practiced as much as some of the other tasks that we presented.  Interestingly we found that some people had their eyes closed in task one when they had freedom to do anything, however they began to feel uncomfortable when we took the choice away from them because they then had to find a partner first and interact before starting a conversation, rather than having the ability to consciously choose a partner then close their eyes when they started to feel more comfortable.

As a group, task 3 proved to be the favourite as they found it more comforting that they could at least see the outlines of other bodies to allow them to be spatially aware of who they were moving with, which is what they said made them feel apprehensive in task 2. Again they found themselves in the safety net of starting back to back because they are familiar with that from previous contact classes. They found it easier with a change in vision rather than no vision at all because they could experiment with movement more if they knew who they were making contact with.

They decided that in order for them to be able to work well in the second task that they had to allow their trust to grow from one task to the other, which is what we expected when we were designing our research lab. They also found that they learnt throughout that there was no fluidity in their movement or they couldn’t experiment much if they didn’t learn to trust the other body that they were in contact with.

There is a problematic  ‘organization through the technical and organizational rules governing both dance and society’ (Robert Turner, 2010) requiring us to lose all pre existing knowledge of how to behave in society in order to learn new ways of thinking for how to behave in in the studio. This week we trialed this as we started to work closer together than we have before meaning we had to think in a different way to make it work.

In the paxton reading this week we learnt thinking is different to doing and they effect each other in the terms of “habitual movement” and making contact with others. We tested this first by trusting out partners with the weight of our head in their hands. This was a strange experience as we learn to hold our weight in our head/neck from a young age and this exercise meant that we had to forget all of that existing knowledge but continue to move and trust the person you were working with. I felt this was a lot more difficult than how it felt or how I initially thought it would feel. Whilst moving, I thought I was letting all my weight into my partners hands, however from feedback she told me that should feel a strong resistance from me where she couldn’t take my weight which was surprising to hear as it was not how my body felt during the exercise. Whist I was holding my partners head I realized that it was easier for me to use imagery, rather than thinking of how hands would hold a head,  to help me think in different way which made it easier for my body to move with hers and I could feel the more I did this the more my partner trusted me and we were able to work better together with more fluent movement. As this was an unusual exercise it required me to fins a new way of thinking which wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

This week I found that changing the environment has a dramatic impact on how we think and how that influences her movement. During a familiar exercise (walking around the space making eye contact with people and starting movement conversations) I tried to make myself aware of my surroundings and the other bodies in the space, along with making sure my own body was engaged. Doing this helped me become more aware of which bodies I could trust and could start an interesting conversation with as apposed to the people or friends who I know I could probably work with. If other people weren’t as alert or engaging the space in the same way as me they were harder to move with and it was clear just from making eye contact with them. For example I found that a face with a tense jaw, angry eyes or a smiling mouth usually belonged to a tense body that was focusing on movement in their own bodies rather than interacting with other bodies.

The same exercise allowed me to make accidental contact with other bodies, similarly to in a jam. Whilst walking around the space I decided to make change in directions quick, often and sharp which made collision with other dancers likely and initiated a spontaneous conversation. I made contact with one other dancer with my back and her chest which allowed us to find new ways of baring each other’s weight and we found interesting new counter balances that I wouldn’t have thought would be possible if it had been pre planned.

This weeks contact jam didn’t feel the same in my body although I was alert and tried to keep my energy high. The more instructions were introduced, the more I found it difficult for things to work which I believe to be because each instruction allowed a different interpretation for each person, causing us to leave the space to rethink, re-engage and start again. However a failed attempt often took away the confidence I had to entre the space and try again. The lesser/ slower atmosphere as a collective and the absence of the teachers and their pace created a dramatic difference to the excitement and energy of the previous jam which also influenced the amount of bodies in the space at one time.

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.

I feel as though a chilled welcome back was much needed, and it helped a lot. Before the class I was extremely nervous about this module. As much as I began to enjoy improvisation at level one, the idea of relying on other people more heavily than in previous sessions is daunting to me as I am not used to working with other people and I feel very uncomfortable being lifted or being upside down (e.g. forward rolls). But after the first session I excited to learn and become for comfortable with contact improvisation, similarly to level one.

We started this class by watching 4 contact work videos; 2 choreographed 2 improvised. the main differences I noticed between the two groups were that the choreographed pieces flowed a lot better and they included fast transitions between push and pull lifts and more higher level lifts that were strong, powerful and confident. Whereas the improvised videos contained slower movement, more consistent work on a lower level and in the third video the dancers tended to stay with the same parner for the majority of the video, or only swapped partners a small number of times, compared to a middle section of the 2nd video where every lift or moment of contact was with a new person.

Starting with impulse exercises helped me to feel more confident in starting the new module and working with familiar people made it easier to move and react to their impulse. From moving I felt as though it was easy and I didn’t fall in to any habitual patterns, however from observing other groups I felt as though over all the movement was all very similar and not as exploratory as it could have bee, or had been in previous sessions.

Walking around the space without sight was a strange experience for me but it was interesting to have to trust a full room of people and try something we have never done as a group before. It was easier to walk with my hands out in front of me and shake hands with others than it was to hug people and make full contact. However I also found it was easier to use my senses of smell and hearing to guess who I was making contact with, which made me feel more comfortable and more trusting of the people around me.