Week 1 -26/09/2017
This was the first week we have had contact improvisation. We were gently eased into the session with different based exercises gaining trust and relationships with each other. the readings this week at first were very strange as of course I read the readings before we started our first session. My favorite reading out of them all must have been the Leading and Following by Joerg Hassmann. This reading states exactly that building trust is a big thing when it comes to contact and that easing into bigger points of contacts comes with trust. And practice and that small points of touch at first is not such a bad thing. He states
“I find a point of contact, preferable with a gentle leaning into each other I like for example, leaning with my shoulder/upper arm against my partner’s back…we will stay with only one point of touch for quite a while.” (pg44 by Joerg Hassmann)
Simple stating that this isn’t a bad thing to stay just shoulder to back swaying for a long time. During the lesson we did many exercises gaining trust from one and other and building relationships with each different person in the class. Some of these exercises I found difficult especially when you weren’t used to working with a specific classmate. But these exercises where there to tackle any nervous feelings that you had and being able to work and gain the relationship with people you might not specifically work with.
We were eased into each exercise gently, first creating dialogue with our bodies, like we were having a conversation with each other. We were encouraged to work with different people and not only people we felt comfortable dancing with. I found this difficult because when you have danced with somebody before you know how their bodies work and I found it hard working with some of my class mates as I didn’t understand properly how their bodies moves and they didn’t mine. This caused awkwardness in the movement and a lot of stops and starts in the conversation which didn’t feel good. The good thing about this was the we discovered new movements be probably would have done with somebody we were used to which I found helpful and useful in a lot of ways.
We also did a lot of trust exercises. For example, going back to back with someone and bending your knees until your almost in a squatting position and then trying to walk either forward or backwards. This was so fun as the exercise itself was enjoyable and I had a good time doing this. With these exercises it’s as all about just listening to each other and trusting each other. Listening to directions off one another and trusting in what each other said as well as in when to take the steps in order to get somewhere. This relates to the first reading again Leading and Following by Joerg Hassmann. in the reading he talks about that listening to each other is a really important thing if you’re not in a contact jam of course and your just in a lesson like us. And this was so useful as we worked together and we made a connection by just speaking and by that we succeeded at the task which was set.
Another reading called Moving from the skin by Dieter Heitkamp. This reading was all about your skin. How skin is the most important thing and the reading makes you think about your skin in a totally different way, as to how people touch you or your skin and how you touch there’s. All of the readings became so much clearer when we got up and started moving and started the little points of contact with in the lesson.
Bibliography
Hassmann, J. (2017) Leading & Following: focusing on the communication in and under the skin. Contact Quarterly, Vol 42: Pp. 44
Hietkamp, D. (2003) Moving from the skin: An Exploratorium. Contact Quarterly / Contact Improvisation Sourcebook II, Vol. 28:2. Pp. 268