This week’s reading Touch: Experience and Knowledge, by Fiona Bannon and Duncan Holt. This was so interesting reading for me, the reading really explored the different ways that touch is one of the most important elements of contact improvisation and also in just daily life as well. The reading is very repetitive and talks a lot about how important touch is and sometimes we don’t remember what that touch feels like.
The reading talks about touching in day to day life and in this particular part about a chiropractor and how ” hands on” (Fiona Bannon and Duncan Holt pg. 217) the job is and the experience you encounter when you’re a client and the professional. They do this every single day there for they probably don’t remember the sensation and the contact that the skin made. This made me think about all different experiences I’ve encountered with people and how I’ve never felt about how I’ve touched somebody and the sensation I got. I then touched a fellow class mate and tried to feel the sensations I got and what I could feel, I didn’t get much sensation off them as this is something that you do every day.
In class we started by lying on the floor, the aim of this exercises was to move from side to side. We did this whilst our eyes were shut, I found having your eyes shut helpful because then I didn’t have the urge to look at anyone else to see what they were doing, you were in your own world and I was just exploring different reaches and pulls that I could do and also how big I could make my shapes before rolling on to each side. I tried keeping all my parts of the body in contact with the floor thinking about all the different parts that are touching the floor and what feelings I got through my clothes, and what does the floor feel like when it brushes against my skin. This was such a simple exercise but by thinking about how the feelings and sensations of my skin and body gave me a knock-on effect in to different movements.
The surfing and rolling exercise was such a fun exercise and again like the first week we were encouraged to try this exercise with different people, experiencing people’s bodies differently. I first tried this with Kirsty my lecturer and a professional contact improvisation so straight away I was feeling nervous by working with someone I hadn’t worked with before. She eased me into the exercise so gently explaining every step to me. She was contently speaking to me breathing and making sure that I was comfortable with what we were doing. The main element in this task was being engaged at all times and staying on contact via word of mouth and making sure that at least one part of our body was in contact which we did and made me feel so much more confinement and comfortable trying it with somebody else, I then felt comfortable going in to this exercise with different people. This exercise also relates back to the reading where it speaks about the over and under dancer
” what we have is continuity of connection, between touching in and touching out and in this way emphasizing that we in habit world that is inconstant motion, a continuous mode of existence.”(Fiona Bannon and Duncan Holt pg. 220).
We were rolling over one another keeping in contact at all times, this is so relatable as both under and over partners had to be comfortable.
Working with Kye which was someone I had never worked with before was very challenging. He is a lot taller than me but actually doing this we were actually very good and I was just as comfortable as him when he was rolling over the top of me. We were constantly talking and helping each other along the way helping each other out on parts we’re we felt unconfident and by doing this is gave us both the confidence to work to want to work together more as we completed the task. This was a great feeling of success.
Bibliography
Bannon, F. and Holt, D. (2012). Touch: Experience and Knowledge. Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, Vol. 3 Issue 1/2, pp.215-227.