Month: November 2017

This week’s reading WHATS THE SCORE? By Maura Keefe was very confusing to get my head around. I understood the relation to dance improvisations and baseball. It spoke about how improvisation doesn’t have a set of rules but it has scores and how improvisation then has a structure to follow. It relates contact improvisation to the technique of the bowler when the bowler begins to bowl the ball. It states ” he dropped his weight way back onto his back leg” this as dancers we see as a form of technique its structure but the way he does this is improvised. As everything we do in life is a form of improvisation. 

In class today our first partner work exercise we did was a simple lead and follow exercise, something we have covered in lesson before but we revisited with different people. As there was an odd number in class I was with a three for this with both Laura and Jess. Me and jess found it so difficult to both be leading one person as we were both trying to determine the way we wanted Laura to go but of course there was two of trying to direct her so there for it seemed to be a bit all over the place. It was also very hard when we switched places as Laura then had to lead both me and Jess at the same time, to make this easier and safe she decided to wrap her arms around me and Jess instead of placing them on our lower backs we therefor knew what directions she wanted us to go in. Because Laura was leading two of us sometimes the pressure she wanted in my right side she would also do to jess which we would then sometimes collide and bump into each other at some points. At the begging of this when she started with the hands on our backs walking I had anxiety as I knew her job was harder.  

Did I trust her? 

When she then turned to cupping around our waist my anxiety went and I began to then trust her. It was great to see the use of the hierarchy nature used and thinking of the equality of all of our bodies. We then developed the following and leading into movements where our partners would touch a part of our body or do something to initiate movement. Our partners were encouraged to touch different parts of the body and apply different pressures to different parts, she had initiate different and out of the ordinary movements to get us out of our habitual movements that we would normally do. I was still with Laura for this, somebody I have never worked with in contact before which was really helpful has her body moves very different to mine. Just the way Laura touched my body parts and the different body parts I had never thought somebody would have touched, for example my fingers and the side of my body. Just simply using her fingertip gently gave me a completely different sensation to when I had done it before in class with somebody else. It made me explore different movements and really release my body and stop my normal and habitual movement I tend to do. My experience was so different in this exercise than it had been before or in any other exercises we had done like this, I really enjoyed working with Laura and I feel like I learnt a lot from this. 

For the last part of the lesson we were trying more going up lifts for example one I did with Jess was the arm to arm shoulder lift. This was a really hard lift very mentally challenging for both me and the under dancer. For this we decided that having spotters was the best option to keep everybody safe especially the over dancer as I was flipping over Jesses shoulder. With the help from Kirsty we did manage to get this lift once but the second time we tried this with the spotters’ jess had her sense of gravity in the wrong place and she actually fell backward with me in the air on top of her shoulder and fell onto the floor. With this lift sharing the sense of gravity and having our sense of gravity in the correct place was a really important. The placement of where I held onto jess and where she grabbed me was very important so we didn’t hurt each other. The main thing for me being the over dancer was to not hold any muscular tension but be able to hold my body in the correct place to help the momentum of Jess lifting me. 

 

 

Bibliography  

Keffe, M. What’s the score? In Albright, A.C,& Gere, D.(2003) Taken by surprise: A dance improvisation reader. Middletown, Conneticut: Wesleyan University press. Pp 223-235. 

Due to personal circumstances I didn’t attend today’s lesson. Further on from this we had two readings prior to read in preparation for this class. Although I didn’t attend the class I still did the readings for this session. 

One reading, Exposed to Gravity by Bruce Curtis and Alan Ptashek and then the second reading, Dancer- Dance – Spirituality: A phenomenological exploration of Bharatha Natyam ad contact improvisation by Aparana Ramaswamy and Daniel Deslauriers. 

Exposed to Gravity really seemed to click for me and was the one reading I really understood because we have had a reading previously about Gravity, Centre of Gravity by Ann Woodhull in week 6. 

Bruce Curtis a man in a wheelchair talking about his experiences and own bodily movement whilst sitting down. He talks about how his body moving and dancing in his wheelchair is just the same as anybody else’s movements that they can do stood up using everything in their body. ” this micro-movement was just as much dancing as what everyone else did with their whole body”. (Curtis, B. 1998. 156) his body is just as able as anybody else’s even though he is in a wheelchair his moves are just as much dance as for example mine are who is able to walk. 

Curtis talks greatly about how it does not matter how his body is your just as able as anybody else and it’s how you use your disability to your advantage and how you explore your body being disabled. He states ” what is most important to remember is that each body, disabled or not, is unique and presents another opportunity to explore what movement is possible”. (Curtis, B. 1998. 157) this is really inspirational and Curtis hasn’t let his disability stop him from doing anything that anybody else can do. 

 Although he cannot feel the gravity under his feet his “chair has become a part of my body”(Curtis, B. 1998. 156) he states. Therefor in order to feel the sensations of gravity his chair does this for him. ” gravity is very noticeable to me since my muscles cannot stand in opposition to it.”(Curtis, B. 1998. 157). 

Contact improvisation has a great sensation feeling to it when creating contact with a different person, whether it’s just hand to hand or whether its other body parts touching one another. I know this due to my own experiences throughout the past 7 weeks in contact improvisation. The sensations I feel when somebody touches a body part and what movement follows on from the sensation I was feeling. This is exactly the same with Bruce Curtis. He feels sensations the same way as we do he still leads from movement to movement from the sensations he gets. He says ” through the point of contact, I would feel the potential for movement waiting to be released” (Curtis, B. 1998. 158). 

Music has a huge impact on our improvisation I know from past experiences in jams me as an individual definitely move to the rhythm of the music. Curtis talks how Alan discourages this, ” the body tends to move to the rhythm of the music, instead of the internal rhythm of shifting weight, sensations and the communication that goes back and forth.” (Curtis, B. 1998. 158). 

Although Bruce Curtis has that form of disability Alan Ptashek talks about how he uses the chair and still contacts Curtis by jumping and throwing himself on top him and his chair without any complications just like it’s somebody out of a wheelchair. Ptashek suggests that he’s found a safe way of doing this without injuring each other. ” I have learned and thrown my weight on Bruce and his chair from many angles and impulses”. (Curtis, B. 1998. 161). Like before they have to have their sense of gravity in the correct place just like anybody else in order to do these contact moves. 

This reading was so interesting so see the difference in Bruce Curtis but also the similarities in mine and his body because there is no different sometimes.  

 

Curtis, B. (1988). Exposed to Gravity. Contact Quarterly/ Contact Improvisation Sourcebook I, Vol. 13. Pp.156-162. 

This week’s reading, I felt was very relatable to everything that we have been doing over the past few weeks in lesson. Centre of Gravity by Ann Woodhull, the reading was about wat it says, the centre of gravity. She talks about wherever the centre of gravity is the body will follow. She also talks about the body as if it’s different segments and each part of the body an almost its own centre of gravity. Although she states the ” centre of gravity tends to stay around the belly”(Ann Woodhull, 1978, 45) she also states “think of the body as a set segment, each of its own mass and position” (Ann Woodhull, 1978,44) it almost like one compensates for the other without you knowing. It’s important to share the weight of gravity and also when working with partners to share the weight of gravity between you both a well, this is clearly demonstrated in our tasks in this lesson.  

This week was going up week which was really difficult and specially for me as I’m still not lifting in contact properly yet due to injury. Although it was hard I had so much fun being the over dancer and see where movements could lead to from this. 

We did a sea sore lift which although me and Chloe work together a lot n contact really struggled with this and simply couldn’t figure this out with each other. Our sense of gravity wasn’t equally shared so it made us off balance. If we were the under dancer we would put our hand underneath the over dancer’s hand which made it work but then when we were asked to develop this I found it hard as I had to put my hand over the top. The development moving the move forward continuously we then couldn’t do as we were changing hands. Therefor we know we need to work on sharing the weight equally and practice this so we can do it in a jam purpose. 

When then did a pencil catch which previously I had done this but to work with somebody knew was a different experience. I worked with Hannah on this and it worked really well the weight of gravity from both the under and over dance was in the correct place and the lift worked really well. In this situation I was the under dancer therefore, catching Hannah. I didn’t want Hannah to be the under dancer.  

Why? 

I didn’t trust her to catch me? 

There was the sense of anxiety that she might from me therefore we just keep going with me being the under dancer. The more we did this the better and easier it got we got a great sensation off each other. We just had to remember to be careful of each other for me not to catch her round her knees but because her sense of gravity was in the correct place it made it easier for me to catch her which was just under the gluteal this relates to what Ann Woodhall mentions ” When the body changes shape and the centre of the body changes”(Anna Woodhull, 1978, pg number) we had to change the weight for me from pulling her up to the ground to then a neutral position when I caught her. I then tried this with Laura and allowed Laura to lift me so that I was the over dancer. The anxiety had eased off as I saw her catch other people. This was all about the stability of the under dancer which the weight of gravity helps with. 

Another big lift we did which was really going up a lot was the paper clip lift which I tried with Rayanee. I was always the over dancer due to injury I didn’t have the full strength in my ankle to lift somebody that high. We worked on this movement a lot and pretty much manage to get this movement straight away. We kept on trying this movement as much as we could but due to excitement I pushed my sense of gravity to far over Rayanee which sent my pelvis to much over shoulder sending me to much over her which then she collapsed to the floor. The sensations were great that we felt at the begging ad we were getting it really well. Although this little mishap happened it didn’t stop me and Rayanne it made us more determined to make the movement to the best of our ability. It felt great to be finally going up it felt like I was flying it was a great feeling. The main points were to try not to hold muscular tension in my body or I just wouldn’t get up and I had to hold my body and find my sense of gravity but my centre of gravity doesn’t have to be in my body it can be out of the body as long as both of out positions were stable which the majority of the time they were. 

Woodhull, A. (1978) Centre of Gravity. Contact Quartrly,4, 43-48. 

 

 

 

Thinking in movement by Maxine Sheets- Johnstone the reflection of this I got was that firstly it talks about thinking and how we don’t think about thinking. It talks about how we think about the habitual movements we do and how we could think about stopping these ” thinking in movement in inefficacy… can have a practical, self-inflectional, or explorative ends in contrasts to the aesthetic in ones of improvisational dance.” (Maxine Sheet- Johnstone, date pg.8),Johnstone is explaining we should be thinking about ways of turning that habitual movement into something else and into a new movement.  

 

Tasks in class-
We started with a simple task of hand on a dancer back. We had to create a connection with each other and create dialogue in order for this task to work correctly and not bump into other couples. We were told to close our eyes in the middle of this task. Did I trust my partner enough to do this? I don’t think I trusted Sarah enough yet to do this although I did this but was always peeping my eyes open as I felt bodies really close to us when she was leading me around the room.  in order to change me in direction I had to feel the sensations of her hand on my back and into which side she was pressing in order for me to turn to that direction. I felt anxious doing this as I didn’t trust Sarah as much as I do others. 

We went on to developing the surf and roll exercise that we had been practicing over the weeks in contact. Surf and replace, it was so difficult for me and Jess at the start we couldn’t get the hang of replacing the second surf. Was this because, we don’t work well together? Does jess not trust me to take her weight?  we practiced this with just each other throughout the class and we really was struggling with it until finally we did this. We just found the connection and found that sensation off each other it felt amazing to finally get something that we couldn’t do at the beginning. 

 

Table top to backwards walkover was another task we did today which I worked with Abbie and Chloe, I found this really easily with both Chloe and Abbie, we seemed to just flow into this movement with any difficulty. It felt great to have both people your working with trust you and you trust them. When we were in table top we tried to not stay static and was trying to figure out what we could then go into from this movement. The reading explore that we can stay in continuous flow even when in static positions like table top. This goes into out next exercise. 

 

We gradually started putting together and liking some of the individual exercises that we had done in class over the previous weeks to see how they felt and how they could flow into one another.  I worked with jess in this task and also Chloe and Abbie. In my previous blogs me and Chloe definitely have a strong relationship and feel very confident together as well as Abbie but me and jess have a really good relationship out of the dance space but sometimes find it difficult to make that connection in contact. Therefore, I was really nervous incase the moves went wrong and we were to hurt each other.  

 

 

 

Sheets-Johnstone,M.(2017)Thinking In Movement. Contact Quartely,42(1) 7-12.