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.