The session this week started off with a discussion. It mainly revolved around our concerns about contact improvisation. A lot of people after last week’s lesson seemed to have developed worries about the module. A lot of the worries focused on the events which took place in last week’s jam. Last week was the first time a new person (Fenya) was introduced to our weekly jam. During the jam Kirsty and Fenya took part in a conversational duet, where one person would move and the other would then respond to this initial movement. This would go back and forth and the movement would develop and adapt like a conversation. Watching this made the rest of us collectively quite anxious about our improvisation. It was a type of improvisation we hadn’t been exposed to and it made us feel very limited and underdeveloped as contact improvisation dancers. Understandably they’ve had more experience with contact than us so obviously would know other ways to improvise without using predictable material. Kirsty explained how that was the first time she had improvised with Fenya and that she didn’t feel as comfortable performing as she looked. This made me question the whole how it feels vs how it looks theory and whether only we individually can tell when we don’t feel quite right in the movement or if we’re having an off day.
We then watched two duets, one by Martin Keogh and Neige Christenson and one by Mirva Makinen and Otto Alkkannen. Both duets involved a male and a female dancer. The first piece involved a very slow and delicate dynamic, the second was faster pace however still contained a level of fluidity which was apparent in the first improvisation. The main difference between the two duets was that in the first one the male dancer took the lead as the under dancer, whereas in the second piece the female dancer initially took a more predominant role as the under dancer. The roles in the second duet seemed to change more than in the first one. Is it unexpected that she took on this role because she’s female and smaller?
After this we began moving. We were asked to travel across the room and each time we were given different tasks to explore. We were asked to travel making as much noise as possible when our body made contact with the floor. This I found quite tricky because it’s something I’ve been told not to do since I began dancing; ‘there exists a wide array of pre-conditioned responses and behaviours’ (Curtis, 1988) from dance training that may hold us back from exploring new realms of possibilities in improvisation. We were also asked to improvise with the incentive of moving into and out of the floor i.e. constantly changing levels, I found this made me experiment with my dynamics as well. We were also told to explore the idea of twisting and circling the body. We were told to maybe think about this in reference to specific body parts, for example, twisting the spine, circling the foot and I felt this made me aware of my whole self as I would try and twist/circle a different body part each time.
We then moved into partner work where we investigated this idea of surfing. I found this really interesting and liked how two bodies could glide over and weightlessly move/ rest on one another. The way you could interchange seamlessly as the over and under dancer I found fascinating because it wasn’t as if you were ever restricted to one role. We then changed partners and looked at this idea of free flowing movement incorporating Aikido rolls which we have looked at in previous weeks during the warm up. We started off with one individual on all fours in table top position (with a flat back), while the other individual would move themselves over the other dancer and rest their tummy on the other dancers back. The under dancer would then roll forward and the over dancer would move with them. As the roll was carried out the under dancer would switch to being the over dancer automatically and eventually would return to being the under dancer as the rolls completed. We were asked to return to the starting position so the movement could be performed again and for me keeping the connection once the roll had been finished was the hardest thing.
Continuing with this idea of surf and turf, we got into partners and labelled ourselves A and B. Partner A would lie on their backs while partner B would lie on A’s stomach (so the belly buttons were touching). We were asked to lie here and notice each other’s breathing pattern. This links back to a concept we looked at in week 4 called small dance. Keeping this idea in mind we were asked to begin initiating movement from the diaphragm. Gradually the movement got bigger and bigger and eventually we progressed back into this surf and turf movement.
The session then moved into looking at this notion of going up again. We started by looking at this idea of flying back to back. You and your partner would stand back to back. You would initiate the lift by scooping your pelvis underneath theirs to then lift up. While doing this I found that height played a massive factor in the effectiveness of this lift. My partner was quite a bit shorter than me and when she did the lifting we didn’t have a problem, but when I tried lifting her, because her pelvis was a lot lower than mine I struggled to get into the correct position to lift her. When I tried this lift with a taller partner I found it a lot easier and less strenuous on my knees. We switched partners and went into other lifts such as the paper clip lift. Personally I found this lift quite easy because it required lifting from an anchor point, which is a point you can initiate and hold quite a lot of weight. It involved the person being lifted to put their arm over the lifters shoulder, the lifter would then pick up the other dancer and rotate them round. The lifter would hold the dancers hips as a support. If I wasn’t lifting using the shoulder, I think I would have found this harder, simply because I was able to carry quite a lot of weight with my shoulder. The next lift I struggled with, a lot. It consisted of one dancer being lifted and then rotated around the lifter body. My partner and I struggled with the lift itself let alone then being moved around their body. The lift encompassed quite a few of the fundamentals that were covered in last week’s session and both my partner and I sat out the previous week and we felt this impacted us a fair amount.
Curtis, B. and Ptashek, A. (1988) Exposed to Gravity. Contact Quaterly/Improvisation Sourcebook. 13(2) 156-162.
Neige Christenson (2009) the play of weight. [Online Video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ltq6y06E8ew [Accessed 15 November 2015].
Omegabranch (2011) Contact Improvisation Mirva Mäkinen & Otto Akkanen. [Online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMLbWxujoGw [Accessed 15 November 2015].