Contact Improvisation

When thinking about thinking in movement, I find it bizarre. How do we think in movement when we are not aware of thinking? It just seems to happen, the mind and body become one to produce ‘something which never before was..’ and ‘..something which will never be again’ (Sheets-Johnstone, 2017, 8). I find this aspect of CI interesting, and shows that the body is a remarkable thing.

The first task of the week was hand on the back, and I feel this exercise related to our research lab last week with what senses are heightened when we cannot see. I was aware of all of my senses, but my touch was heightened the most. Apart from the pressure of the hand I could also feel the heat from them too, even after the hand was removed I still had the sensation that the hand was still there. For this exercise I imagined one body moving in the space, not two individuals moving separately, and this really helped myself listen to where I needed to go.

Now we have a variety of tools to work with I find the jams easier and fun. At first it was hard to go in because I did not know how things would go, however they seemed to go pretty well. I enjoyed putting the tools to practice and exploring new ways of moving while keeping in contact. I was lost in the motion of movement, that I forgot I was inside the circle and that other people was watching. I felt confident even when I worked with Abbie, because I had never worked with her in CI until that moment, however I took on board what was said in Thinking in movement that CI is ‘an unrehearsed and spontaneous form of dance’ (Sheets-Johnstone, 2017, 8). With this in my head, I listened and moved with her and just expected the unexpected, and in my opinion I felt we made a good connection.

On two occasions I was part of a group, the first was at quartet and it was unintended and I could have worked with it, but because it was unfamiliar ground I froze and reset with my original partner. I wish I had experimented with the quartet at a slow pace and seen where it had gone. Although when I became part of a trio, I did try and experiment with simple weight exchanging from one another on the floor. However, when we tried to surf and roll, we struggled with the position we were in, so we returned back to a duet.

Besides throwing myself into CI this week, I did struggle on a few occasions when trying to move over table top. I need to practice moving and rotating myself on someone’s back because I have difficulty getting over, and I think that is because I am not in the right position. The second exercise is going backwards over table top. I know I put the weight into my head, and I need to transfer that weight from my head into my hands.

I really enjoyed this week’s CI, I feel I am pushing myself to experiment more with the tools that we have been given, and feel comfortable to experiment these tools with anyone in the class. I cannot wait for what the next few weeks bring.

Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2017) Thinking in Movement. Contact Quarterly, vol 42: 1, pp. 7-12.

After last week’s class our group decided to focus and explore the concept of senses in CI. Our question was: How are the senses heightened or forgotten when moving through improvisation with vision or without? We set 2 tasks for the group to complete which was; lead and follow and finish the image, both exercises were performed with the eyes open and closed. To answer our main question, we asked these questions;

Which connection was stronger with your partner, eyes opened or closed? And why?
Did you feel different?
Did you create different movement?
Which senses were heightened, and which were forgotten?
Could you hear anyone else in the room that was near you?

The feedback showed us that the senses are easily forgotten, and that we rely on our vision a lot when improvising with another person. Depending on the activity, feelings changed on what they preferred: eyes opened or closed. The first exercise was easy with the eyes opened and closed, however it was easier to move with the eyes closed, because it allowed them to relax and not think about what to do next. In the second there was more experimentation with the eyes closed, but there was a boundary of not wanting to push yourself too much, because of not knowing where the other person was and cause an injury. When trying to find their partner, they mentioned that their touch and sound was heightened compared to when their eyes are opened, although they could still use their sight even though they could not physically see. To work out how close their partner was to them, they used the shadows that the other person was creating. Besides all of this, at one point of the activity they were not aware of any of their senses, because they were concentrating on creating movement and keeping contact. They also forgot there was people in the space apart from them two. Therefore, touch was heightened because they knew someone was there, they were just not aware of this sense it was just a subconscious thought. Overall, everyone thought they had a stronger connection with their eyes open, however their connection was still strong when they were closed. They were connecting with each other by listening to each other’s bodies through touch, they were just not aware of this.

Before class I did not understand anything in Is Contact a Small Dance? However, after the class it made more sense because sometimes seeing things makes it clearer. The video of Steve Paxton’s small dance made me realise we never stop moving, even when we are stood still. Therefore, is this motion called small dance, because of how little and non-visible the movement is?

Putting the reading and video to practice, I was aware of the sensation of moving. When listening to my body I would notice small details like; fingers twitching, knees bending and muscles activating. When I swayed backwards I noticed my right knee lock to re-centre myself. Although, I did not feel centred, I had the sensation of my body falling forward and I was not upright. Sometimes when moving I was not aware of what I was doing, I was listening to my body and letting the body do what it wanted. The rest of the time I could feel myself forcing the moves and it was not the authentic movement of my body. After the exercise my awareness of moving was heightened and I felt like I was swaying more than what I was at the beginning.

Two things interested me in Sensing weight in movement, I can influence how I feel, move, and weigh by imagining something, and I feel this will help create new movement for myself. The second thing was ‘What a dancer senses is a function of how the dancer moves, and how the dancer moves is a function of what he or she senses’ (Fuchs and De Jaegher, 2009, 472). I understand what this means, but I do not know how to explain it but the quote really stood out to me.

I worked with many different people this week and I feel comfortable with all of them. I think I have pushed past the boundary of ‘hesitation, vagueness, and insecurity that is usually a hindrance to building a dance together’ (Paek, 2015, 36).

 

 

 

Brown, B. Is Contact a Small Dance? Contact Improvisation Sourcebook I. Vol. 6 Pp. 72-75

Fuchs, T and De Jaegher, H. (2009) Enactive intersubjectivity: participatory sense-making and mutual incorporation. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8: 4, pp. 465–86

Paek, S M. (2015) Beginning, Approaching, Practicing, Dancing. Contact Quarterly, Vol 40: 1,pp. 36.

Ravn, S. (2010) Sensing weight in movement. Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices. Vol. 2 Issue 1, p21-34, 14p.

ZayacZhe. (2009) steve paxton. Smalldance. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sJKEXUtv44 [accessed 20 September 2017].

Week 3 has been the most enjoyable for me, I feel relaxed, confident, and energized to learn more about CI. Steve Paxton Interior Techniques: Contact Improvisation and the Political Power was an easy read and I feel I could relate to this ‘We are afraid of proximity, and therefore respond to “crowding” by avoiding contact’ (Turner, 2010, 124). What I took from this was that when we are uncomfortable we revert to our comfort zone by doing habitual moves, because we do not know how to respond to the situation. I know I do this, and I need to get this out of my system because everyone is in the same situation.

Simone Forti is a dancer, choreographer, artist and writer and first started her dancing career with Anna Halprin. In the early 1980’s Forti focused on ‘News Animations, spontaneously weaving together movement and spoken words, with a focus on world news’ (DRJ special issue, 2015, 145). When looking at the body Forti looked at the body as an object that is ‘defined by its weight, mass, and scale in relationship to the other things surrounding her’ (Spivey, 2009, 15).

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Steve Paxton’s piece ‘Magnesium’ (1972) and Blake Nelis and Brando piece (2010), are completely different from one another and shows how much CI has changed. Paxton’s piece showed people rolling, colliding, and falling on each other and not having any sense of safety, and hoping for the best. Whereas Nelis and Brando’s piece, has more of a relationship with one another and sharing responsibility of giving and receiving weight. CI now is more about exploring movement in numerous ways, instead of simple touching.

At the start of each exercise there was a struggle of how to move and not to think about it too much. In some cases, this did happen however, the more experimentation done, the easier the exercises became. Releasing our heads and letting them lead to create movement was difficult. I struggled to relax my head at the beginning, however by the end I was relaxed. With both laying down and moving exercises I had two different experiences with my eyes open and with them closed. With my eyes open I was distracted and felt like people were watching even if they were not. With my eyes closed I felt relaxed and not under pressure of being judged. I trusted my partner throughout, it just did not feel natural to give my head weight to someone’s hands.

When moving on the floor I imagined my head was a magnet, and I feel like this helped me release my head into the floor. At first, I felt restricted and only moved my legs, arms and moved side to side. When I knew I could do nothing else I started to think about; different levels and how much of my body can I get on the floor, and what part of my head can touch the floor that would not normally. After, I noticed that I was creating new movement and was not thinking of what and how my body is moving. From my own experience and hearing people’s feedback I could tell everyone was thinking too much. I was thinking about not losing connection with the other persons head, that I forgot about the rest of my body. Once myself and my partner had gotten to our feet, we did not know how to move and just stood there. Moving on the floor was easier but our movement was still limited, slow and awkward. I was thinking more with what can we do with our heads, than the head is just the connection of two bodies.

To me, touch before weight transfer is the foundation of trust. This statement needed to be in mind for the pebble and table top rolling and the headstand over the table top exercises. If the movement was not controlled and the weight was just given, I know that myself and my partner would get injured. I also think that the point of contact prepares you for the weight transfer. Normally I end up working with the same people, although I ended up working with Laura, which was a nice change. I was nervous at first but that soon disappeared. Due to concentrating on connecting and listening to the other person’s body and relaxing everything, I forgot about that I had never worked with Laura before because we worked so well together. By the end of the task I was comfortable and now feel more confident to work with someone new each week.

 

Brando, A. (2010) Contact Improvisation: Blake Nellis & Brando @ Earthdance.

. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQRF2sLK1vY [Accessed 15 October 2017].

DRJ. (2015) Simone Forti interview. Choreographic Practices. [accessed 15 October 2017].

Spivey, V. (2009) The Minimal Presence of Simone Forti. Woman’s Art Journal. [accessed 15 October 2017].

Tumasia. (2010) Fall after newton 1 .

. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k768K_OTePM&amp=&t=300s [accessed 15 October 2017].

Turner, R. (2010) Steve Paxton Interior Techniques: Contact Improvisation and the Political Power. TDR: The Drama Review, 54 (3) 123-135.

Readings

I understood a lot from this week’s reading, and I think that was because it was an easy read and we went through the reading in small groups. On page 216 it mentions about how we are touched can affect how we react (Bannon and Holt, 2012, 216), and I could relate this back to week 1’s exercise, with the touch to instigate a movement. Different amounts of pressure tell our body to move in different ways and I find this quite interesting, because why does our body choose to do this? 

Despite understanding a few things in the reading, I did not understand the word proprioception. I have noticed that proprioception keeps popping up throughout the readings, and I was unsure even after doing a research about it. However, after the research I did and this week’s sessions I now have a better understanding of what proprioception is. Proprioception is a subconscious sense and happens at every moment of everyday. This sense allows us to control our limbs without looking at them. In contact improvisation we create movement off somebody else’s impulses without looking at what body part has been touched, and just go with the flow and not think about what we are doing.

Exercises

There is so much to remember within the surfing and rolling exercise and if you forget one, the exercise will not go to plan:

– Breathe to relax and the rolls will flow
– Not to lose contact
– Communicate if one is struggling
– Roll in the correct place to prevent injury
– Keep moving, the momentum drives this, do not stop moving

At one point I was concentrating on giving weight that once I had done, I forgot to roll again so we ended up laying there. We then had to start again because we had lost the momentum from our previous roll. From the reading Touch: Experience and knowledge, I had read that we can communicate with touch, however this was then experienced in this exercise (Bannon, 2012). I could read that my partner was struggling at times I could give them the extra push they needed to get over.

The stop start exercise was a lot harder than what it sounded. When moving it was easy, I knew I had to keep a stable stance for myself and my partner to prevent myself from falling, and to not drop my partner. The other part of the exercise was the complete opposite. It was hard to find different ways of giving weight in a safe way and not do the same as before. Another thing that was difficult was telling them to stop. Simple instruction. However, I would see a moment where I could lean on them but they had already moved on by the time I had said stop. I had to rethink of how I was going to lean on them, and it took longer than what it should have.

Jam

The first jam back was rather difficult to get into because I had not improvised for a few months. I only went inside the circle twice because I wanted to make relationships with people, however I did not want to disturb other people’s relationships that had already been created. Another thing was that I was not sure how to move with a partner for a long period of time. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed watching others in the circle making relationships and seeing how they used their bodies to stay in contact with one another. From watching others move I gained experience and I can use what I saw into my own practice for the upcoming weeks.

 

Surve, S (2009) What is Proprioception? Available from http://brainblogger.com/2009/06/09/what-is-proprioception/ [accessed 8 October 2017].

Bannon, F and Holt, D (2012) Touch: Experience and knowledge. Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices, 2012, Vol.3 Issue 1/2, p215-227.

From the reading Moving from the Skin, the key point that stood out to me was ‘We can never touch just one thing; we always touch two at the same instant, an object and ourselves’ (Heitkamp, 2003, 258). This made me think about how and where my clothes are touching me, but not being aware of them and why this is.

Contact improvisation is about expecting the unexpected and the video of Angela Donny and Athos made me consider something. There is no right way of moving with someone, even when someone surprises you with a move. Although they are both professionals, at times there looked like points of struggle. When a moved surprised them they did not make it awkward, they just went with what their body was telling them. From this I learnt that if something goes wrong or not how you intended it to, just fall into another movement and keep the flow of movement going.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0OmQaLaj6c

Each exercise incorporated some form of trust. A few individuals made me feel comfortable and the moves flowed one to another, others I felt we needed to experiment more since we have not worked together a lot. Other individuals I could not gel with. The moves did not flow and came to a standstill, or we reacted the same way every time when a certain body part was touched or pushed. Although not being able to gel with certain people is a downfall, I still had a positive outcome from it. I now know my habitual moves because I was not comfortable with these individuals, I automatically reverted to what I found comfortable.

What I found surprising was how much pressure of someone’s touch can influence you on the moves you choose to do. When someone either lightly touched me, or touched me with one finger, my instinct was to go slow, or when a lot of pressure was applied, I allowed my body to go where they were pushing me and not think about what I was doing. Another automatic response was to roll or slide, or go in the direction of where their hand left my body, when they did a swiping or brushing action.

I really struggled with the weight bearing exercises. Certain exercises myself and the person I was working with could equally distribute the weight between us. Like with the exercise when we held each other’s wrists, had our feet next to each other and lent away. However, with others we could not get the hang of it. I found it hard to get the right balance with the other person, I either gave too much weight to them or not enough, we just needed to find the right balance. I especially struggled on the exercise when we were back to back and had to walk across the space.

Improvisation is not my favourite thing to do, because I end up panicking on how to move. Therefore when contact improvisation was introduced, I had the same feeling of not feeling comfortable. However, I feel I need to push past the barrier of feeling awkward and get on with the experience. Everyone in the class is in the same boat, therefore I need to forget about people watching and forget what I look like when I move.

 

Heitkamp, D. (2003). Moving from the Skin: An Exploratorium. Contact Quarterly/ Contact Improvisation Sourcebook II, Vol. 28:2. Pp. 256-264

KriyaLv (2010) Angela Donny & Athos – CONTACT IMPROVISATION 2009 IBIZA

. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0OmQaLaj6c [accessed 28 September 2017].