“Becoming responsive means becoming aware of one’s own body, what it can do, what it needs and how to take care of it.”(Byron Brown) Improvising and exploring new positions on the floor allowed me to experience new sensations such as sticky, slippery, head and foot, explosive. This helped me becoming aware of my body creating a new images and making me think about my body parts. How do they become sticky? How I create an explosive movement using my foot? This made me really think and take note of how my body was feeling which parts needed more attention than others. To continue, the crucifix lift we did made me become aware of my body as well as others around me and how much trust I had within my other dancers. This lift had to make me connect with gravity and make sure my weight is central whilst being lifted “giving up control” (Susanne Ravn) allowing other participants to create the sensation of feeling supported and like I was flying. I found this was all activating control in myself to fall backwards and controlling my body to fall and almost take flight staying controlled through my muscles. I found I needed to find that relationship between gravity and the control. Doing the crucifix lift made me feel more trusted within my group and made me feel like others were becoming more comfortable with the idea.
Walking around the room trust falling today made me feel slightly uneasy maybe it was because I was falling backwards and we weren’t just stood there to catch someone, we, were moving. “Awareness of the small dance implies the opening of freer communication within the body” (Byron Brown). We have to see beyond this falling back and allow gravity to take us even if it means safety rolling out of it. We have to sense what is going on around us, sense who needs us to take that weight when that balance control just takes over and we have to fall. Falling backwards once you have the confidence felt like one big swoop it felt like I was going fall to transition into a moment but once I got caught I felt protected and at ease. When falling you must breathe into the body it makes you feel more supported and when exhaling and falling that inhaling allows you to go into the other movement. However, when catching you must also be aware again sense and hear what’s going on around, be in position to support them safely.
Re-search Lab
My research lab was based around, How does sensory knowledge impact the way we communicate through contact improvisation? During our group workshop we decided to do an exercise called the Banana roll and once called Sensorium. During the banana roll you had to really explore what contact was going on as you rolled across the floor. The Banana roll made participants feel challenged as they found it hard to relax into the body and tried rolling themselves along the floor. When focusing on where touch was coming from they found it hard to concentrate as you had the touch of the floor as well as the hands combined. They found it distracting but somewhat relaxing and ones that managed to relax found it like a gentle massage.
Sensorium – the sensory apparatus of the body as a whole; the seat of physical sensation, imagined to be in grey matter of the brain.
However, the sensorium exercise they found hard because you are constantly connected to your partner’s side, again challenging them in ways and body parts they never thought. They found it hard to track but also found it hard as they had limited movement although it made them really think about body parts a lot and what they don’t use as often. They thought that hip to knee contact was useful as you could use the hip as a way of starting to take weight and experiment with that.
Contact Jam
This week felt good, I was exploring more and didn’t feel lost when trying to take somebody else’s weight. I wasn’t constantly questioning how do I support them? How do I get into the lift or weight baring? Experimenting with this and new moves allowed for new doors and possibilities to open when improvising.
“How do they relate to dance and choreography?” (Byron Brown) I am always questioning this when contacting with someone if does look improvised or does it look like a ball of mess getting tangled up in the moment. What I have noticed is that when I dance with someone if it feels good then I feel it looks good, if there’s not that communication or connects then maybe it isn’t going as well. This was helpful to think about when doing contact with everyone, one improvisation I really enjoyed was with Natasha Allen. It felt like that eye contact and communication was always there and we had a strong understanding of what was happening, even if it wasn’t eye contact our bodies had some way of communicating with one and other. We tended to experiment with the eye contact and a slight touch to start off with to get a feel of what was happening and going on, this progressed onto us getting a lot more experimental. When doing the weight baring and taking each other’s weight we experimented with pelvis to tail bone, table top experimenting and general rolling point but using different body parts to initiate movement. The key to this was “grounding” staying focused with our partner and keeping a well-grounded position.
Bibliography
Sensing weight in movement’. Full text available By: Ravn, Susanne Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices, 2010, Vol. 2 Issue 1, p21-34, 14p.
Brown, B. Is Contact a Small Dance? Contact Improvisation Sourcebook I. Vol. 6 Pp. 72-75
Research lab
Touch: Experience and knowledge. By: Bannon, Fiona; Holt, Duncan. Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices, 2012, Vol. 3 Issue 1/2, p215-227