Contact Improvisation Kye Davis

The past 10 weeks have been an incredible journey, I have gone from rolling over people on the floor, to lifting people over my shoulders and having them balance on parts of my body I never expected someone to be able to balance.

How the underscore went – reflect on my own movement within the session.

Throughout this experience I have feel I have greatly improved in my contact improvisation, from looking through all my previous blog posts its been really interesting to see how I have slowly developed in my skill. In my earlier weeks I talked about how I struggled to give weight and this has been a continuous struggle for me throughout this module, as being a tall young man in a class with all girls I always felt very conscious of  giving the entirety of my weight to the other members of my class in case I was to cause them any injury. However, I feel that since the start of my training in contact I have been able to get over this fear through negotiation with the fellow dancers in jams.

Being an under dancer has come fairly easily to me I have felt. Being able to take other peoples weight and perform movement in table top and going up tools, I felt I have been able to execute with sufficiency. Although from feedback gained from Kirsty Russell (Lecturer) and from my own experience the main issue with my contact training has been my avoidance of being the over dancer. When in a Jam I have the habitual attitude to support my fellow dancer in a performance aspect. S o when it did come to performing in a Jam I had to constantly be reminding myself to explore movement as an over dancer rather than just as an under dancer, and throughout the weeks I have gained a more experimental attitude towards being an over dancer, which in some cases has led to tumbles and painful fails but in others I have found myself moving through the space more fluidly with a partner. However, it may be true that being an under dancer has become a strength to me I have naturally found some room for improvement. It came to my attention that at times instead of using momentum to rise through the kinesphere with a partner I had the habit of just using my strength to lift other dancers, I was able to work with this and produce more momentous movement after working in Jams and applying feedback about creating more fluidity moving between the under dancer and the over dancer.

Looking back retrospectively, I was quite surprised by the amount of work I created with new bodies in the space. Before starting this module I was very cautious to dancing and exploring movement with people who I had not worked with and with people who didn’t know how I moved, but throughout this journey I have disregarded this fear and embraced a new way of improvising. what I have found is in most cases, two bodies which are unfamiliar with each other can create some very exploratory movement that has opened myself up to whole new ways of moving. For example, since starting this module, I was very conscious of moving with Abbie Price because from my perspective she had impeccable technique for which I do not. However, I gave into my curiosity during the 2nd set of research labs and found that the movement we created was incredibly experimental.

During our final contact session on Tuesday, we did a shorter version of Nancy Stark Smiths (NSS) Underscore, and included a 1 on 1 Jam to the end of the session. The Underscore was very interesting to play with in this class, I was glad that I had already experienced it in a previous class and through the research gained a deeper understanding of it before being thrown into it this week. With this session I really tried to apply everything we had been taught and really embrace the fluidity and momentum but moving through being the under and over dancer. One part of the underscore which stuck with me was when we had to mobilize/agitate the mass. This section was interesting because myself and my partner found ourselves working very intricately with very specific parts of the body and not necessarily working with major movements but with simpler and littler ones which turned into very interesting movement. Near the end of our session, we were invited to explore movement with just two bodies in the space. This was quite nerve-racking as we had never explored this form before but after the immediate surge of anxiety and once we were dancing in the space, it was very interesting to have the entire space between two people. movement became more exciting and myself and Laura Barrett found ourselves trying things that, I personally, had never really tried when the entire class moved together.

It was quite disheartening to finish this module but I look forward to continue exploring contact improvisation out of the class in the near future.

 

This week we did a mock assessment of Nancy stark smiths underscore in preparation for next week. In this class I found myself being able to explore my movement a lot more than in other weeks, this was because of the prompts received, these helped me think about how i was moving alone and with a partner and gave me more opportunities to really explore different movement possibilities.

During the class I worked with Laura Carey in the underscore we explored the ideas of repulsion and attraction. During attraction we really aimed to flow through being the under dancer and over dancer and tried to avoid falling into our habitual movements of me being the under dancer and Laura being the over dancer. I think because of how comfortable myself and Laura are with working together, we were really able to get closer with contact and didnt have restrictions. Personally, I struggled with repulsion, although I was able to think about pulling away from each other, I didnt quite grasp how we were able to do full body contact while trying to move away from each other. Due to this issue, I then moved onto performing this section alone and forcing my movements outwards and away from other members of the class, this helped to make the idea of the movement a lot clearer.

I also tried to apply feedback I was given the week prior, about using the momentum to shift over dancers through the space rather than just using my upper body strength. to start of with this really restricted my movement because instead of trying to use the momentum I just removed lifting from my dance vocabulary, this then pushed me into a new thought process for the exploration, I would say that this did help to an extent but also added onto the struggle because I found myself losing momentum more than gaining it.

In the Jam this week I found myself exploring movement as an over dancer more than an under dancer, this was really interesting to do as I have been so comfortable with being an under dancer I usually refrain from being on top. When working with Abbie Price during the jam I really pushed myself to continue a flow and refrain from always lifting and being the under dancer, this meant that at times the jam became fragile and I was more likely to tumble and fall, I wouldn’s say that this was a bad thing because it gave me the opportunity to really think about where I was placing my body and how I needed to give my weight a lot more. Another thing I noticed when being the over dancer was how much gravity is incorporated into the jam and how depending on where I am placing specific parts of my body ,such as my head for example, really distinguishes how successful some of the movement we did, this has made me a lot more curious as to the extent to what an over dancer is capable of when securely placed on another body and I look forward to exploring this approach in the next session.

Injuries are the bane of my existence recently. Due to illness I was forced to sit out of class and miss more of the going up exercises that I long for. However, this may have actually not been the worst thing to happen to me. During this module I have noticed that I have a tendency to rush into things head first and think about the consequences later but by watching the rest of the class, I was able to truly understand what our lecturer Kirsty Russell had been speaking to us about in classes. I really feel that by standing back and watching the improvisations from a bystanders point of view, I was able to fully understand how important the giving and taking of weight is when lifting people. I also noticed how peoples approach to lifts and my own was incorrect and could potentially be dangerous. What I noticed was many partners would quite literally throw themselves on to their partners without much preparation, I am also very guilty of this. This has made me think a lot more about how I am moving when in a Jam situation and how I really need to think about the negotiation between both the under and over dancers, it has also made me think a lot more about my support and preparation before attending to lifts as this would really increase my abilities and support the momentum that is needed within our jam sessions.

In the Jam this week we focused on the idea of working with our eyes closed and seeing how this changes our movement within contact. this idea was very difficult for me because I felt quite unbalanced when rising through my kinesphere and doing movement in standing by myself or with another body felt very disorientating. When we began opening our eyes movement seemed to be a lot smoother, however I felt like because of feedback I have gained about using my strength when lifting bodies in the space, I really aimed to avoid lifts which then effected the momentum and because I was really focusing on not lifting other members of the class, all I could then think about was different ways of moving through the space through lifts. Something that was constantly mentioned to us as a class was that we needed to move through the space and swap between being the under and over dancer. I tried to incorporate this idea into my jam and to an extent I think i managed to succeed, although it didnt fully try to be an over dancer, when with Laura Carey she pretty much took control of the improvisation at one point and we did manage to shift between the under and over dancer briefly until we went back to the habit of me being the under dancer.

What I have got from this week, although may not have been largely practical, but I was able to broaden my mindset within a jam situaiton and push myself beyond the boundaries of just being an under dancer which I think is very important within this module.

This week was our second research lab, for this week we wanted to find out if, does knowing your point of gravity effect your balance in contact improvisation? The reason we wanted to ask this was mainly because of the reading Centre of Gravity from a previous week and the section where it discussed the centre point on cardboard cut outs, we read this and began to question what would happen if we were able to transfer this onto a human body. Our tasks were fairly simple, we asked the class to perform different exercises learnt in class and after testing each one out, they had to try and figure out where the points of gravity were on a another body and attach sticky notes to that point. The reason we did this was to get each person thinking about the points of gravity while doing the exercises as we hoped to notice a change in their movement style.

During our post lab talk we asked how the participants had felt after performing the exercise and the response was quite good. One of the members said that she thought that getting her to think about the points where the gravity is positioned helped with how she performed the second exercise (headstand over table top) because she didn’t feel like she was just flinging herself over her partner. Another member of the group said that she felt more secure and fluid the second time she performed the exercises because instead of just thinking about where each point of contact was they actually thought of where the weight was needing to be placed and how that effected balance. As part of the task we asked each pair to feedback to another couple as to what they were seeing and where they thought the points of gravity were. when we asked the group how this helped and it at all this changed how they were moving, one person said that this made them think a lot more and actually improved the movement in terms of security.

In terms of successfulness of this research lab, I felt that it was interesting what was found out in regards to the talk at the end, it seems safe to say that thinking about your points of gravity does effect your balance and security when performing certain exercises in contact improvisation. I think that although contact is an improvisation, and we have been taught to flow with the momentum of wherever the improvisation may be taking us, but it has come to my attention that its not only what is happening that we must think about, we also have to think about everything that is included with each weight transference or lift. Although yes for safe practice it makes sense to think about all these things but I disagree with the thought that any of these things needs to be processed by our conscious thinking, if we are unconsciously aware of these things and do not dwell on them too deeply then they will not restrict our bodies, which for me is more important.

During one of the other research labs myself and Abbie carried out our own improvised duet, this was massively explorative and experimental, we approached the duet with the idea of twisting and spiralling and the result was incredible. we found ourselves creating some really interesting work that was a lot different to what we had done previously, I think this has a lot to do with the amount of tools that we are learning in class, and because we have been taught more ‘going up” tools, we are a lot more comfortable with being lifted and shifted around the space.

Unfortunately I was quite ill for our practical sessions so did not attend. So, this blog entry will be based off the readings that were set for the classes.

Centre of gravity –

This reading was very interesting, It used imagery as a way of explaining how centre of gravity worked and used and idea of cardboard cut outs to explain this, I felt like this idea was good as a starting point but then when I tried to consider this I began asking myself, how was this able to relate to the body. In regards to what the topic of this week, which was ‘going up’, this reading had a lot of importance because it brought to our attention something that must be thought about while lifting people from the floor which is the point of support that we must constantly be aware of, otherwise the people we are lifting could be in danger of getting injured.

One quote which has stuck with me is “whenever the center of gravity is not over the point of contact, the body tends to turn and fall on the side where the center of gravity is.” (Woodhull, p2, 1978) I thought this quote was important to remember because It gives an exact example of what is going to happen if we are not aware of where our centres of gravity are located within a contact jam.

However, at one point where this reading completely lost me was was when Woodhull began using maths to explain the centre of gravity, this was especially confusing to me because I didnt quite understand why the mass of a body part was able to alter a persons centre of gravity. I couldnt grasp this idea so have chosen to avoid using it in my practical work in case I begin to over complicate.

A certain kind of knowing –

I struggled to finish this reading this week and have a very small amount to say about it, I think the reading it self was informative but I couldnt quite understand what about. At points it seemed to click but then their were other moments which I felt were inconceivable.

From what I understood, this reading seemed to relay some of the points already made in previous lessons and readings. It mentioned briefly the idea that dancers need to have a willingness to approach questions with an answer rather than wait for the answers to be handed to them. Also it discussed how we as dancers seem to let what we perceive and think get in the way of actually moving. I agree with this statement quite a lot, an example of this was earlier this week when myself and Jessica Pearson were attempting some of the lifts from the class we had missed and Jess was afraid of being lifted and it took us a few minutes until she stopped psyching herself out and was able to throw herself into the movement and we succeeded. its this idea that we psych ourselves out that really supports that statement.

Bibliography

Cohen, B.B. (2017) A Certain Kind of Knowing. Contact Quarterly, Vol 42: 1, 30-33.

Woodhull, A. (1978-79) Center of Gravity. Contact Quarterly/ Contact Improvisation Sourcebook I Vol 4, 43-48.