First week of contact improv and as usual the readings confused me, I attempted to read them twice however it wasnt until after our first session that I actually understood what each author was discussing.
the Steve Paxton reading was interesting. from what I read he discussed how consciousness and imagery were used when working within contact. what he meant by consciousness I assumed was discussing a focus of the space you are in, by this I mean that you have to perform in the jam you are in, In order to create fresh and interesting movement. The most influential part of this reading for me when was when Paxton called contact “not art.” what I got from this was that basically there should be no reason to try and make something look pretty when trying to create improv work. When I read this, I got excited to start contact properly because as a Dancer I value the “not art.” a lot more because it tends to show more passionate work and to be honest when I watch someone who is throwing their body around and passionately dancing it will always look more appealing than a strong technical performance.
When doing the lead & follow exercise it was very interesting to see how I reacted when working with certain people. I found that when working with someone I felt I had a closer relationship with, the movement we created wasn’t as fresh as when I worked with someone who I may not have been as close too. I worked with Laura and Hannah and when working with Laura I found that we were trying to anticipate each others movements and control the situation. However when working with Hannah it seemed a lot more fresh and interesting. When doing this exercise I personally found it very difficult to just allow my body to move and not repeat my habitual movements, I felt like I was constantly trying to plan a route to dance.
From the videos we watched in class I noticed some things that surprised me quite a bit. When watching Berlin k27 (contact improv jam) I noticed that the participants were communicating quite loudly and discussing all the movement they were doing. Originally I assumed that improv was fairly silent and communication was a distraction but after watching this video although what they were saying wasn’t audible it was clear they were discussing the jam. also from this video I noticed that one pair weren’t moving much but they were still in contact and they were where my eyes kept being drawn too. this was because they were led across the floor and doing such minimalistic movements, it showed a completely different aspect of contact improvisation that I had not thought about before, my initial thoughts of contact were lifts and the ability to carry another persons weight but after watching this video its changed that opinion.
Im very much looking forward to continuing my training and research into contact improvisation and I expect to pushed to my very limits.