The title of this blog post may come across as confusing, so let me elaborate.
In class we started with exercises using our head. We were instructed to improvise movement while attempting to keep parts of our heads in contact with the floor. While doing this exercise I noticed that I seemed to be putting a lot of weight into my shoulders and upper back, doing so lifted me off the floor slightly at times. One problem I seemed to have with this exercise was that occasionally I would put my body in uncomfortable positions and the only way to get myself out of these positions was to remove my head from the floor, I attempted to avoid this as much as possible by using retrograde to sufficiently come out of these positions and continue the improvisation. When doing the floor to standing head exercise, myself and Laura Carey felt a lot differently about the exercise in comparison with the rest of the group. the majority of pairs found this exercise challenging and said they lost contact frequently, they also spoke about how difficult it was to find new ways of moving with in constant contact from above the neck. Like I mentioned earlier, Laura and I had an opposite opinion to the rest of the class, as we felt quite comfortable moving together, this was due to us communicating with our bodies and deciding as one how we were going to move. Once we felt more confident, we moved onto more weight baring exercises, such as the pebble exercise, table top and headstand over table top. When performing these activities I noticed a massive difference in height between myself and the girls I tried them with, for them this made the activities a lot more challenging as they had to use more energy getting themselves over or onto my back. For myself it made the activities easier but more restrictive, this was because I was conscious of putting my full weight on the girls as I am, by default, a lot heavier than them.
The most influential reading this week for me which has made an impact on my improvisation was an interview between Simone Forti (Postmodern dance artist and choreographer) and Daniel Lepkoff (improvisation artist). Lepkoff discusses his opinion on a dance festival he had participated in. during the reading Lepkoff suggests that performers should be considered as creators rather than just the tools of the choreographer, from this I understood that he was talking about how, during contact improvisation all participants must be involved in directing their own bodies to fully create a contact improvisation performance/jam. When talking about the eyes and the breath, Lepkoff explains that our bodies are in constant motion, he talks about how our eyes are constantly moving, even when we sleep, and how we can never stop ourselves from breathing because then we are still doing the action of stopping ourselves. this adds to ideas we have previously discussed in earlier weeks like when doing the surf and roll exercise. One quote which has stuck with me from this reading is on the last page of the reading when Lepkoff says “Try and make work that does not tell people what they supposed to see, or what it is supposed to mean, or indicate, what is good or not good.” To met this basically means create work that makes an audience think, instead of creating work that is easy to watch, be memorable. I liked this idea and although it may not directly connect with contact improvisation it does connect with our choreography modules next semester and next year.
Here is a list of questions which were brought to my attention this week – I will try and answer these questions through next contact jam.
- How does movement change with eyes closed?
- What did I need to focus on while performing contact improve?
- How would it feel to make contact with more abstract parts of the body? e.g. elbow or ear etc.
- How does eye contact effect movement quality?
Bibliography – MoMA Learning. 2017 Dance Constructions: Simone Forti. New York: MoMA Learning. Available from: https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/simone-forti-dance-constructions-1961 [Accessed on 16th October 2017]
Daniel Lepkoff performance(2107) Daniel lepkoff biographies. Halifax: Daniel Lepkoff. Available from http://daniellepkoff.com/biographies/daniel/index.php [accessed 16th October 2017]
Forti, S (2005) The Movement of Attention. The Movement Research Performqance Journal, 29. 1-5. Available from http://daniellepkoff.com/Writings/Daniel%20simone%20Interview.php [accessed 9th October 2017]