Month: November 2017

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.