Month: December 2017

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.