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.