The first session of contact improvisation, brought my attention to the difference between contact improvisation, choreographed contact and improvisation.
By watching the video ‘Blush’ (youtube, 2012) I noticed that choreographed contact is a faster paced piece of choreography, the weight baring lifts are riskier and the contact between the pair is hardly any with each movement being in sync with another.
Where as in contact improvisation, the movement is slower, with each surface that comes into contact with another body being fully explored, with the sense of performance not being an aspect, this is shown through the video ‘Contact improvisation jam Berlin – K77’ (youtube, 2010) where it is clear that each weight lifting movement is based around communication and touch with each lift clearly being based around levers and anchors.
We looked into weight baring, response and trust tasks, I noticed that during the touch/response task that, the longer you touch the person and guide/move them with your touch the more chance they have to explore the full range of movement and the further they can move away from habitual movement.
‘One of the most important elements of contact improvisation is communication by touch’ (Heitkamp, 2003, 256), this quote I see as transferring what you want your partner to do through how hard, fast you touch them and how long your touch lingers for through to your partner through nothing but your touch.
I noticed through Laura’s touch, that I started to think more about where Laura wanted my body to go and how she wanted me to move rather than what my mind was saying for my body to do, I could of explored this task more if I hadn’t of resisted Laura’s touch and moved more slowly so I could fully go about my movement. I could of also used more levels, as reflecting back I was mainly on floor, I didn’t fully feel comfortable with movement on a middle or higher plane.
I am unsure about whether the closed eye walking task made me feel uncomfortable and isolated or made me explore my movements more.
I don’t know whether being in such close contact with people made creating movement easier within a non judgemental environment or whether there was too much fear/nerves to full explore this movement.
I found having my eyes closed made me think more about my awareness of my other senses and how the touch of someone else’s body could effect my own movements.
During the contact floor jam, I felt that being able to create movement from a single touch of any part of anyone’s body made creating movement easier and made it more natural and less forced to touch to create.
During the partner trust work, I notice that if you did not have complete trust within your partner the exercise would not work.
‘it is amazing how much information is transmitted through touch’ (Heitkamp, 2003, 258) as quoted by Heitkamp, I feel that if this information should be passed through the surface connection and the two bodies should become whole, making the trust tasks possible.
there were a few moments during this task where it worked for me, however I feel as our trust and focus gradually develops this should improve.
‘Because Consciousness can be felt to change according to what it experiences. If a gap of consciousness occurs at a critical moment, we lose an opportunity to learn from the moment’ (Paxton, 2003, 177) This is something I have found difficult through the past year of improvisation, keeping my mind focused on the movement at hand and being able to let my body flow with what’s happening around me rather than overthinking each situation and losing my connectivity and flow, when I enable myself to do this, I will in myself become better within this module.
Bibliography
Paxton, S. Drafting Interior Techniques. In Stark-Smith, N. A Subjective History of Contact Improvisation. In Albright, A. C., & Gere, D. (2003).Taken by surprise: A dance improvisation reader. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan. University Press.
Heitkamp, D. (2003). Moving from the Skin: An Exploratorium. Contact Quarterly/ Contact Improvisation Sourcebook II, Vol. 28:2. Pp.
Themalcomme. (2012). Blush part 5 on 5.avi. [online Video]. 12 february 2016. Available from: http://youtube.com/watch?v=igK7FNpbq84. [accessed: 27 September 2016].
Juri Schmidt. (2010). Contact improvisation jam – berlin K77. [online video] 8 March 2016. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDhhKmCVVdo. [accessed: 27 September 2016]