This week we worked with a release and contact based company called feet off the ground who are an all female company. We explored different lifts and counter balances, some we had never explored before, by exploring these new lifts and counter balances I was able to work with new bodies I had not necessarily worked with before, this gave me an opportunity to experience a different connection within my own body and just working with another body in a whole.
Towards the end of the workshop with feet off the ground, we learnt a release and contact phrase, even though we only had 45 minutes to learn and perform, I felt positive with my skills and the end result. After the workshop I reflected on the day and reflected on how I can put everything we’ve learnt into a jam situation, I feel I have more movement to explore within my own body.

 

‘How do we use the three stages of preparation to develop confidence in weight baring lifts?’

We chose to base out research lab around this question because we felt it was a common flaw in most of the classes practice. We based our research to back up our research lab on this weeks reading ‘Exposed to Gravity’. We found it really related to our research lab, as it talks about a man who found new confidence within CI, finding the trust and connection in another body, finding grounding through the floor even in weight baring lifts, ‘on top of Alan’s shoulders I could feel the ground through his body solidly supporting me against gravity” (Curtis, 1998, 158). Curtis and Ptashek also discuss gaining fearlessness through using momentum and weight exchange.
To make sure we gained all the research we needed we spit the 20-minute session in two halves’, starting off with exercises we have explored before such as body surfing incorporating table top, with their starting position and ‘safe’ position table top, we wanted to see if they explored new movement and challenged themselves to work their way through to table top from body surfing.
We then upped the difficulty of the task so their safe position was now one from table top and one from standing, challenging them further to look at movement they wouldn’t have necessarily found working from the normal starting and safe positions.
During this exercise we found that many duets had started to explore with new movement, they started to find the standing connection earlier on which allowed them to explore movement for longer. We didn’t want to chose pacific songs, as Curtis explains “Alan, discouraged this because the body tends to move to the internal rhythm of the shifting weight, sensation and the communication that goes back and forth between the dancers.” (Curtis, 1998, 158). We wanted them to explore at their own pace, which we realised very early on they it was a very slow pace, which made each of the movements controlled, it also meant they kept their connection, allowing movements to flow better.
‘Keep your eyes open, don’t get lost inside your head. Look for opportunities to support your partner, move in underneath them. Don’t give or take weight without listening for the agreement of your partner’s body’(Curtis, 1998, 158), We used this quote within our session because as a group, as we researched for a question we noticed that whilst in a jam we started to plan what we wanted to do, we got lost in all the different ideas we wanted to explore, we stopped listening to our partner’s body and the connection started to leave.

For the second part of our workshop we still wanted the group to explore the transitions between getting from the floor to standing, but we decided to go in reverse so we started with both bodies standing in the space, and we asked them to reverse the practice, so they go from standing to table top and then back to standing again, we also banned body surfing.
For the second stage of this exercise, we carried on with the same idea, but we banned table top and body surfing. We did this because we wanted the bodies in the space to find different ways of moving across the space, ways they had never thought about moving and by restricting the movements they were allowed to do this made them stray away from their habitual movements.
We felt even though the group found the exercises difficult, it managed to challenge them and create new movement even if the group didn’t recognise it in themselves.
We saw a change in the confidence in the group, it was really easy to spot groups that were taking the time to explore and exploring ways to move the connection between the bodies.
In the second set of exercises we used the quote ‘Mutual trust is based on uncompromised attention, so stay in the present moment’ (Curtis, 1998, 158). We used this quote because we felt it was relevant to the group at the time, as they were moving from weight baring lifts to different points on the body, the trust between the two bodies was the main thing needed to maintain the flow and connection.

Photos from our workshop.

 

Bibliography
Curtis, B. (1988). Exposed to Gravity. Contact Quarterly/ Contact Improvisation Sourcebook I, Vol. 13

We watched two videos at the start of this week’s session, revisiting the idea of the over and under dancer and watching more examples of anchors and leavers.
Investigation #1 with Martin Keogh and Neige Christenson, in this video the male was more dominant, using his body more as the under dancer, working with a lot less momentum.
They found stillness quite often and found weight baring lifts to use this stillness in and balance, they’re work seemed effortless almost as if the movement had been choreographed.
Comparing Keogh and Christenson’s work to the work of Mäkinen & Akkanen, I recognised more variety of movement, with the female offering platforms for the male. They created riskier weight baring lifts and explored more throughout this idea of platforms and jigsaw pieces slotting together. They had constant body connection, which I don’t think Keogh and Christenson had all the time, using anchors and leavers, rolling points and platforms.

We started practically walking around the space, thinking about releasing into the floor using our breath. Taking it in turns to say ‘3,2,1’ and trusting the other bodies in the space to catch us as we released our bodies into the floor. During this task I focused on releasing the muscular tension through my legs and mainly my thighs as I have realised this is where I hold a lot of my tension when trying ‘release’.

We spent the rest of the session exploring ways of ‘going up’ using different kineaspheres, lifting from the floor, to table top and then to standing and jumping lifts.
We started off body surfing, and making sure the connection is kept between the two bodies and then exploring how we could take the body surfing into a table top weight bare.
This is something I really struggled to explore, as I felt the connection between the two bodies disappear and we stopped releasing into each others bodies. After exploring it further with other bodies in the space, it still didn’t get any easier. Am I not releasing my body? Am I not fixing the right points in my body to create the idea of a jigsaw? I am not making full connection to start with? As I started to question myself as I was exploring this exercise I started to notice that instead of working with the other body, I tend to place myself into the ‘right’ position and then release and carry on, meaning the connection was lost and my body had tense up, I started to release it wasn’t the transition from the floor to table top to standing that was going wrong for me, I had lost the connection and the release before I had even started to think about the transitions. This is something I wont to explore and work with within class next week and it will always be something that I think about during contact.

 

Jam

 

This week I felt was a turning point for me in the jam, I felt my confidence levels grow in a matter of minutes. I thought about all the my questions and queries I had from the lesson and took this into the jam with me, making sure when I started within connecting with other bodies I thought about releasing and keeping the connection especially through the weight baring lifts.
Through doing this I felt the weight baring lifts were easier than in class, I felt confident in taking some up or letting myself be taken up, I also started to play around with the transitions between the floor, table top and standing, it was only baby steps, but it has made me feel a lot more confident to use these new skills more often with other bodies in the space.

Bibliography

Neige Christeneon(2009) The play of weight. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ltq6y06E8ew accessed 8 November 2016].

Omegabranch (2011) Contact improvisation Mirva Makinen and Otto Akkanen. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMLbWxujoGw [accessed 8 November 2016].

“In Contact improvisation, one finds oneself in circumstances that demand accessing support from any area of one’s own body surface, in physical contact with any area of another person’s body surface, both of which are in motion. In this situation one is not able to rely on habits, the reflexes take over and the rest is history” (Lepkoff, 2008) This, to me, is important to realise that within contact improvisation habitual movement struggles to take over your body whilst you’re in motion with another body. I have noticed this within my own practice, straying far from habitual movement with other bodies, however, my journey in and out of the contact jam and in-between finding different bodies to work with tends to stray back to habitual movement.
“In order to change habitual movement patterns one needed to address the functioning of the whole organism, the mind as well as the body” (Lepkoff, 1999)
This is something that I feel I need to make the connection between whilst working on my own improvisation and I believe it’s an important thing to master.

In this week’s session we started to look at different ways to move across other bodies using surfing and the idea of over and under dancer to get across the space, whilst keeping the connection at the torso/hips.
At the start, I noticed that the movement was difficult to keep the movement flowing, as I kept moving through the space I noticed this was because the connection kept breaking between the two bodies.
What surfaces of the skin needed to make contact? How was the two parts of the body supposed to stay in contact?
I started to think of the bodies moving more as a jigsaw piece rather than two separate parts of the body and releasing myself more into the space of the body.
Looking at different ways to weight bare through surfing and the over and under dancer, using table top and keeping the connection and lifting whilst your partner was acting as the over dancer, become extremely difficult.  If felt odd within my body. How was my partner supposed to know when I wanted to roll?
How was I supposed to move myself into table top without hurting my partner?
These are questions I still haven’t answered within my own body as of yet and questions I want to explore within the next contact session and the next jam.

We started to explore ways of weight baring to use in the improve jams.
I realised that momentum was a key part of weight baring lifts, using this to move both bodies, and the more momentum I built the more the movement felt comfortable, it flowed better and the two bodies released a lot more into each other.
I learnt that throughout any weight baring lifts I attempt to do, I must always focus on ‘going down to go up’ and finding different anchors within your body.I started to use the top of my back/shoulders as an anchor.
Being able to release into my partner was fine, however I struggled with being lifted and I noticed within myself that I offered to be the base more than I offered to be lifted. This is something to do with my previous training as always being the ‘base’, it’s something I need to focus on and work with, within jam’s and other weight baring exercises, until I combat my fear of being lifted.

I started to learn throughout most of the exercise we were going through during the session that, trust, confidence, momentum and ‘safe’ practice, are the most important things during weight baring lifts.
For example, the pulling exercise, if the momentum and trust wasn’t there between the two bodies, the exercise wouldn’t work, finding the balance of these between two bodies is so important.

I notice that in the wrap around leg kick lift, momentum and making sure the two bodies fit as a jigsaw piece, this is something me and my partner struggled to grasp, on getting the bodies in the correct places so they fit together, and having the momentum to get us round, it took us quite a while to get the hang of this.
This exercise is something I want to explore further within the contact jam next week.

 Contact Jam

This week’s jam felt good, I felt I explored a lot with the movement we learnt the week before and some weight baring lifts, however I struggled to intertwine a lot of the weight baring lifts as I didn’t know how to place them and to initiate them with the other bodies in the space.
I’m starting to focus more on having a connection and conversation with my partner during the jam’s, to make the movement work between us.
Within myself I need to learnt to accept when something doesn’t work and don’t try and force movement upon my partner, instead let the movement flow and see where the two bodies end up.
Sometimes the most amazing movements start from an accidental movement.

Bibliography
Daniel Lepkoff (1999) What is release technique?. [online] Available fromhttp://www.daniellepkoff.com/Writings/What%20is%20Release.php[Accessed 30^th October 2016].

Daniel Lepkoff (2008) Contact Improvisation: A Question?. [online] Available from http://www.daniellepkoff.com/Writings/CI%20A%20question.php [Accessed 30^th October 2016]