Blog Entry 9/03

Our class started with the walk around the space like normal, becoming aware of our surroundings and learning to become comfortable with the other bodies in the space “the link between dancers… it occurs not only by means of actions but also of emotions” (Ribero, M and AGAR, F, 2011,) and Kirsty encourages us to work with the idea of collective intelligence even when just walking round the space, as working together to pick up the pace in the warming of our bodies with relate to the pace consistency we are trying to achieve in our improv jams.

We got into pairs for the swiping exercise on three different planes. I found this method enjoyable as I enjoy working with other people and I was able to notice in my own movement and was able to sense the movement of my partner. Similarly, in previous lessons I struggled to concentrate when the movements matched and it became a bit frantic and I think this is something I really need to work on in terms of improving my improvisation and partner work, particularly in preparation for contact improvisation in second year.

In different pairs, we worked on the same swiping movements, but moving across the room and one of the pair had to work on dodging the other swipe. I found this quite difficult as I wanted to look for different ways to dodge my partner’s arms and found myself resorting to ones that I had already used. We repeated this method, but with the swiper’s eyes closed, which as the dodger, didn’t really change but to have your eyes closed was very difficult. This was because you couldn’t sense the body around you unless there was some form of collision, and I felt more hesitant as I wasn’t sure where the other body was.

In the same partners, we had to copy our partner’s movement across the floor which I didn’t feel was particularly challenging as I was able to view the whole movement and predict where the movement was going or what was coming next “How is it possible to make a shared choice of movements during improvisation between two or more dancers, without previous agreement and without communication through words?” (Ribero, M and AGAR, F, 2011). This changed however, when the partners were creating new movement and there was no way of predicting their next movement as you were trying to figure it out in your own body.

We came out of partners and starting moving around the room, blinking and trying to take a picture of where you were going and trying to avoid the other bodies in the room. This felt surprisingly comfortable and a lot less difficult than I anticipated, I easily adjusted to the pictures that I was mentally taking and I was aware of the space and the length of time I had left to move before needing to reopen my eyes. We tried this method, with movement across the room by trying to copy our partner which I found the most difficult and was completely unaware of the movement my partner was doing, and what I was doing was completely different.

Back into partners, we used impulse touch from a previous lesson and experimented with the different pressure of touch and how it contributed to their movement. We were then given different images, like in the previous lesson:

Seaweed: This movement was quite clingy and there was a prolonged pressure on my partner, even physically moving the body parts with the pressure and it felt fairly easy to embody the image, using the texture in your movement.

Kitten: This image was quite playful and we created contact between other parts of the body, like the nose to impulse the movement. Some of the reactions to this were sharp dynamics, and a lot of jumpy movements.

Wrestler: This one was quite powerful and the points of contact were over a bigger surface area and a lot of powerful. The touch was more intense and the movements generated were a lot heavier than the seaweed or kitten.

Bibliography:

Ribeiro, M. Fonseca, A. (2011) The empathy and the structuring sharing modes of movement sequences in the improvisation of contemporary dance. Research in Dance Education.