Before attending the session I was slightly apprehensive as to what to expect, as I had limited experience with contact improvisation. In order to gain as much from the lesson as possible, I drew upon the readings which I had done and tried to apply the knowledge in to my work in class. One point which particularly remained with me was from the pre module reading, by Novack, C which was all about Contact Improvisation and American Culture. A point which she has made was that movement was based on survival and the natural, as opposed to performing movement for aesthetic purposes. With this in mind, a personal aim for me, was to try and move naturally in my first lesson, experimenting without putting to much thought in to which body part I was moving.
In one of the exercises we were told to focus on pressing, sliding and rolling movements. An obvious choice for pressing for me would be to use the hands, so I tried to steer away from this particular body part and instead explore with different parts in a different style to what I considered as normal and habitual. Once this task developed we were then put in to partners and had to track each others movement, eventually developing in to us both moving and both tracking. I personally found this task quite a challenge to begin with, particularly when tracking my partners movements. I feel that rather than working together and moving in the space, it was as though we were still dancing as quite individual dancers rather than as a pair. Once we were encouraged to then explore the idea of heavy and light tones, I feel this helped me and my partner work closer together. We moved morecomfortably with a lighter tone, and I think that the reason for this was because we were moving slower and we were less forceful. I felt that I was more relaxed and therefore, more responsive to my partners movements. The task excited me and has stimulated new thoughts and ideas which i am curious to investigate in the coming lessons.
– How would tone vary, depending on who i was partnered with?
– does each person interpret tone differently?
References:
Novac, C, J. (1990). Sharing the dance: Contact improvisation and American culture. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press, 3 – 84