Sensing Weight in Movement

At the start of the reading Ravn described how she felt in classes about sensing your weight which I connected to. I have had to do this in class and the feeling of if you’re doing it right or am I feeling my weight correctly. As a dancer we have a relationship between mass and gravity and we explore it during training and learning technique.

“According to philosopher Shaun Gallagher’s phenomenological descriptions, proprioception is, in its most typical form, a pre-reflective and non-observational awareness that allows the body to remain experimentally transparent to the agent who is acting (Ravn, 2010, 29). I believe that this means what we do without thinking such as walking; standing upright we do these things without thinking.

Overall the feeling of weight reveals two things, two different dimensions one focused and one connected to an overall sensation of what their bodies feel like.

Is Contact a Small Dance?

In contact Improvisation there are two different performance modes, the behavioural and the relational, these can merge in to several different performance forms. When learning CI we have to take responsibility for one’s self and what we are doing.

“In other words we learn to use our bodies in necessary and efficient ways in order to relate to our environment and a moving partner.”(Brown, 73) We have to become aware of one’s body, what it can do, what it needs and how we need to take care of it.

Bibliography

Ravn, S. ( 2010) Journal of Dance and Somatic Practice. 

Brown, B. Is Contact a Small Dance? Contact Improvisation Sourcebook I. Vol. 6.

Interior Techniques

With CI there is no set choreography and no specific instruction, “Improvisers in the space continuously choose their own movement, when, how long, and with whom they will dance.”(Paxton, 2010, 124). From this I feel that CI is free to a degree as the dancer chooses what they want to do in the space.

Steve Paxton wanted to get rid of all external constants and to do this he set up movement experiments and by doing this he returned the decision making to the dancer.

Paxton started developing awareness of reflexes and trying no longer to control what was happening but instead by just dancing this created “flowing streams of movement” (Paxton, 2010, 127). I think Paxton tried to make dancing not as strict and not so much about technique, he wanted the dance and dancer to flow. With doing this CI had the ability to affect the audience. “It is through the eyes that the audience begins a kinetic response or a physical empathy with the dancer” (Paxton, 2010, 128). I think that this means that the audience start to feel what the dancer feels while dancing the piece, if the audience do this, this means that get a different experience.

“Equally significant was the dissociation of relaxation from tension since tension was cultural, it was to be avoided. Moments of tension could be resolved (instead of observed or investigated) by going back to one’s bodily sensations and relaxing” (Paxton, 2010, 131/132). I think that this means that relaxation and tension are different things and tension needs to be avoided and if tension does occur it can be resolved and by looking at what is going on in the body and relaxing them to get rid of the tension.

From this reading I this explained to me how Paxton went about finding more out about CI and I found this interesting.

Bibliography

Turner, R. (2010) Interior Techniques in the Drama Review. 

Touch

Aesthetics comes from the Greek language which means perceptive by feelings, “From this that the primary grounding of the field aesthetics”. (Bannon, Holt, Duncan, 2012, 216).

From the reading this week I learnt lots about touch. Touch as a dancer is important and through this reading I have found how important touching and not touching can be. It is also about the quality of the touch and not the quantity and how it affects us and the boundaries it teaches us. In the reading there was an exercise which I did, with the exercise it felt unfamiliar like it stated. I also found it difficult to know if I was doing/feeling the right parts. It was a strange sensation but opened up my mind to how much touch affects daily actions.

Touch also helps to learn about the bodies anatomy, “Examples could include teacher’s guidance to brush a palm along your own neck to discover state of your vertical alignment and to interrelate the information gleaned between palm and neck to explore potential for change in that alignment”. (Bannon, Holt, Duncan, 2012, 218). I found this interesting as touch is just not about partner work it can help in learning technique. “Touch can be used in dance learning to guide the dancer into a position and to help transfer embodied knowledge from teacher to dancer without the need for speaking.” (Bannon, Holt, Duncan, 2012, 221) I think that by using touch you discover different things about yourself, it is the first sensory system that we learn to use and by touching we learn things ourselves. “It is a loop of touching and being touched in which we continue to learn from that which we touch in connection with the world and ourselves” (Bannon, Holt, Duncan, 2012, 220). I found skin ego interesting as it describes skin as an organ that feels and remembers what you touch.

Overall I found that when I dance I need to think more about what I touch, not where I place my touch but how the touch makes me feel, I also think with doing this I need to think as an individual like stated in the reading. I think touch will help me progress which learning techniques but also finding a different side to dance.

Bibliography

Bannon, F. & Holt, D. (2012) Touch: Experience and Knowledge in Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices.  

Taken by Surprise

Contact Improvisation has had many different definitions “As time has gone on, the answer has shifted: away from an experimental dance phenomenon and toward a physical practice allied with a number of complex new body and mind studies.”(Paxton,2003,175). Steve Paxton explored Contact Improvisation firstly though imagination. He did not know much about imagination and with exploring it though Contact Improvisation he began to have a better understanding of what the imagination is and how it influences Contact Improvisation.

At first he had to teach students that the performance of actions do not just happen you have to imagine them first. With this it leaded Paxton on the exploration of the consciousness. Paxton found gaps appearing with the consciousness; this meant there were opportunities lost and these lost moments meant that you could not learn from them. Paxton believed that the reason these gaps happened was because the movement being performed was too fast for the conscious to keep up with. Dizziness and nausea were thought to be the borderline between the conscious and the reflexive, reflexive is what replaces when the conscious has gone, they would step in out of each other’s place. I find this interesting because when I think about moments when I have become dizzy because I have turned to fast I feel that there is a something lost with the conscious. When turning you are thinking and when you go to fast I feel you lose all thought, just for a brief moment, and then it returns with the dizziness.

To further explore and teach Contact Improvisation Paxton came up with a working model “I took the working model to be a simple imaginary person with no physical seasonal or social inhibitions”. (Paxton,2003,179) I think that Paxton made it simple so it would fit any person at any point; this is a smart move from Paxton because he can work with anyone.

Paxton assumed many aspects when exploring and learning about Contact Improvisation, he found that by assuming, these assumptions affected the result. “I tried to beware of what the assumptions were and to let the phenomenon we explored-the narrower field of improvisation when communicating via touch with another person-guide the definitive imagery into appropriate areas.”(Paxton,2003) Paxton had to make the assumptions to progress learning more about Contact Improvisation; he took into fact these assumptions but still went to assume many things when researching Contact Improvisation.

This reading was interesting to me as it showed me how Contact improvisation became to Contact Improvisation and how it progressed from just an idea to becoming an actual art form. I feel that it has opened my mind to Contact Improvisation and I am excited to learn more.

Moving from the Skin

Hautsache– this is a skin matter. Heitkamp used this to explore the skin in dance. One of the most important elements of Contact improvisation is communication of touch; through touch a wide range of information is exchanged. “Communication via the skin also involves dealing with limits and boundaries, my own and my partner’s- flexible, porous boundaries with limits that we define and are free to redefine”.(Heitkamp,2003,264) The skin does many different things, it is the bodies outer boundary. The skin inhales and exhales, maintains muscle tone, holds the body together and provides a framework for our sense of touch. Through the experiments I found common elements, I felt each experiment focused on the skin and how it was different in each exercise, such with the ground and environment and how it was with other people and how the skin was with clothing and how that made the person feel. I found it interesting to read each experiment and how it made the people feel and with the experiment more was learnt about the skin.

From the reading I found it interesting that skin does so much and can do much when dancing. I have never thought of the skin as a communication device when dancing and when I am back dancing I am excited to see how the skin communicates and what I experience through touch.

Bibliography

Heitkamp, D. (2003). Moving from the Skin: An Exploratorium. 2nd Edition. Northampton: Contact Editions.

Albright, A. C. & Gere, D. (2003) Taken by surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader, United States: Wesleyan University Press.