The over and under dancer. A hard concept to get your head around when you think about it. How would I manage the logistics of being the over and the under dancer? I wondered before heading into this week’s task. After reading this weeks’ reading, ‘Touch: Experience and knowledge’ my mind started to open into the things we might get into this week.
‘Touch has become a vulnerable commodity’ (Holt & Bannon, 2012, pg. 219) I thought about this as we started an exercise that I believed tested this theory. We had to walk around the space and touch someone on the shoulder, and then they would sink to the floor. Once you were lying on the floor you had to wait for someone to come and help you back up again. To be in this situation did feel vulnerable, and to put all your trust into the fact that someone else had to help you up backed up this point. It was awkward making these connections and as Kirsty had to point out, the movements that we were using were definitely not ‘pure’. I found it difficult to trust that the other person could pull me up, making it hard to relax into these movements. Our authenticity of movement began to get better however and this was how I was finally able to relax into the exercise.
We then had to experiment with the roles of ‘over and under’. As we started back to back with a partner with our eyes closed, you could sense which way your partner was going to move. I thought this was very interesting, it meant your body reacted with what they were doing, almost as if you and your partner were one person. As me and Indre began to explore this more I thought it became very apparent that she was the over dancer, though thinking about it now, how were each of us sure what the other was thinking? Exploring movement with different partners meant sometimes your role changed, often I would find myself being over a dancer who otherwise I would have been certain would be happier with being over me.
‘Touch allows you to connect with one another’ (Holt & Bannon, 2012, pg. 221) When we did an exercise in which we experimented in movement placement, I found that finding weight placements with your partner could be quite difficult. I worked with Becca and as she improvised it was challenging to find a position in which I was confident she could hold my weight. It was also hard to use this touch sensation and go against your habitual movements. For example I ended up using Becca’s back to hold my weight often, when in fact, there could have been many other body parts which could have supported me just as well. This is something I hope to work on in future weeks.
I feel like as contact improvisation is going on I have started to become more confident with myself, I am no longer afraid to work with different people from which I would usually work with. I feel this is a successful attribute as sometimes you feel you connect better dancing with people that otherwise you maybe wouldn’t work with. From the aspects of the ‘over, under’ dancer, I feel I need to improve on this. My movement this week felt very habitual to me, and unlike last week I was struggling a lot more to persuade myself to move out of these techniques. I want to be able to trust that the ‘natural’ places you go for on your partner to support you aren’t always the best options. Next week I hope I will be able to support this further. This lesson taught me however that anyone can be the ‘over or under’ dancer, something that I was never taught throughout A Level dance practice.
How can I stop myself overthinking in contact improvisation? Eventually I would like to be able to have an solution to this problem.
Holt, D. & Bannon, F., 2012. Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices