This week I was back in my apprehensive mind set again, having sat out last week I felt I was at a disadvantage when it came to the whole ‘going up, coming down’. I hadn’t really yet experienced the feeling of going up properly yet, and I was definitely nervous about what was to come. Kirsty started the lesson off by making us watch two contact improv duets. One by Martin Keogh and Neige Christenson called ‘The Play of Weight’ (2009), and the other by Mirva Makinen and Otto Alkkanen.
She told us to focus on dynamics and the role of the ‘over and under’ dancer. In Keogh and Christenson’s duet they used a lot of eye contact and momentum in order to see where the movement might flow to next. However I noticed that it was always the girl that was the over dancer, there wasn’t really any swapping between the two of them. Keogh came across as being the most dominant as he was usually the under dancer, starting where he thought the movement should go to. In Makinen and Alkkanen’s duet however the role of the over and under dancer was very equal, the movement was slower and the duo were able to find secure balances where they could easily shift with each other. It almost looked like they were both the same weight they were so equally balanced with one another, this made me feel better about the lesson to come, if they could do both roles, so could I!!
We started class by concentrating on the idea of the surfing body. Finding a partner and seeing what movement could come just by holding a part of the torso together, my first partner was Ellie and we struggled with not just going round in a circle! Using each others hips as a anchor kept becoming increasingly difficult. We then swapped partners and I ended up with Nicole, this time was much more efficient. Why is it you work better with some people than others? She helped initiate our movement and soon we were flowing so much better, the over and under dancer changing all the time. We also found some weight placements and balances that were interesting and that I would like to put into my duet. ‘The dance was within us’ (Ptashek, 1988, 156), this statement is defientely true, when contact works with someone you forget about everything around you. Your bodies become as one and the movements you begin to find become more and more interesting.
We then stayed with the same partner and went on to trying Aikido rolls, something that when we watched the video of looked impossible. Me and Nicole managed to do the roll pretty much straight away we just couldn’t quite seem to get the transition between each roll. This made me think that we could definitely use these rolls in a contact jam, in order to get in or out of partner work. We then went on to improvise with bigger lifts, like the paperclip and the cradle lift, I was with Millie for these lifts and we managed to do the paperclip one straight away. This was something that built my confidence, I WAS ABLE TO BE LIFTED! As we went on to try the cradle lift i realised how much we needed this idea of centre of gravity from the reading. In the reading it talks about using someone else’s centre of gravity as your own (Ptashek, 1988, 158), if me and Millie could do this together the balance point in the cradle lift would begin to come more natural. Eventually we found the point and the lift was as easy as other people were making it look,
I have also had time to rehearse my duet with Anna this week, and I like the progress we are making. Slowly contact improv is making much more sense to me and I am actually really starting to enjoy it, I even look forward to our lesson now! Improv Jam with the addition of different people is something that I am also liking the experience of, the fact I can now dance with everyone is something which I think is a major improvement for me!
Next lesson I would like to work on going up into the air more and also becoming more confident when improvising alone.
Curtis, B. & Ptashek, A., 1988. Exposed to Gravity. Contact Quarterly Contact Improvisation Sourcebook I. Vol. 13.