This week’s reading was based on scores, having only recently learnt what a score was, most of this reading seemed to go over my head! Some Considerations When Structuring an Improvisation (to be seen by an audience by Stover, taught me to think about ‘spatial rhythm’ and how to structure a score. Scores now make more sense to me and I can see how scores would help the practice of improvisation develop. As me, Claire and Indre began to think about how our score would be structured I began to see how a structured score could create differences between improvisation and restrictions in improvisation.
Kirsty started the lesson easing us straight away into a jam, something that we have never done before. This included finding safe points of contact, being able to give yourself to someone to manipulate. Also we worked on safe structures and the way to get in and out of these over dancer poses. As we went through these movements, i began to get more confident with who I could give my weight to, I could see basic structures and by just putting your body on them you began to make more structurally interesting poses. This slowly led into a jam, which is was one of the most interesting jams i have yet been in. Everyone began experimenting with all the things we had learnt and it was easy to see how much the jam started to improve.
Kirsty then went over the movements we had learnt with Feet of the Ground dance company on Saturday. I found this workshop so helpful in my Contact practice as it taught me to do movements that I never thought I would be able to do before. Such as a walkover across someone’s back, this has always been something I found challenging and with the help of the dancers I was able to achieve it. As we were going through the movements i was with my duet partner Anna, and we were able to find new balances in which we could probably put into our duet.
We then went into each groups’ score, starting with a ‘Halfway Score’, I found the layout of this score very interesting as it is a lot different to how we usually start a jam. I liked the fact that you could only enter with someone because that meant once you were in the space you always had someone to dance with. It taught me about spatial awareness and the fact it was with music meant that i was able to forget that the music connected to the movement.
The next score was stood in a circle in which you had to make a noise to exit. You also had to do 3 lifts before you could exit the space, this was something i found difficult as everyone was trying to lift everyone. There was also a bit of confusion in who was being lifted and who was lifting. However I did like the lifts that came from this practice, they were original and a lot more interesting than they had been before.
The final score I took part in was the ‘Mouse Trap’, i thoroughly enjoyed this score, and even the fact that you were restricted in space didn’t seem to bother me. It meant as a class we interacted more, and i was able to dance with people that I don’t seem to dance with that much. It also meant that people traveled more and we were able to reach around more of the space than i had before. The mouse trap made me think of original movement ideas that i previously wouldn’t have done.
Finally it was time for our score, which we named the ‘sensory score’ as it was based a lot around observation skills. We used a lot of different limitations to see how our group would react to it. For example only every having one group of people of the lower kinesphere was one that was particularly hard to observe. As i was taking part in this score it was hard to see what was going on. But from Claire’s description we were not as good at observing as we think. I think this is true for me, i spend a lot of time thinking about my movement, not the movement that is going on around me. Maybe this is something I could change. Can you observe others as well as yourself when dancing? I want to work on this in next week’s jam, making sure that i take notice of the people around me, whilst at the same time, thinking of what movement i can use to be more original.
I feel this weeks jam went so much better than normal, with the over and under dancer coming much more naturally to me this week. It also meant the jam went a lot faster, something which i have never felt before. I am excited for our last week of contact to see what happens.
Stover, J., 1989. Some Considerations When Structuring an Improvisation (to be seen by an audience). In: V. 14, ed.Contact Quarterly’s Contact Improvisation Sourcebook. Northampton : Contact Editions , p. 185.