I am looking forward to this course overall as I believe it will enable me to challenge my own movement and help me break away from habitual patterns. To begin with, I found this weeks readings really interesting as there was a lot of information on the skin that I wasn’t aware of prior to this lesson. Another interesting statement made in the ‘Sharing The Dance’**(reference) reading was that there is a clear division between the mind and the body. This is something that I can think about when i’m struggling to break away from habitual movement.
We then began focusing on our bodies with slight movement. We started by laying flat in anatomical neutral and just lightly pressing different body parts into the ground. This made me feel a sense of release and almost like I was weightless. I enjoyed this exercise as it helped me to really focus on my body before any improvised movement began. After the pressing exercise was over, we extended this into a sliding and rolling motion which lead us to move around the room rather than just being stationary. This also gave me a sense of freedom as I really felt like my body was released into the ground. I enjoyed moving like this as it allowed me to challenge myself as I have never used these techniques before. Once we had challenged ourselves in this exercise we then began to add different tones to our movement. Overall I think this is something that I personally need to focus a bit more on as I tend to stick to a movement pattern which is quite light and free. If I can break away from this tone then I am hoping that my movement will also alter.
After moving around the space we then gathered as a class in a circle, closed our eyes and sat upright with crossed legs. We were then instructed to place our right hand on the person who was sat on our right side’s thigh, which in turn meant that we had the person who was sat on our left sides hand squeezing/putting pressure onto our left leg. After experiencing this sensation for a while, I felt like my own hand didn’t belong to my own body anymore and was just a part of the persons leg on my right who I was making contact with. It was a really strange sensation but it helped mw to really understand how the mind and body are very individual from one another. After the exercise was complete, my right hand felt a lot larger and also much more heavier than my left hand.
To conclude the movement, we then got into partners (myself and Beckie were together) and worked in the space trying to block each others facings while the other slid, pressed and rolled around. The 2 were then combined together. Me and Beckie ended up mirroring each other and got into a rhythm where we worked well as we understood the pace that we were both working at. When using different tones (between 1-10) the rhythm and pace picked up the higher the tone level got.
Reading:
Heitkamp, D. (2003) Moving from the Skin: An Exploratorium. Contact Quarterly/Contact Improvisation Sourcebook II, Vol. 28:2. Pp. 256- 264.