This lesson focused on going up in lifts and coming down safely and we began by  watching a video on youtube of Mirva Mäkinen and Otto Akkanen. This video highlighted how important it is to remain in contact at all times to make the movement more fluid and exciting to watch, i found this particularly helpful as i often feel as though there are gaps within contact imrpvisation where i need t work on my fluidity and movement quality. Secondly, to prepare our bodies for this and get ourselves familiar with some of the movement that may be helpful we began the lesson by practicing some rolls along the floor. The rolls involved reaching our bodies and really stretching ourselves across the space. Over the last few weeks i’ve really been struggling with dizziness and nausea and therefore I feel that these rolls didn’t benefit me in the way that they may have done the other classmates as i couldn’t give 100% however I was still able to feel the stretch needed from my toes right up to my fingertips which were raised above my head which is still a beneficial feeling when going up in lifts as it meant that I felt more in control and focused within my own body.

My favorite lift of the session involved using the rolls from the start of the lesson. You began by positioning yourself side to side with your partner, who would then lunge into your waist area. The person who was then going up into the lift would pour their weight onto their partners back and balance themselves there. Once balanced comfortably the aim was to use a twist in the pelvis to roll up your partners back and finish at their shoulder level. This was really difficult to achieve as it involved a lot of engagement from the core muscles however i really enjoyed attempting it.

Works Cited/Reading:

Omegabranch (2011) Contact Improvisation Mirva Mäkinen and Otto Akkanen. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMLbWxujoGw [Accessed 17 November 2014].

Curtis, B. (1988). Exposed to Gravity. Contact Quarterly/ Contact Improvisation Sourcebook I, Vol. 13. Pp.156-162.

I need to focus on:
Being more trusting with my weight when being the over dancer
React better to contact improv from my dance mates rather then shying away from movements
Really challenge how much weight/surfaces/support I can experiment with.

This week we conducted a research lab in the lesson. My group consisted of myself, Emma, Jade, Beth and Chloe. We decided that we wanted to look into how we can perform movement without constantly relying on our hands to help us get from A to B, this then lead to looking more into how the use of momentum can help this. To really highlight the fact that we weren’t allowed to use our hands the first exercise that we did was clasp them when moving. When doing this i felt quite ridged and clumpy in my movement and almost robotic. I believe that this may be because we didn’t have our arms free to help to movement flow also therefore the only place that could really move or feel free on my own body was my lower torso and legs. This exercise helped me to realise that my hands and arms are a big part of movement for me and therefore i’m going to try and vary from this in the future.

(The image above shows myself, Beth and Jade performing exercise 1. It shows that when our hands were bound we felt the need to keep of centers low to the ground and didn’t use higher levels much.)

The second exercise we did was a relaxation technique based on us lying on the floor in anatomical neutral and feeling any points of tension in our bodies and trying to relieve this. The aim of this was to try and loosen our bodies up so that we could really test gravity when looking into areas of momentum in movement. I felt a lot more relaxed after this exercise and i believe that taking time to focus on my body helps me to understand what i need to work on which i believe is very important in contact improv.

The third exercise that we did was to try the cat and owner technique from the previous lesson but to do this with our hands clasped just like we did in exercise one. I felt very trapped in doing this and didn’t particularly enjoy this exercise as due to us not being able to use our hands i didn’t particularly feel like i wanted to trust my partner with much of my weight.

Finally we did a trust based exercise which focused on momentum and gravity. The exercise involved one of the group members standing upright with legs parallel. 4 other group members then positioned themselves around the member and lightly pushed them around the cirlcle freely letting them fall from side to side. Considering i’m not usually very trusting, i really enjoyed this exercise as it helped me to feel the idea of a small dance in my body being manipulated by other people. It also helped me to feel a lot more momentum in my body in comparison to the other exercises that we conducted.

(The below image shows Beckie taking part in the exercise, although she didn’t enjoy it much as she felt as though she didn’t want to put the full weight of her body into the rest of the group.)