The week we addressed some of the specific needs of the class in terms of contact improvisation. We began by working on spirals. Students worked with partners and engaged the spirals in the body first by physically leading a partner into a spiral
by drawing an arm or leg across the center line of the body. Students rolled one another over onto their fronts and backs and worked on finding the spirals tipping points. Afterward, we we worked with these new physical realizations individually by rolling and falling into the floor.
Monique Courcy and I demonstrated some of the common problems that sometimes happen with contact. The arms as speed bumps. Getting caught in patterns and the thought stream.
On the jam day, I played music and the class found its way. We jammed, flowing in and out of contact for an hour and twenty minutes of the class. I spoke briefly at the beginning and then, let the space do its thing. It took about twenty minutes for any of them to make contact. I just danced today. I allowed myself the space to teach as a participant.
On Wednesday evening, there was a jam and many of you came to that. It was a great time of dancing. I really felt that many of you came alive and the community was there to meet you half way. Personally, I think this is the best way to teach contact. Through osmosis. Through the body.
In the last half hour of class, I played Fall After Newton, the video that describes contact and its creation with Steve Paxton arrating. The footage is fantastic. The fact that we can see the first piece Magnesium and the evolution of the form in the short time that it was existed is pretty amazing.
What will you harvest from this week of contact improvisation?
Two things are essential, I believe, in learning: practice and teaching. This week, we had the awesome opportunity to explore contact improvisation, and really learn it! On the Wednesday night jam, I was able to explore with several teachers our physical body, our movement, and our emotions. I really needed this space. Wednesday was a day when I felt a lot of anger, I had been vulgarized and I was feeling both vulnerable and inferiorated. My body wanted to act this out, and contact/the studio, gave me space to do this. As I moved with Micheal, I believe, we ran around the floor, pulling, gesturing, breathing, and jolting. Through this contact dance, I was able to reach into my body to release a lot of the emotion I was feeling. I found that my memory and my imagination were fertile ground, that got stirred up as I intended only to listen to my body. I felt a real symbiotic relationship with my needs of the moment, and the process of contact improvisation. As I write this, I feel a little uncertain about wether this is emotion is included in the contact process. I feel comfortable with my experience of it, this past week, in that I used my emotions, and the physical sensations that connected with those emotions, to move me in improvisation. Toward the end of class on Thursday, we watched some film of the original creators of contact improv. I read a second article, for this week, in Contact Quarterly. It discussed the Neuro-Politics of CI. It discusses how emotions affect the experience of CI, scientific explainations of how habits form, and how CI is a practice for listening to reality of the present moment (and all that is included in these moments: thoughts, feelings, and sensations). In this article, the claim is that CI, as a practice of listening, rather than one of memory or patterned reaction/impulse habits, is an opportunity to create outside of the obedience and oppression we give into our bodies, and recieve from the social body. CI provides a practice to reconstitute the social and recreational expressions we have, and in this way, the article says, it can affect the political and economic dynamics of our culture. The article does emphasize Steve Paxton's teachings that the teaching/learning should come through sensational facts, and not through symbolism, mysticism, psychology, or spiritualism. The discussion continues and elaborates that CI teachers have heard practitioners say that CI provides a refuge from the world. CI teachers are hesitant to say this it seems, although I find that this space is needed in our world, and that CI ought to offer this unconditionally as a dimension of the practice. This can be a legitimate space, one of safety during times of destruction. CI can be a place of healing and reconnection. This looks differently in various contexts. Additionally, it is important to understand the implications that CI has for making real insight and understanding into the various sensational, thought, and memory sources of our habits. This work, drawing directly from our own experience, improves our understanding of ourselves. In this way, CI is a tool for changing the world, not of distracting us from us. CI is a shock absorber for political (personal/power) trauma. CI is a practice of confronting fear, and disrupting habits, then integrating them into the spaces we inhabit. Confronting our experiences using techniques of CI awareness, evokes great power. "We can see wether our fear is realistic or simply based on conditioning; we can change the microstructure of our brains." So, the question becomes, through movement and language, how can we be healthy, and learn to say directly what we think, to question, and to listen. We can learn to undo the pattern of looking at conflict through fear: "we need to find ways to be in conflict that are not abusive or violent, and where we can know our own truth without being offended by someone else's different experience." And this comes back to the two things essential to learning: teaching and practicing.
ReplyDelete+alice
The more I experiment with contact improvisation, the more comfortable I am with my weight and how it impacts the person I am dancing with, but I still struggle with finding the joy in it. I have really liked doing contact improvisation with many different people as each person brings a new and exciting perspective to my experience. As is mentioned in “Experiencing the Body”, “the students attempt a particular kind of movement with different people and learn through doing it how to adjust for different bodies and how to gauge the possibilities for continuing movement sequences through their contact with other” (page 154). During our jam session on Thursday, I really felt this idea play out because I looked at the session as an opportunity to problem solve depending on the person I was working with at the time. For example, when my body became intertwined with one person, I looked at it as fitting puzzle pieces together in trying to determine what my next movement would be. One of the things that was very helpful in my continuing education and exploration of contact improv was having our questions and concerns answered. CI seems like it would be a hard topic to teach since it is very experimental and every person has their own experience, so I appreciated being pushed out of my comfort zone to try it, but then having some guidance on questions that arose during my time in practice.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite moment from this week had to do with seeing the clip from early contact improvisation. It is so interesting to see how early ideas have evolved and expanded for current generations. For the reading assignment from Contact Quarterly, I found an article the discussed a celebration that happened last summer in honor of the anniversary of contact improvisation. In the Winter/Spring 2009 edition from pages 22-27, there are pictures and accounts from the celebration of the 36th anniversary (called CI36) that took place at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. The celebration included a celebration and training component and a presentation by Steve Paxton, the “founder” of Contact Improvisation, a transcript which was also included in Contact Quarterly on pages 11-15. Even beyond the people in attendance at the event in Pennsylvania, it was so interesting to read about the other events that were happening around the country and the world in honor of the anniversary. Reading this story really helped to put this art form into perspective because connecting with another person through touch is something that people around the world are passionate about.
This week in contact improvisation, it seemed easier to get a jam started in class. After watching demonstrations of how to avoid having the arms in the way as speed bumps along with practicing weaving in and out of each connection I found that each contact improvisation was much stronger. I felt that the connection between each person was greater than the previous week, and each pairing jumped right into contact with other body parts instead of just the finger tips. Also watching demonstrations of how to move a repetitive movement through space, change the speed or levels it became easier to find variety in movements.
ReplyDeleteThe differences with each dancer are still seen, and you share a different level of connection depending on the partner you are dancing with but the experiences are worth it. The more practice of contact improvisation we had, the more improvements we all made. Also being comfortable with people you hardly know can be a struggle, but it became easy at the beginning of this week.
I love the concept of "no-fault" dancing as it is discussed at the end of the Experiencing the Body reading. There are many dance forms where skill levels differ and matter greatly, but the nice thing about contact improvisation and some other couple dancing you can have little dance skills to be able to dance with a partner. It's great how you learn different skills from each partner, and someone who may barely know how to do contact improvisation can learn from another dancer at a contact jam. It's a great form for all levels of dancers to collaborate and share intimate connections with other dancers.
Katherine Boulanger
This week for me was really important. I now feel a lot more comfortable with doing contact improv because of your tips with the common problems of contact. I always had trouble with my arms. I never new what I was doing wrong but I always had those "speed bumps." Learning to raise our arms, using speed, and even pausing and absorbing the moment really had an effect to the jam. I felt more comfortable and allowed myself to be in the moment and free. I think with the tips, I was able to relax more and be more at ease with out having to worry about getting stuck.
ReplyDeleteI was able to "focus on the physical sensations of touch and the pressure of weight" (pg 150) especially on the wednesday night concert jam. I was having a really rough day. Back to back classes, work for 7 hours and rushing home and showering and eating dinner. . . . then the contact jam. All while studying for a calculus midterm the next day. I was running on 5 hours of sleep, one americano, and one energy drink. So by the time contact started, my brain was buzzing and I was frantically running through my calculus in my head. I was a mess.
But what happened was, as soon as I was actually in contact with someone, all my stress went away. It was so relaxing. The buzz in my head from so much caffeine and lack of sleep went away. I was in the moment. It was so relaxing and having the tips when getting stuck made the jam really easygoing and fun. It really calmed me down.
I was really able to let go explore boundaries that I am usually afraid to go to. For example, I ended up lifting someone with my head in their crotch. It was cool to experiment without worry. All I have to say is: i was in the moment with the people I was in contact with and there was vulnerability but a comfortable vulnerability. It was super cool.
cougar
I feel that I have learned a lot about contact improvisation in a physical, practical way this week. I cannot speak highly enough about the jam on Wed – I’ve never danced with so many people. At first, I felt awkward as there were mostly students from class there and it seemed uncomfortable to initiate something, but I chose to feel my body first and layed on the floor until I felt a need to touch someone. I danced with many experienced improvisers and felt that the adjustments which I might have to make for other partner dancing styles I am used to, like salsa, are so incredibly similar to improv. I would spend the first few moments just feeling this person and seeing where our unique point of contact was. This became even more complex when dancing in and out with multiple partners. It was a beautiful jam, especially at the end when everyone was literally mingling with all the other dancers and you almost didn’t have enough time to realize who you were dancing with. I also felt the most thoroughly engaged in a mental sense as I only took a brief 5-10 minute break for the 2 hour jam. Though I had many moments of thinking there would be a good cutoff point to the dance, our point of contact seemed to say “not yet, Liz, keep going!” And, boy am I glad I listened to it, because that was probably the most beneficial aspect of my growth in improv this week. I thought this was interesting to relate back to a previous reading in “10,000 Jams Later.” Peter Ryans explains that contact improv “strengthens the body rather than breaking it down, so it enables dancers to move at the limits of their potential.” And, because contact improv works inside and outside the body, Ryans also asserts that “the result [in improv] is someone who moves in internal and external synchrony.”
ReplyDeleteOn Tuesday, I felt a little unclear how to make a smooth transition in spirals from standing down to the floor. I began to feel more of a connection in these spirals when I began to trust my body and let it spiral me in and out of the floor like Yvonne Rainer says in our excerpt of “Some Thoughts on Improvisation.” She says that “One must take a chance on the fitness of one’s own instincts.” Still, I feel that this is something that I would like to further investigate in my own body.
Overall, I would say that the main thing I will harvest from this week of contact improv is the ability to trust myself. I feel like much of improv has to do with a sense of confidence in the fact that we are all capable of releasing into something and making contact/touch with someone else. Feeling comfortable is the biggest challenge, I feel, in improv and I feel very blessed to have the openness and vulnerability needed for this dance form in such a comfortable, learning environment. I am sure that even if one has had much practice in improv, there is always more to learn since there are still dances to be had and new dance partners to touch. I hope to continue learning improv.
Wednesday’s jam was an exhilarating experience. I have never actively participated for such an extended period of time in a jam before. But the most magical moment was towards the end when everything thing stepped up a gear from being alive and vibrant to purely ecstatic. I learnt a lot by dancing with other people. With the experienced ones, I learn by observing others and also osmosis when I danced with them. With other relatively less experienced ones, I learnt by having to amplify my inner voice to be the confident and sure footed partner.
ReplyDeleteThe video chronicled the evolution of contact and the differences between then and now emphasized the key ideas and concepts of contact which survived the decades of evolution. The no rule, no formal definition and individual definition and portrayal of contact improvisation are highlighted as well during the video and lecture.
One thing I learnt this week about contact improvisation through practical and reading the article is that contact improvisation does not solely rely on muscular strength. We could use our body more efficient and engage our core to lessen the need for pure muscular force. As the reading mentioned, each dancer is only supposed to do what he or she is able to. I initially thought that partners should be of same sizes and weight, but now, I realize that being a good partner indeed is like what the article described – resting on one’s movement awareness within the parameters of the form.
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ReplyDeletePart 2
ReplyDelete“Experiencing the Body” refers to dance forms, and contact improv in particular, as “culturally revealing” (150). I feel the cultural and personal revelations are easy for me to identify in my own body. I've never been much of a hugger and personal contact has always been limited and specific in my life, but it is extremely relieving not to have these boundaries in contact, but also frightening and unsettling because I am unsure of, literally and metaphorically, where I am at when I am doing contact. “The act of minimizing control can also carry frightening social implications” (151). Touching in our culture is seem as overtly emotional or sexual, but through my experience with contact I have found the concept of touch to be rather unrelated the stories told about it. I feel contact is an amazing form in which people can redefine touch and inter personal experience, from the reading “Contact improvisation has redefined a woman's strength capacities and a man's sensitivity” (168). While my hesitation and anxiety have been years in the making, and while they are a struggle, my experience with contact is shaking these things up and they are steadily ebbing away. After the jam on Wednesday, I felt much more comfortable and by Thursday was excited for another jam. I felt much more able to be in the moment, to react and to listen to my partner without being worried. Sure those moments still existed, but in much less of a concentration. In two instances I completely fell during the jam. The first time, I didn't see that there was a person behind me as I was dancing, step on them and in trying not to cause to much damage went straight down, they caught me and we started our own contact duet. With the same partner, I leaned my weight a little two far over and rolled right off their back and kept rolling to the ground. I wasn't hurt, I didn't feel any pain. What I didn't realize until afterword, is that I didn't feel like I was falling. The usual fear and hesitation, tightening of the chest and rush of adrenaline never manifested, it felt like an extension of the dance. I literally rolled with the flow. Hopefully, this is a sign that I am becoming more comfortable with losing control.
-Allexa Laycock
This last week of contact was quite interesting to me as I feel I went through some barrier. My last experience had not been exactly positive and I was a bit nervous about more contact improvisation. One thing I did learn from it though was I need to pay better attention to my own boundaries and take care of myself. Tuesdays class with learning about the bodies spirals was good as it helped me land better when I go to the floor. It was also interesting being moved by my partner, how the spiral would easily flip one over, this was also noticeable when flipping my partner… the little effort it took if I did the spiral correctly. The ending contact dance was brief but good, I actually felt like I was dancing with one of my partners. Still I was a bit nervous for Wednesday’s Jam since extended contact is actually one of my difficulties and also because it is a more open group and all different levels. I appreciate that Louis said I could sit and journal if need be as knowing that was an option was like a safety net for me giving CI another chance. I ended up having a lot of fun and unlike my previous jam experience felt more in control and also like I was actually dancing. I could write quite a bit about my experience, but will save it for the contact jam journal entry. In “Experiencing the Body” Novack states that contact improv. does not rely on muscle and that each dancer is only supposed to do what he or she is able, I think keeping that in mind was quite important in helping this week be a more positive CI experience. Wednesday class was a lot of CI and really time flew by for me. I really like the part where we are all interacting pairs merging to become new pairs or a trio and single who spirals into an other group, so many dynamic combos. I think I especially like it as the contact is stagnant which can happen when two people fall in a pattern (it can be hard to break even when trying different techniques such as standing still). Also I realized I like being upright more than the floor, or at least not on the floor for long. The switching around also makes me feel freer, I don’t feel guilty breaking away from my partner. I guess in CI at last I am just not a monogamist. The video at the end of class was interesting and also made me realize that the earlier form of contact dance was much more risk taking. In one of the articles in the Contact Quarterly (2009 Winter/Spring. “In Response to Freedom, Power, Happiness“) someone mentions how that in the earliest videos the dancers were “confronting comfort culture” and how there was a thrill in the risk. That same article was about two different views of CI, one more physical and one more social. It was really interesting to hear all the different views and how CI seems to have different incarnations in different places.
ReplyDeleteOverall I feel that my experience with contact improv has
ReplyDeleteenlightened me to a lot more movement possibilities within my body as well
as some habitual limitations that I still have to work through. On Tuesday,
the work with spirals coincided nicely with my reading from Contact
Quarterly; an article entitled “Evolution, Ki and the Aikidoka's Axis” by
Marjeen McKenna. This article explored the tie-ins between aikido and
contact improv and highlighted some of the influences used by Steve Paxton.
In class, as we worked on spiraling by exploring the rotational structure of
the muscles of our arms and legs around the bones and by exploring our
intrinsic rotational motion in our spines, I reflected on the connection
with some principles of aikido. A few years ago, I had a brief encounter
with the aikido art form. I became familiar with concepts of ki and the
principles of defense and being rooting as well as bringing an opponent off
balance. While my exposure was very limited, I found it helpful to connect
these concepts, as I had experienced them and from the article , to my
movement exploration on Tuesday. The article elaborates on the principle of
spiraling as they are integrated in akido; referring to the embryonic growth
of a fetus, the extremities develop from the body and spiral out word, “this
life force of growth is like the aikidoka's extension of ki through the
fingertips” (McKenna, 17). By ki, the article was referring to the life
force as coming from the “hara” (18) or “energetic center of the body from
which ki emanates” (18). The idea from aikido is that “moving from the
center first, the aikidoka is capable of generating vortices-the spherical
movement that characterizes akido” (McKenna, 18). I feel that with contact,
thinking of my movement as an extension of my energy is very helpful in
allowing my body to react and accommodate a loss of control and
redistribution of weight. With our exploration with partners on Tuesday I
was aware that I still had a lot of hesitation with contact despite
attending a jam the previous friday. From “Experiencing the Body,” “I
discovered that unless a skill was really 'in my body,' a part of my
movement repertoire that could emerge or be called on when appropriate, I
would lapse into an awkward state of manipulating my own movement or my
partner's” (153). My lack of familiarity with contact made me hesitant and
also made in harder for me to inhabit my body while my mind was so anxious
over the movement. It was different than the previous Thursday's class
because we had so much warm up and specific movement practice that I felt
more confident in practicing certain movements.
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ReplyDeleteAfter this week, I realize I need to utilize my weight much more than before. Previously, I was so focused on the point of contact that I really didn’t utilize my weight at all. By the time Thursday came around, I was much more comfortable with my partners and use of weight. I believe I still need to use more weight. I also felt like things became much more like a dance with my partner, instead of just exploring the point of contact. The more it became like dancing, the more fun I had. I found it rather marvelous when the exchange of partners was very random and free. It felt great when things would “just happen”, when it was just our bodies doing the talking. It is these moments that make me understand how contact improv needs “cooperation and independence” (Contact Quarterly 2009, pg. 3). How the dance is “effortless” (10,000 Jams later, pg. 418).
ReplyDeleteContact improv is an interesting dance style that I'm still not completely comfortable with and don't know if I will be. I enjoyed the spirals we explored on Tuesday. It was interesting to see how we react to falling to the floor when we mean to rather than we actually fall without knowing. It wasn't as intense. I'm not exactly comfortable with touch, especially not with people I don't know that well. On pg.406 of looking into movement as culture, it says, "people doing contact improv create a dance through collaborative interaction, basing their improv on the physical forces of weight and momentum. the dancers are supposed to be absorbed in experiencing the movement and sensing, largely through touch, the experience of their partners in order to allow momentum to develop, dancers have to keep their energy flowing, abandoning self-control in favor of mutual trust and interaction." I don't know if I can completely abandon self-control. I need things in order- to let go of self-control means to let go of that order. Sometimes its beautiful to let everything go and I have definitely done that at an individual level but at a partner level it is definitely harder. That means I have to depend on someone to hold my weight, I can't hold it by myself. I think that's the hardest thing for me- to trust my partner completely. I am always afraid that they will drop me or I will drop them. On page 178 of Experiencing the Body it says "the ideology of contact improv defines the self in terms of the action and sensation in the body rather than on basis of the appearance of the body to other people and it promotes a tolerance for a range of abilities and kinds of bodies." I respect contact improv in that sense and I have tried to like contact and become comfortable with it, but it is definitely not something that has resonated with me as some of the other dance forms we practiced. I think a lot of the dances that come out of contact improv are beautiful and its really nice to see people do some of their movements with what looks like no effort at all. I enjoy watching contact improv and what comes of the relationship between the touch of two or more people. On Tuesday I felt just a little more comfortable with contact and I definitely felt like me and my partner were dancing rather than exploring touch but there are times where we got stuck at the point of contact of the wrist or standing up but I definitely branched out by exploring movement on the floor and points of contact.
ReplyDeleteJuhi