The underscore is something which was and is continually developed by Nancy Stark Smith. It is a structure which is used all over the world for contact improvisation. It begins as soon as the dancers enter the room and goes all the way up to the reflection at the end of the jam. It gives a basis for the dancers to follow, grazing through different areas, first getting in touch with your own body and the ground below you. When these connections have been established, connections between individuals slowly begin to form. The dancers graze, looking for opportunities which interest and attract them, choosing where they want to engage in a duet or add to an existing dance.

My practice of Contact Improvisation over these 11 weeks has revealed to me that when I lead I tend to move quite slowly and calmly, however I enjoy the elements of play which are found when the movement is quicker, such as avoiding touching someone, instead dancing around them, offering a surface for contact and quickly moving it away. As I am still not overly confident with contact improvisation, I am however more comfortable with the idea of improvisation than in the module last semester, I prefer to dance with someone who is more confident, not afraid to guide me in moments where I feel stuck wondering what to do. When dancing in a jam, I find that I often get lost in the moment. I find myself closing my eyes in order to feel a deeper connection. This may not always the best or safest idea when large groups of people are involved. I feel this sense of being lost is the state in which I enjoy contact the most. This is because I am not over thinking what I am doing, I just let it happen. In that moment nothing else matters except for the movement.

Through engaging in Contact Improvisation I have discovered that contrary to what I thought at the beginning of the semester, you do not have to be in physical contact in order for there to be a sense of contact present. I find that as I am a very visual person, for example in relaxation exercises I see colours swirling and dancing around. During contact without touch, I see the connections between people, like strips of coloured light which connect the people, or a force which is pulling them together, but also separating them at the same time. I have also come to realise that people are often much stronger than you originally think. As I am much taller, I was worried about trusting people to lift me, or fully take my weight. However through pushing myself to relax in these situations, people can take my weight and a trust has been built up between the members of the group. In connection with this, I have also found that being taller is not always so much of a big issue. It has both its advantages and disadvantages. Two very contrasting heights definitely comes with its challenges, however it also opens up opportunities for discovery. You have to find ways to make it work and through this also discover what does not work.

From these sessions one of the questions which I now have is how can you maintain and sustain a duet with a person without it becoming tedious and boring for both the dancers and the audience? I wonder whether this is something which improves with experience? It may be that the more you play with different ideas, new movements are discovered which can be introduced in order to keep the dance interesting.

This week was a research lab in which we came prepared with questions and tasks in order to investigate the areas which we wanted to focus on. Before I explain the findings, I think it is important to know that I feel that in order to be successful and take a lot from contact improvisation, you have to be in the right mind set. As much as I tried, due to injuries and other things, I found I struggled to fully get into the state in which I was open enough to fully explore. The questions I looked at were:

1. How can you find the balance between letting go and remaining in control during momentum?

Letting go is something which I as well as many others have found, can be hard when trusting people with whom you are dancing so closely. There is a certain amount of letting go which is required in order to make movements easier, tensing can lead to more injuries. However there is also an element of control which is needed in order to help with the situation. When being lifted, you can do things such as keeping your core engaged in order to help the person who is lifting, as well as to maintain balance when in the lift.

We found this question particularly difficult to answer with the tasks which we chose. As we only had a limited amount of space and three dancers at the time, we found it difficult to make the material flow and progress enough to make any major discoveries. We found that gaining momentum can be difficult, however it also raised the further question of whether momentum and a fast speed have to go hand in hand together. Momentum is defined as “the quantity of motion of a moving body, measured as a product of its mass and velocity.” (Google). At no point in this definition does it say that there has to be a fast pace, something which we don’t always remember.

2. How do you put somebody down safely and without risk of injury?

We often think about how we are going to arrive into a lift successfully and safely, however we often don’t give as much though to the decent.  We used exploration of other body parts such as legs, arms, pelvis and the head instead of just your centre. The hands can be used in order to help guide the person to safety. Relaxation is important, softening means less shock and stress on the joints. If you think about it and use your initiative the task becomes easier. We have natural instincts in order to protect ourselves which can be used in contact, our bodies are very clever and know how to work in that situation.  You should think about both yourself and the other person. It is a two way conversation through the bodies in order to successfully return the weight safely to the floor.

3. How can we be connected and manipulate one another during improvisation without  physical contact?

We found that this type of contact had a much more playful element to it. When experimenting with this task myself and Sophie played with the idea of the thick skin. Moving around and through each other without touching. I found this to be much more enjoyable, reminding me of children playing games instead of thinking about whether it looks good to an audience. There was a kind of question and answer between the dancers asking where they wanted to go and what to try next. I found that although we were not connected physically, I felt a kind of connection between myself and the other person, almost like a magnet which kept us connected. Due to this playful and relaxed state, it allowed for much more freedom within the movement however to an outside eye the connections could still be seen. This was my favourite area which we looked at, I felt the most at ease with these tasks.

4. How can we maintain speed while creating new material?

Speed when dancing can feel very different to different people as I found on this task. When myself and Leonie had danced together we found that she felt that we had significantly altered the speed when we were told to change, however I felt that it had stayed on a constant level. Because of this, although I had on one occasion tried to make the movements faster, Leonie had resisted as she felt that she was already going faster. We used the words fast forward, slow motion and rewind on pieces of paper picked out at random in order to change the speed. These commands meant that you had to think instantly on the spot. We found that when the fast forward command was given the dancers would pause and readjust themselves in order to carry on, however this was not the case for the other commands. We found it easier to already have an idea of where you wanted to go and then allow whatever happens to happen naturally.

From these questions we drew up some conclusions. We found that many of the findings which resulted from the tasks for different questions all overlapped and interlinked. There wereseveral occasions where a task for one question helped us to answer another. We also found that although our work was successful in finding some answers, we were limited some what because of the small group size. It may be that if these tasks were expanded upon with a bigger group, with more opportunities to explore and discover, that other, greater findings would be discovered.

Our definition was:

Contact improvisation is the art of communication through bodies to create spontaneous and organic movements. It requires you to connect with yourself as well as others to build trusting relationships in order for your experimentation to be successful.

Building  a trusting relationship to me seems to be a fundamental element to contact. It may be the case, during a jam, that you dance with someone you do not know, or who you aren’t familiar with. When you dance with someone for a long period of time you begin to recognise their movements and rhythms, the trust element is built up and it becomes much more comfortable. I think this is why I’ve noticed that people tend to gravitate towards working with the same people, myself included. Contact requires trust when giving your body weight to another person. However it is not the person taking the weight who has to do all of the work, it is still a team effort. For example when jumping into a lift, we found through an exercise, the person being lifted should imagine themselves as being a fountain as opposed to a sack of potatoes or a statue. This ‘fountain’ image means that the lifter doesn’t have to do all of the work, lifting a dead weight, which leads to a better overall outcome.

Although during contact improvisation you are in contact with a person, it is important that you also remain in contact with the space around you. During a jam you move between partners or groups, this possibility is restricted somewhat if you are only open to what is happening within a close proximity instead of everything else around you. It is also an element of safety. If you are swinging someone from your pelvis, sending them out into space, you need to be aware of other people around you, being careful not to cause injury through collision.

I think the definition of contact improvisation is somewhat subject to each individual person. There is obviously a general consensus about some things, but every person can draw something different or experience different things depending on their mindset, openness, feelings at that time or how and where they are dancing.

It has been said that the eyes are the window to the soul. Is this the reason why many people shy away from eye contact? Is it because they do not wish to share this much of themselves to the other person? As I have mentioned in previous weeks, anything involving contact becomes very personal and intimate. You are not only dancing for yourself, but for the other person too. We all have issues and baggage in life that in some cases we cannot leave at the door when we enter a room. It may be the case that we wish to take these experiences and draw from them in order to find new ways of moving. However the eyes are telling and if there is something you wish to hide, the eyes may give you away.

The eyes change constantly with emotion, the pupils dilate and shrink, tears form or they show pain. With this in mind, making eye contact adds another layer to the dancer’s pre-existing vulnerability.

The eyes are something which we are so reliant on. If we were blindfolded, without a guide, not only would the world be a very dark place, but we would not experience things in the way which we currently do. We did an exercise which involved following a person’s hand with our eyes, starting by moving from side to side and then taking it further so that the eyes had to look further, the head and body moving and adjusting in order for the eyes to still be able to follow the hand. This exercise eventually lead us to seeing the space while moving in a way. I found that the hand became the constant point of focus and during the exercise, I found myself noticing the light shining through the fingers and how it changed instead of looking solely at the hand. The hand was just there, part of the image, it was the background behind which was changing, causing new thoughts and provoking new ideas.

Being blindfolded is one way of handicapping and able bodied person, however as has been proven people who are handicapped in other ways, such as being wheel chair bound, can still engage in contact improvisation. Bruce Curtis found that although he had no muscle control in much of his lower body, he could still feel some sensations when pressure was applied to his legs, a kind of tingling sensation. although his experiences with contact improvisation will obviously  be slightly different from an able bodied person, reading his words, I found similarities with my own thoughts and experiences. ‘Keep your eyes open, don’t get lost inside your head.’ (Curtis, 1988, p 158). In class situations I am not hugely comfortable with having my eyes shut, another sense of vulnerability, however during contact improvisation, I find myself listening to other people so much through the contact, that I close my eyes and therefore miss part of the hole experience. I have also found that the movement doesn’t always flow, it pauses, working out where to go next ‘Often I will stop to rest by finding that place of balance where momentum is briefly suspended between possibilities, and then with a slight push, I will join with the flow once again.’ (Curits, 1988, p 158)

Works Cited

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

Image from: http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-girl-eyes-emotions-vector-illustration-detailed-%D1%81loseup-eye-beautiful-woman-image32716730 [Accessed on 10th March 2014]

We began with an exercise in which we moved an object in the space and revealed an insecurity which we had about contact improvisation. I found this to be like the method which councillors use with children, asking them to tell a puppet their issues instead of a person. The object distracted you and made it easier to be honest. This exercise revealed that many of us shared the same insecurities, worrying about hurting others or what it would look like to outsiders. These were the main ones which were mentioned on this occasion, however with exercises like this it always makes me wonder whether people have other things which they want to say but are still afraid to mention in front of the rest of the group.

Pushing and pulling are actions which we use multiple times a day in many different activities such as opening and closing doors. These actions can be used with the idea of weight intertwined in order to show intention when moving with a partner in contact improvisation. They can be used in order to direct, move or resist. For example in the workshop we played with pushing or retreating through just the touch of the fingertips. Even this small amount of contact was enough in order to give instructions to the other person about where you were going to take the movement next. I found it easier to listen to these sensations when we did this with our eyes shut. It heightened my awareness to the sense of touch because I was relying on it more, with the comfort of sight gone. I feel we would have been able to take this further if there were only the two people in contact in the space with their eyes shut. Because we were all dancing at once, I found myself worrying about where others were and whether we would collide or hurt each other.

Within the workshop, we laid on the floor and imagined a rock in our centre which was falling to the centre of the earth. This was a way to find a connection with the floor and then lead to another person lying in the exact same position on the back of the other person. ‘A sense of unity is provided by the feeling of a shared “centre”‘ (Heitkamp, 2003, p256) After staying here for a while a connection was formed between the two people, the underneath person moved and the one on top went with it, allowing themselves to be taken.

‘The shared experience often begins with a common breathing rhythm, goes on to include tiny, synchronised movements of the fingers and             hands, and extends to feeling shifts of weight within the shared “double body”‘ (Heitkamp, 2003, p256).

Although physically you are two separate beings, capable of making your own decision, during this exercise you fuse together in an abstract sense and become one organism, navigating its way through the space.

Works Cited

Heitkamp, D. (2003). Moving from the skin: An Exploratorium. Contact Quarterly/ Contact Improvisational Sourcebook II, Vol. 28:2. Pp 256-264