“The skin has the largest surface of any of the body’s organs… an area of skin the size of a penny consists of around three million cells, one hundred sweat glands, ninety centimetres of blood vessels, and almost the same amount again of lymph vessels.”(Heitkamp, 2003, 257)

I find it fascinating that the skin is something which is often forgotten, unless it is hurt or broken, a lot of the time we don’t have much awareness of it. However it is something which is constantly receiving information, feeling things, protecting what is contained within it and communicating with others through touch.

As was said by Didier Anzieu, the skin has three different functions. These are: being a vessel which retains positive experiences; it is a boundary, protecting us from the outside world, acting as a barrier to anything potentially harmful; it is the site of communication, in many cases just as effective as the mouth. Contact improvisation definitely does bring more of an awareness to this huge organ. It is through the skin that the two people moving are communicating. It is sending messages through the intensity of the pressure, forceful or soft, as in leading or allowing yourself to be lead.

It is ‘through our skin we also touch the world and express something of who we are and how we feel; in this contact we gain feedback from the world about ourselves’. Many dancer’s say that they dance because they need to, they cannot live without it. Dance is a very personal thing, opening up endless possibilities, allowing people to share things, emotions that they maybe could not express through any other means. Sharing this with someone else can be a very intimate and rewarding thing. “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” In this contact exploration in which dancers are connected through their centres, they become one unity, sharing the motions and the feelings, they have a sense of unity.

“We can close our eyes or cover our ears but we cannot “turn off” our skin.” It is constantly learning, feeling things, experiencing new sensations and remembering them. Contact Improvisation brings a heightened awareness to this and when the other senses are closed off, can bring new findings and meanings to the sensations.

Works Cited

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

This week involved a large amount of trust between you and the other people with whom you are dancing. We began with trusting someone to lead you around the room while you were blind. When we discussed our findings, myself and my partner both revealed that we felt very tense when this was happening, feeling like you were going to crash or walk off the edge of a cliff. Although there were some occasions when I had no sense of where I was in the room, at the end, due to the other use of my senses, I knew exactly where I was stood. I felt that my use of listening had become much stronger, as I was using the sounds in order to work out what was happening and that I would be safe. This was explained in through the quote ”

From this we moved into bigger groups and one person stood with their eyes closed and the others surrounded them. The middle person fell and the outside people caught them and sent them back to someone else. I found this quite difficult to do at first. I, like many other people was afraid of being dropped or too heavy for the other people to support my weight. After a while it becomes easier and it’s not so much of a struggle to stay relaxed. ‘one of the essential aspects to teaching falling is retraining our instinctual experience of gripping or holding our breath when we feel our bodies loosing their grounding.’ (Albright, 2009). In order to do this successfully , the body needs to be relaxed and calm, this is something which is not easy when falling as it puts us in a situation which has caused pain in previous experiences.

Much of this workshop involved giving and taking weight from a partner. We played with resistance and counter-pulling, leaning away and balancing in a seating position as well as using the other person to stand up together. As was pointed out in the discussion at the end, contact doesn’t always flow. There were moments when it felt very disjointed and there were pauses in which you were trying to think of what to do or where to go next. I think it is important to remember at first that it is not always going to feel natural, there will be moments which feel uncomfortable or possibly put you in a compromising position. It is navigating your way around these experience which help you to go further with these explorations, giving you more confidence and a greater understanding of how you, and others move.

Works Cited

Albright, Ann Cooper. Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices, 2009, Vol. 1 Issue 2, p143-153

‘It is the quality of touch rather than the quantity of touch that is of primary importance in our development,’ (Holt, 2011, 216). This is saying that you do not always have to have had a large amount of experience with contact in order to develop, however it needs to have been of a fairly high quality, helping you to understand the meanings and the sensations. Much of contact is about being completely focused and in the moment, as mentioned before. This is because you must be in tune with the other person. For example this week we experimented with sitting back to back and sending messages through movement of the spine. It helped to imagine that there was a stick going through both of our centres, connecting us together. With this in mind, you could move more as one.

‘Unlike wrestlers, who exert their strength to control a partner, contact improvisers use momentum to move in concert with a partner,’ (Novack, 1990, 8). This was shown in an exercise we played with. Beginning back to back, one person tipped to lie on their side, the other gave their weight and draped over them. The underneath  person began to roll, which in turn sent the other person along, transferring them from one position to the other. Being rolled was something which I was fine with if i laid on my side, however when lying on my back, I began to panic, not wanting to give all my weight in fear of hurting the other person.

At the end of this session we engaged in a contact improvisation jam. This was the first time that we had done a jam of this nature, with some of us never having danced together much previously. This was the first occasion, since doing improvisation that I have found myself completely lost in the movement. I wasn’t thinking about anybody else, just myself and the other person. All I was thinking about was the contact I was making through the palm of our hands, where they were and where I wanted it to go next. I also found stepping out of the action helpful. It was interesting to watch other people and their different experiences with contact. It also helped me to see many other opportunities in which contact could be made. I found that I could see this process within other people, they would be watching, see something and go and join in.

Works Cited

Holt, D (2011) Touch: Experience and Knowledge. Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, 3(1-2) 215-227

Novack, C. (1990) Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture. Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press.

At the beginning of the workshop the question “What is your pallet?” was asked. This was a simile for the paint pallet which an artist would use. Just like an artist has a selection of colours ready to be used in a painting, a dancer has a selection of movements which they can look to to create a masterpiece on the dance floor instead of on a canvas.

Eyes, we all have them, we use them daily. But how much do we actually see, how much passes us by because we aren’t paying attention? It is okay to see things but different things can be a stimulus for movement to stem from, a reaction to an influence.

“At its roots my dance work is focused on everyday movement, the functioning of the body, how we navigate physically and how the mind and body work together to compose our movement.” (Lepkoff, 2005)

Due to the fact that much of dance is taken from everyday movement, we should always be  present in the moment. We should be observing and analysing to some extent in order to draw upon these experiences while dancing. Just as we can see things, we can also initiate movement from the eyes. In an exercise, simply twisting the torso, but initiating from different areas had a very big impact on the overall outcome of the movement. For example initiating from the hips or the arms had an impact on the amount which the body moved and the speed at which the motion happened. Initiating from the eyes was definitely something which I found uncomfortable. I found it made me very dizzy quickly as I was seeing everything around me at a very fast pace. In hindsight this may not have been so bad if I had done it at perhaps a slower speed.

In ballet and other dance styles, the positions call for pointed toes and fingers in order to make the lines seem infinite, instead of cutting them short with a flexed foot for example. We had an exercise which in some respects echoed this. In partners we began on hands and knees, connected by the crown of the head. The spines were an  extension of each other, the movement of one person carried on through the other. We found that although the intention was to try and work together, there was usually a leader and a follower. The sensing which we experienced was more feeling the initiation from the other person and reacting to it or vice versa.

The rolls are becoming much easier as the weeks go by and they are more embodied. The connections are beginning to become more evident. For example in the reverse crescent roll, the movement is initiated by the hands and feet and the aim is to look for the spacial awareness between the hands and feet. You are concentrating on the side of the body and relaxing it into the floor. It should be a smooth transition as opposed to flopping from one surface to the other. The aikido roll is something which needs more work. Every time I try it I end up turning it into a forwards roll. However some of this could be psychological as I really don’t like rolling over my head.

Works Cited

Forti, S (2005) The Movement of Attention, The Movement Research Performance Journal: 29

“The dancer feels anxious, thinks judgemental, deprecating thoughts … and in response often initiates habitual movement forms.” This quote from Robert Turner, I feel perfectly describes my relationship with improvisation. It is something new and very strange to me.Provide me steps I know and can use and there will be no problem, but give me freedom, panic sets in. I know that is is something which I need to work on, believing in my choices and accepting that although it may feel ridiculous to me, it probably isn’t in actuality.

The phrase ‘sleep on it’ can often be useful in dance. It has been realised that stepping away from something for a while, reflecting on it and then returning with a fresh perspective can help. The brain works out any kinks there may be while you may not be concentrating on it. This was the case with myself and the helix and crescent rolls this week. Something clicked while I had been away and they seemed to make so much more sense. For me, it felt like the rolls were much more continuous, I didn’t have to stop and think what I was doing quite so much. I found in particular with the crescent roll, thinking about the hips controlling the movement instead of the arms and legs made the roll easier and caused far less stress in my back. This has made me wonder whether there are other movements which I use which I may not be initiating from the correct place, whether this would carry less tension.

In trying the spinal progressions, which are like ‘S’ shape movements initiating from the head or the pelvis, on the floor, with the help of a partner, it became evident that there is part of my spine which is not very mobile. Every spine has their own little quirks, things which make them different. This is the part in which I have an inflamed facet joint due to a car accident. I could not tell this when moving while standing originally, however since repeating the movement on the floor, it has drawn my attention to it more, something I need to work with to try and either improve or work around.

Works Cited

Turner, Robert. TDR: The Drama Review, Fall2010, Vol. 54 Issue 3, p123-135, 13p, 5 Black and White Photographs