Contact Improvisation

This week was our final contact improvisation lesson and within this class we brought together everything we had learnt throughout the past weeks. For the first time, we experienced performing contact improvisation in front of an audience, 12 university photography students. Having these 12 students watching and taking photographs of me improved my confidence and encouraged me to do my best, it wasn’t necessarily pressure that I felt, it was more comfort and reassurance. This week, in more detail, we experienced and experimented with Nancy Stark Smith’s Underscore, something that was a lot more successful this week than last week due to having a rough idea as to what it consisted it. Stark Smith’s Underscore “is a score that guides dancers through a series of “changing states,” from solo deepening/ releasing and sensitizing to gravity and support: through group circulation and interaction, Contact Improvisation (CI) engagements, opening out to full group improvisation with compositional awareness, and back to rest and reflection” (Stark Smith, 2008, 90).

The score provided us with not only a secure framework within our jam but it also created room for exploration. Nancy Stark Smith didn’t just create the score to aid movement within contact improvisation but to help dancers engage with their own bodies, minds and bring awareness to safe practice. Using the Underscore as our structure provided us with that element of surprise (even more so than normal), I never knew what my partner would throw at me because everyone interprets the Underscore differently. Stark Smith felt trapped within her own space, by her own material, she needed to open the space again in order to generate new, original movement, “I found myself prolonging open, structureless sections of class, during which I would suggest things to focus on – through language and my own movement” (Stark Smith, 2008, 90). The score was created to challenge dancers within contact improvisation, it provides experience and practice; builds on our knowledge, “learn about the mind of the body through experiencing it” (Stark Smith, 2008, 90).

CI word bank:

• Scores
• Trust
• Touch
• Communication, dialogue
• Connection
• Breath
• Aikido
• Eye contact
• Release
• Trust
• Imagery
• Surfing
• Skinesphere
• Under and over dancer
• Interchangeable roles
• Kinespheres
• Momentum
• Small dance – Steve Paxton
• Going up to go down
• Letting go
• Habitual movements
• Being present
• Equal forces of weight
• Internalizing
• Rolling points
• Releasing the head

Throughout this module I have been through a lot of different states, both physical and emotional. At the start of my practice I felt quite negatively towards contact improvisation, I lacked confidence in my movement, entering the space during jam session, flow and weight baring, all things I strived to improve in. Although it took me a while to get to this stage, I feel as if I eventually got there. Within the last contact jam, I felt less fear than I ever did before, I wanted to go into the space and make contact with a range of bodies. I tried my hardest to keep connected with the other body I was improvising with at all times in order to make my movement flow.I felt less pressure, I didn’t care what people thought or if people were watching me, in the end, that didn’t have an effect on the movement I was performing. I started to experiment with taking and giving weight, I had no fear, I trusted myself and my partner, I wanted to see where my body could take me. All these things came through time, through frustrated moments and times of thinking ‘I’d never be able to do contact improvisation’, but I can and I did. Contact improvisation is something that has helped me with my all-round dance practice, the elements on communication, creativity, risk taking and awareness are all things I can now take into consideration throughout my dance training.

 

Stark Smith, N. (2008) Caught Falling, The Confluence of Contact Improvisation, Nancy Stark Smith, and Other Moving Ideas.

 

The reading Some considerations when structuring and Improvisation discuss and explore the following questions: “What sort of structure do I want in terms of spatial rhythm?”, “Do I want visual markers that act as stabilizing markers which arrest the flow of actions and space?”, “Do I want my ‘game rules’ to be clearly seen, only indicated, or deeply hidden?”, “How much do I want to rely on the actual rules I set or on the formalistic and other wise significant sensibilities of the dancers?”, and “How much does my dance fulfil or not fulfil existing contextual aesthetic expectations and parameters for dance, for performance, for improvisation…for art?” (Stover, 1989, 185). The answer to all these questions are different to every individual that participates in contact improvisation, and will not necessarily be accessible by the exterior. Exploring a formal framework makes contacting more understood, helpful when it comes to bringing something original and new into the space, offering and taking something, and most importantly maintaining a conversation.

Within the videos we watched of the University of Roehampton dance students I could clearly see a connection between that and what we had been exploring. The video included components such as balances, weight baring, pelvis to pelvis connection, back to back connection and surfing, all things that we have come to explore over the past few weeks. Breath is something that is commonly used within this video, you can distinctly see their use of breath to initiate the movement they are performing. The second video we watched was at a much faster pace than the first, it was a lot more risk taking and fearless. Within this second video the dancers didn’t even think twice about what they were doing, they offered a lot to each other and worked with what was offered; they had a lot of trust and you could see this throughout the movement they were creating. The dancers explored a more diverse kinespheres, kinespheres that I find difficult to work on when it comes to contact work. For example, the higher kinesphere whilst incorporating weight baring lifts into the movement was something that the dancers did comfortably. They used challenging body surfaces such as the lower back and shoulder, which has enlightened me to some successful ways of using this body part. At one point within this video more than 2 people came together to explore contact improvisation. This not only inspired me to work with more than one other person, but it showed me that it is possible to performing interesting contact improvisation with more than one body. These two videos both used the idea of momentum, and this showed me how critical it is within the art of contact improvisation, it creates a sense of fluidity within improvising with another unknown body; something I wish to improve on over the next two weeks is to create a strong, fluid conversation within a jam session.

We then went onto explore Nancy Stark Smith’s Global Underscore. Stark Smith’s score was created in 1990 to represent particular states felt by dancers within a contact improvisation class, she created a language for the form of dance. Nancy Stark Smith believes that within contact improvisation “the body itself changes state” (Stark Smith, 2014), she feels that we experience a lot more than just a body moving through space, that we also experience “things moving through the body… that the body itself changes state” (Stark Smith, 2014). The first element is Arriving Energetically. This is “bringing your attention into the present movement” (Stark Smith, 2014), focusing in on where you are, the space you are in. This is something that is different for everyone, it could include; looking out of the window, having a conversation with somebody, writing, changing your clothes, anything that encourages you to bring your attention to now. Next there is Arriving Physically, “bringing your attention into your body” (Stark Smith, 2014). This could be through sitting within the space, through yoga, anything that includes assessing your body and discovering how it feels. Pow Wow; checking in with each other; Perambulation – traveling through the space; Skinesphere – though without touching, the imaginary, protective layer around the skin; Bonding with the earth – finding the floor and feeling grounded into it; Mobilising/Agitating – rotating, warming up, bringing dynamic energy into the body. Kinespheres – the low kinesphere, high kinesphere, expanding travelling kinespheres and the overlapping kinepheres. Connections such as; Attraction – being draw to another body or section within the room, a magnetic force; Repulsion – avoiding someone or something, moving far away, being in opposite areas of the room; Coincidence – noticing the same thing at the same time, such as coloured clothing when paths are crossed; Touch; Contrast – in juxtaposition; Confluence – merging, coming together; Divergence – together and split; Influence – the dancers, the space or music having an effect on your state; Collision – two or more dancers or ideas colliding.  Empathy/Resonance and Tangent. Altogether these elements form Grazing – a series of short connections which help and encourage dance within contact improvisation. Followed by engagement – which includes being engaged and commitment throughout the entire jam; open score, into final resolution of the room, Disengagement from the whole pattern then onto Reflection and Sharing. Experimenting this within class encouraged me to be in the space for a lot longer than usual. Exploring the different states and connection prompts allowed me to explore things I haven’t nor would’ve without the score. The score wasn’t restricting; it was very open and welcoming. Before we began the score, I felt on edge, I didn’t quite understand, but as soon as we got into it, I discovered it was just like what we had done before.

Exploring the Underscore within our jam session this week was very informative for me, although I found it difficult at times. Arriving energetically and physically were two things that really helped me get into my own head and my own body, it put me in the right frame of mind for the jam. Focusing on the score sometimes distracted me but it encouraged me to stay in the space and explore new movement. Something I need to work on more is making my movement fluid and maintaining that dialogue. With certain people, I struggle but some others I seem to have a strong connection with; everybody is different and I am starting to learn to interact with everyone/ as many body’s as I can within the time frame and the space. A longer jam gave me more opportunities, it encouraged me to stay in the space and explore what my body gave me, I went over in my head what we had done previously, reflected on it, and applied everything I could to the open jam. Next week, I am to do the same, not just perform within the jam what we explored within that week, explore movement that we have experimented with within the entire module.

 

Contact Improvisation Jam. (2011) Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdKZlryJ4HY (accessed 06/12/16)

Global Underscore with Nancy Stark Smith. (2014). Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOGLMZdm2uA (accessed 06/12/16)

Stover, J. (1989). Some considerations when structuring an Improvisation (to be seen by an audience). Contact Quarterly/ Contact Improvisation Sourcebook II, Vol.14

 

I found this week’s reading, ‘What’s The Score?’ by Maura Keefe very interesting and enlightening. We looked into scores last year during improvisation, but we haven’t considered scores within the art of contact improvisation, so to read something that is an example of a score within contact improvisation was very alluring. Keefe not only gives us a detailed description of this score but she also enlightens his readers with information that I haven’t yet thought about within contact improvisation. Keefe relates CI to everyday life. She talks about how it is something we witness and take part in everyday, although she is a rare participant in contact improvisation, it is something she observes a lot which sometimes can be a more interesting perspective than engaging in it. Our perception of CI can sometimes give us a different look on life, it can change the way we view certain things, not only does it change your theory of dance and improvisation, but also everyday life. “Improvisation happens everywhere. Applying concepts about improvisation that have been theorized about dance can be expanded to examine other physical practices to broaden our definitions of both dance and improvisation” (Keefe, 2003, 234).

This week we explored different frames we could use to make contact and complete weight baring lifts with. We explored body to body connections I hadn’t before, for example, the front to front connection, the use of your torso and pelvis. I have never even thought to explore this area of my body before and today I learnt why. I found it extremely challenging. I found myself thinking of what to do rather than it just coming to my body, I established that this was quite difficult to initiate movement by myself let alone with another body. We were very much left to our own devices this lesson, we were left to explore our own individual creativity, but coming up with new movement to do whilst having that front to front connection turned out to be a lot more challenging than I thought. Something I learnt was that our own individual improvising is just as important as improvising with somebody else. Also that our own creativity is just as important or maybe even more essential than performing already known material. Improvising can be very personal, so using our own inventiveness encourages artistic improvisation.

We then explored finding different points of balance on another person’s body. One person was stable, whilst the other found new and interesting ways to counter balance on that person. The objective was to eventually feel and move as one, have that idea of exploration between two bodies using mutual exchange of weight. We spent a bit of time finding possibilities for weight baring with each frame and once we exhausted that frame, we moved onto the next. Something as a class we need to think about is improving our entrances and exits out of movement, and this was time to work with that. Whilst in these weight baring positions we explored getting out of the movement by the lifter going with the leftie, this encouraged us to do it safety and in an effective way. I found that this also encouraged me to go into a next movement efficiently because the fluidity of the last lift transition makes it easier to flow into something else, rather than stopping one contact movement and creating a new frame to go into the next.

Sometimes I don’t know the potential of my own body, especially small, unappreciated parts such as the knee. In this session I found out that as a lifter, my knee can hold a lot of support and aid a lot of movement, and also as a leftie the knee offers a lot of movement opportunity. This partner exercise turned into quite a successful exploration of new movement, but something I found difficult during this task was to stay connected to my partner. I would explore movement over my partner’s knee, and because this process was experimental I sometimes lost my balance therefore causing me to fall one way and my partner not being able to fall with me. Something I need to work on at certain points is fully releasing my body. At times I am completely released but at other times I get a little bit scared and tense my body, making the contact of improvisation very difficult. Something else to note is making sure that I know where my weight is placed, so the movement isn’t ‘clunky’, making my movement fluid is a main point I need to work on.

For the last part of the lesson we did a jam type situation, but for this jam there was a slight difference. Usually we have no restrictions but this time, a minimum of 2 people had to be in the space and a maximum of 4, but when it came to movement, no restrictions were put into place. Points we were given before this jam started was to not rely on the same people to fill the space, or pick up the pace / energy throughout the jam, we were instructed to try and pick up the pace as a collective. Although I entered the space willingly and enjoyed my time in the space, I didn’t like this style of jam… I felt slightly more exposed than usual, because I felt that more eyes were on me and I also felt pressure to get things right. But then the whole right or wrong factor came into play and I started to pick up the pace along with my confidence.

This week’s jam was very different to a previous jam’s. I felt a lot more confident this week and I feel that this was evident within my performance. I treated this jam as an experiment, a place for me just to try out new movement in order to improve my confidence when it comes to CI. I set the bar too high for myself, get my expectations up and I tend to not succeeded as much as I do. So going in with the mind set of playing and experimenting with my movement gives my mind or body no limits or expectations succeeding in a positive outcome.

“Using an understanding of structured improvisation, we can move beyond the familiar frame of dance and consider the embodiment of other improvisational practices” (Keefe, 2003, 237).

 

Keefe, M. What’s the score? Improvisation in Everyday Life. In Albright, A. C., & Gere, D. (2003). Taken by surprise: A dance improvisation reader. Middletown, Conneticut: Wesleyan University Press.

– Structuring, investigating, performing and reflecting.

On Sunday the 13^th of November we travelled to Nottingham’s Dance4 to take part in a workshop with Feet off the Ground Dance. Feet off the Ground Dance are a dance company that specialise in contact improvisation and partnering for performance. They aim to leave their participants feeling inspired, energised and with an embodied confidence. This 3-hour workshop was one of the rare times I really enjoyed contact improvisation. I discovered that it wasn’t contact I was afraid of, it was improvising. Being lifted or lifted something is not what makes me feel nervous, it’s the improvising part. However, our skills seem to be a lot stronger during improvising as with contact we lose some of the fundamental skills. For the first time we learnt a contact duet sequence, and this is something I really enjoyed. At first, I did find it difficult, but after a few practices with my partner I felt confidence and comfortable. We are going to be revisiting this chorography over the next few weeks and now that I know the material I am going to try to focus more on the fluidity of the exercise, find more release in my body and identify my breath and examine how that helps my movement and performance. During this workshop I left my body and mind wide open, I was prepared to take on and try anything and I feel as if this drew a lot more material, options and concepts into my body. “When we don’t make fences around our bodies, all movement becomes acceptable” (Curtis, 1988, 159). I found a new found confidence within myself and really liked the material they were giving us. It was a changeling class, but this resulted into a successful outcome.

Photos from the workshop:

Images from the duet sequence:

Bruce Curtis and Alan Ptashek in ‘Exp osed to Gravity’ talk about a man finding a new found confidence and new ways of movement through contact improvisation. This reading made me realise that contact improvisation really can be for anyone, weather you have restrictions in your body or not. Curtis has a spinal cord injury and is in a wheelchair, but he explains that he doesn’t let this limit his range of movement; “It seemed pretty clear to me, whatever the reason, that for me to dance, the method would have to come from my personal experience of how my body moves, not from copying how non-disabled people move.” (Curtis, 1998, 156). To him “the micro movement is just as much dancing as what everyone else does with their whole body” (Curtis, 1998, 156). The experience of dancing is different to everyone. Weather that person has a minor injury, a major injury or no injury at all, the experience will always be different in someone else’s body and I think it is important to recognise that. But that injury or disabled difference, doesn’t mean they can’t dance or that they are any less able than a ‘non-disabled’ person and if they dance in a different way that’s not wrong either, dancing is different to everyone.

During our research lab this week we decided to focus on confidence with going up into weight baring lifts. Our question was ‘How do we use the 3 stages of preparation to develop confidence in weight baring lifts’. Through the connection of another body in the space Curits and Ptashek discuss the usage of momentum and weight exchange in order to help dancers gain fearlessness in weight baring lifts and this is something that really related and helped our practice. The idea of our research lab was to challenge the class in order to find these new ways of lifting, we wanted to throw them out of their comfort zones, but try to ensure that they stay focused and that they didn’t let the uncomfortableness distract their mind set or process of movement. We started off with giving them tasks we had explored previously in class; keeping contact whilst travelling across the room. The first exercise involved travelling in ways such as body surfing and from table top, but no weight baring at this point. We gave the class advice of keeping “your eyes open, don’t get lost inside your head. Look for opportunities to support your partner, move in underneath them. Don’t give or take weight without listening for the agreement of your partner’s body.” (Curtis, 1998, 158). We then went onto develop the exercise further by changing the point of starting and the idea of safe position, this way was to have one person start from table top position and the other to start from standing. This exercise was exactly the same as the first but just from a different starting position, we wanted the class to try to experiment and explore new ways of moving and keeping that connection. The starting position slightly changed the way the dancers moved, the movement was a little bit more original than before, but overall this exercise was quite basic for our class, we saw a lot of already known movement and things we had already done in class, so we wanted to push them a little more to try and identify new things

“Mutual trust is based on uncompromised attention, so stay in the present moment” (Curtis, 1998, 158). The next exercise was what we called reverse practice, this involved everyone starting from standing, when usually and previously we had started from table top. Standing was also our safe position, so if anyone ever got stuck, they could go back to this position and start again. The aim of this exercise was to expand onto the dancer’s knowledge of exploring ways of going from standing to table top, and table top to standing. It focused on the idea of weight baring, so we wanted our class to explore this as much as possible but in NEW ways… one way we tried to inforce this was by banning body surfing as we felt that this is something the dancers always went back to once they were stuck and we wanted to try and avoid this! We then went onto banning table top as well as body surfing, so this really made our dancers think outside of the box. This meant that the dancers had to find ways to weight bare ONLY from standing to get to the other side of the space. “A dance form that uses movement, gravity and their relationship to each other as revealed through changing points of balance” (Curtis, 1998, 158). This really tested our classes mind as well as ability, but we learned that it worked. By banning the two major positions that we use in class, enabled the dancers to explore new ways of moving within the air, some didn’t even need table top or body surfing, original and interesting movement was created.

Our feedback showed us that the majority of our class thought that by building up the stages slowly developed confidence, some quicker than others, but they thought it was better than just going straight into standing weight baring lifts. Our idea of restricting movement to aid more movement to be developed worked because 15 out of 20 people thought that by banning certain movements encouraged them to form something more original. Our overall idea of our research lab was successful, 13 members of the class felt more confident after our session to explore and put these new movement methods into practice within a jam session and hoped that they would continue to build their confidence in weight baring lifts. As an overall session the majority of the movement I saw was new, on the odd occasion I saw repeated movement and movement we had completed within in class, but it was really interesting to see the dancers get ‘stuck’ and manage to get themselves out of this situation with new, original, safe movement.

Pictures from our research lab:

I feel that a lot of trust was formed within this week. I saw people work with people I hadn’t witnessed them work with before, a new energy was formed within the class. Within jams people are starting to get a lot more confidence and the space is nearly never empty. People are starting to improvise in groups more than 2 people, although this is very difficult I see people trying. I am still finding it difficult to get myself back into the jam once I have left the space because I am waiting for another person to be ‘free to dance with’. This is something I need to stop doing, I need to enter the space on my own, explore my own, individual improvisation skills and wait for someone to make contact with me or join a duet. I think the confidence is starting to come, I now have all the skills… I just need to apply them to my practice.

 

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

The Play of Weight and Contact Improvisation are two videos that both explore the means of contact improvisation but in two very different ways. The Play of Weight with Martin Keogh and Neige Christenson seemed to be a choreographed piece in which throughout the majority of the piece, the male supported the female. The two dancers had a continuous connection throughout the video, the video explored taking and giving weight and keeping a connection without physically touching, e.g. eye contact. The two dancers had a constant under and over dancer, they didn’t have interchangeable roles unlike the next video. The second video, Contact Improvisation with Mirva Mäkinen and Otto Akkanen seemed to be more improvised than the first and each dancer had an equal amount of weight evenly spread between the two. The dancers had interchangeable roles throughout, allowing them to both experiment with the risk factor. Momentum was used throughout this video, making their movement more fluid. Momentum also aided the dancers to take those risks, but in a more comfortable and successful way, it also made their improvising more interesting to watch. Ann Woodhull said that “shifts in the centre of gravity of the person supported and shirts in the support by the bearer lead naturally too mutual, shared motion” (Woodhull, 1978-79, 47) and I feel that both videos establish this. Contact Improvisation was a lot more experimental than The Play of Weight. Contact Improvisation was set in a more relaxed environment, it taught me a lot in how to act in a jam environment. At one point during the video, Mirva Mäkien and Otto Akkaen, lost their flow of movement but didn’t let it affect their focus, they tried movement from a different angel and kept going. The same happened at another point where they fell to the floor, a movement went wrong, and if that was myself in a jam situation, I would get up and leave the space. But Mäkien and Akkaen didn’t, they continued on and this has taught me to do the same. Don’t let movement going ‘wrong’ affect your movement flow… because is there such thing as going wrong?

The Play of Weight with Martin Keogh and Neige Christenson: 

Contact Improvisation with Mirva Mäkinen and Otto Akkanen:

Our centre of gravity is something that is very important when it comes to contact improvisation. “In Contact Improvisation, we purposely change centre of gravity in order to move” (Woodhull, 1978-79, 47), we change our body shapes constantly in order to execute certain movements, our points of support adjust often in order to refine and create new ways of contact. Our centre of gravity simply shifts and allows gravity to do the rest in order for us to accomplish these bodily changes. “This way of initiating movement looks and feels very different from grabbing and pulling” (Woodhull, 1978-79, 47). A lot of the observable adventure of contact comes from the non-grabby and non-invasive support and movement. Woodhull says that the “shifts in the centre of gravity of the person supported and shifts in support by the bearer lead naturally to mutual, shared motion” (Woodhull, 1978-79, 47) and this was understood and experienced greatly in this week’s practice.

During this week’s practice, the dancers started to explore in further detail ‘going up’. Elements of this had been explored previously but in this week session a lot more was examined in terms of height, weight, trust and confidence. Everyone was asked to work with someone they haven’t worked with before, and at first this made everyone apprehensive, but from observing I could see that this made a huge difference in a positive way. Some people even found out that they worked really well with someone they hadn’t worked with before, that their bodies worked in harmony with each other. Going down to go up was something that the dancers had to really focus on and remember whilst experimenting with weight baring lifts in order to keep the practice as safe as possible. By doing so this also made the weight a lot easier to take a lot easier to give, making the lift as a whole easier. “As you go up, travel through space, and come down, your centre of gravity describes a parabola, no matter what your arms, legs and head are doing” (Woodhull, 1978-79, 48).

We now have an entire dictionary worth of movement to explore within our jam sessions. We had explored and played with a wide variety of movement during our lesson and now it is time to put all the skills to the test. From observing this week’s jam, I saw a huge lift in confidence. The space was never empty; everyone couldn’t get enough of being in the space. The dancers really were putting their skills to the test. I saw things I hadn’t witnessed before, including people being fully off the ground and into the air. There was a different atmosphere in the space, it felt as if the class were really working together, safe and successfully. “Contact is about communication and sharing” (Woodhull, 1978-79, 48).

 

Neige Christenson. (2009). the play of weight. [Online Video]. 29 April 2009. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ltq6y06E8ew. [Accessed: 11 November 2016].

omegabranch. (2011). Contact Improvisation Mirva Mäkinen & Otto Akkanen. [Online Video]. 1 March 2011. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMLbWxujoGw. [Accessed: 11 November 2016].

Woodhull, A. (1978-79). Center of Gravity. Contact Quarterly/Contact Improvisation Sourcebook I Vol. 4.