Touch is a very important aspect when it comes to contact improvisation. It’s not just about being touched, it’s about how we are touched and how that affects us. Touch gives us our sense of reality, it’s what connects us and the rest world and establishes the environment around us. Touching through the means of contact improvisation brings awareness to our bodies, it creates that trust between you and another person. Touch allows you to not only gain someone’s trust, but get to know someone and grow not only a physical connection, but an emotional one, this could be through the means of eye contact. Touch is very much connected with emotion. Touching someone and the way they react tells you a lot about that person, “Touch, is more than the makings of contact, it concerns qualitative variations in the degrees of attention.” (Bannon and Holt, 219, 2012).
The first touch exercise we experimented with made me realize that the concept of not physically touching someone can be just as powerful as touching someone. We played with an exercise that involved a partner placing their hands on my upper and lower back, slowly applying pressure, pushing their hands away from each other, lengthening my spine. This was done for a good length of time, meaning that when my partner removed her hands, I could still feel a connection, it was as if her hands never left my back. Her hands had been pressing into my back for a quite some time, resulting in my body getting used to that feeling and the sensation of heat her hands gave me, taking my back a while to get used to the pressure not being there. Experiencing this touch feeling, whist the physical touch wasn’t physically there, made me realize that you don’t have to do a lot for that connection to be there, it could be the smallest movement and there is still that slight connection between you and your partner. “Touch is the parent of our eyes, ears, nose and mouth” (Bannon and Holt, 218, 2012).
Sensory knowledge was essential to this exercise; when my partner placed her body over mine it took me a minute to adjust to the weight that was now laid on mine. We took a minute to attempt to connect our breathing, to move as one rather than two individuals, again, to help identify that connection. It took a while for us to fully concentrate and not laugh. Laughing resulted into both of you laughing due to the forced movement from your partner’s chest. As this exercise went on my attention turned to the over and under dancer, and how the two can connect. The trusting weight and frame exercise also involved us to turn our attention to sensory knowledge. One partner had to create a strong frame on a low, middle or high kinsephere, where the other partner could comfortably put their weight onto. Sensory knowledge was a fundamental part of this exercise as it allowed us to find interesting, stable position’s where we could easily hold our balance and gave our partner challenges in finding an interesting way to put all their weight onto ours; “It is the early and ongoing affect of touch that still presents a challenge to the long standing,” (Bannon and Holt, 221, 2012).
“We must ask ourselves what body it is urgent to produce, what theoretical discourse could invent a body that is both conscious and unconscious, a body that can act and resist, a flexible body and an unshakeable body and an unshakeable body” (Bannon and Holt, 223, 2012). Remaking that contact once it is broken is something I found very difficult in this next exercise. This exercise involved me and a partner sitting back to back and exploring movement whilst always being connected. I found it very difficult to keep in contact and know what / where my partner was going to go next. This came with time, after experimenting with movement for a little bit with my partner, I started get to know their body and how they moved, allowing me to slightly know where they were heading with certain movements. How do we remake contact once it’s broken? During the exercise once contact was broken I found it hard to concentrate and get back to the movement. But shortly after, I learnt to think ‘what have you got to offer your partner?’ offer them anything you can, you never know how it might turn out. Or, in doubt, return to your starting point, the original position, your safe place. It is ok to go back to this safe place, but eventually we want to be able to keep going, once the contact has been broken, pick it up by starting again, from the position you are ‘stuck’ in.
Touch is “’the mother of all senses’” (Bannon and Holt, 218, 2012), and as we have established an important sense in contact improvisation, but something I think is just as important is the use of your eyes. We use our eyes to look closely, to take in appearances and our surroundings, it is also something that can be very strong when connecting with something or someone. The sense of looking is something that people take for granted, it provides us with a lot more information than touch can, in my opinion. Eye contact can make contact improvisation so much more meaningful. It is a way of keeping that contact throughout the exercise, I found it also helps you really connect with your partner, follow their eyes, take in their movement and gain their experiences.
The idea of our contact improvisation jam at first frightened me a tiny bit. But as soon as I entered the space and we did a few warm up contact exercises I was raring to go. Excited was the last thing I thought I would be, but that I was, very excited. For the first time I actually didn’t care what anybody thought, I truly realized there is no wrong or right and I felt comfortable with myself and with the people around me and the environment that was surrounding me. We formed our own circle of trust, with the room dimly lit and the glow of the cathedral. Darkness is something that made me feel comfortable, something that I never thought I would say. For me, the fact we were in the dark set the mood, I felt excited to dance in the dark. I found it easier than I thought to improvise and move with members of my class, I found my body moving in ways I didn’t know it could. It really helped me find and realize the range of my body. I found it more comforting improvising with a partner than I did on my own, I found it easier and it really boosted my confidence whilst in the space. I standing back and observing the circle just interesting as I did being involved in it. It was intriguing watching other people move and improvise, it gave me little hints and tips in how to let my body go and move freely.
Bannon and Holt once said “we can think of the skin as animated, as a lively border crossing of social interaction” (Bannon and Holt, 220, 2012). Create a journey in how you move, don’t just move for the sake of moving, try to create a conversation between you and your partner throughout the time you are improvising together, this is something I used to challenge myself a bit more. ALWAYS offer something to your partner whether it be a full movement, or just a gesture or a body part! The more comfortable you are in your own body, the more comfortable you will be working with others.
Bannon, Fiona; Holt, Duncan. (2012) Touch: Experience and knowledge,Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices Vol. 3.