This week was our final week of Contact Improvisation and consisted of our usual class followed by a performance of our created score on the Thursday evening. In our Monday class, we used the time to perform our score to each other in order to gain feedback which we could use to develop it, making it a more successful score. Something which we originally struggled to create was an ending to our score however, we used this class as an opportunity to explore different endings I order to discover which one worked the best. I enjoyed creating our score and it was interesting to have some elements being constricted within Contact Improvisation but some left open.

My favourite part to the score was the use of chance. Individually, at the beginning of our score we asked a member of the audience for a number either between 1-5 or 1-10. These numbers determined whether we began dancing on a lower or high level, depending if the number was odd or even, but they also determined how many encounters we had to have with another person before we could leave a space. This made our score very interesting as each individual had their own goal, meaning some people may be wanting to sustain a duet if they only had a small number whereas, people with a larger number may be looking to move through partners at a faster pace. For the performance I was the number eight, this meant that despite my efforts to travel between duets quicker, I still found myself constantly in the space and I was unable to step out to observe. In the rehearsals of our score I was given a lower number which changed the score entirely for me as I enjoyed stepping out and observing however, when I was constantly in the mix of improvisation I enjoyed the score also for the fact that I was always moving. I did find having a higher number more difficult but it also made the experience more exciting.

Moreover, our score looked at controlling space at certain points within the score. The rule was that if a duet was left in the space, the observing dancers would create a corridor for the duet to dance in, restricting the space in which the duet could move within. In the performance this rule occurred twice as myself and the partner I was with were left in the space. In my first duet the space didn’t feel as restricted as it did with the second duet, I think this was due to the second duet travelling further through the space.

Overall, I think that I found it more difficult to perform our score to an audience rather than just undertaking the score in class, I think this is due to Contact Improvisation being such an internal movement, meaning that you are only really thinking of yourself in relation to your partner and other dancers. Having an audience watching you as you do this feels much less natural and traditionally when movement is being performed to an audience you are meant to project your focus out to them, which is very different to Contact Improvisation. Personally I do not think that in terms of Contact Improvisation, I performed my best and I think that many of the duets which I undertook did not feel as relaxed and fluid as they usually do. This is possibly to down my group as a whole and the fact that everyone may have been slightly nervous so wasn’t moving as well as they have done before in class. However, I think performing our score was an important experience as it pushed us out of our normal comfort levels whilst doing Contact Improvisation, making it a good way to end our module.

We spent most of this class going back to ideas that our teacher thought that we should look at in order to complete our knowledge of Contact Improvisation before beginning looking at scores. We firstly looked at the idea of push again but this time including the hips in the movement, I found this difficult to do at first, but once I had practiced it a few times it became easier. This idea of sending the hips into the space became important for what we looked at next. We worked in pairs with the idea of one person being the base who had to make different surfaces for their partner to use, the ‘over dancer’ had to try and use the push action to send their hips onto their partner. We had practiced moving our hips on and off our partner before however, using the idea of pushing you had to try and get to your destination quickly, adding dynamic quality into your duet. After both partners experimented with this we had to repeat the exercise using our feet as the body part to send onto our partner. I enjoyed experimenting with the idea of sending a body part directly and quickly to my partner. I found high levels quite challenging but possibly the most enjoyable of levels to work with as I had to push myself and completely trust my partner. The level I disliked was a very low level as I found that there wasn’t any room to spring to your partner, therefore a middle level was my most comfortable but I enjoyed pushing myself at that higher level.

After this we experimented with another lift, I found this lift much easier that other ones which we had previously explored as both the lifter and the person being lifted. I found it easier as the ‘under dancer’ for this as it required leg strength more than other types of strengths which I found much more comfortable. Moreover, as the ‘over dancer’ I found it challenging but very enjoyable which helped me to keep motivated whilst practicing this lift. I found that this lift more than others, required a lot of core strength for the ‘over dancer’ and I really had to think of reaching my extremities away from my centre in order to keep my balance whilst on the back of my partner.

The second part of our class consisted of us working on our chosen score. As a group we chose to explore further some of the ideas which we had explored in our research labs from the week before, we decided to look at controlling space in terms of levels and special content, speed and from the other group who we joined with their idea of creating interesting and difficult ways to travel between levels. This idea suited our group well as that was one thing in which we wanted to improve from our research lab. In order to help us create our score we looked at ‘Some Considerations When Structuring an Improvisation (to be seen by an audience)’ by Jamie Stover, in this small text he asked questions such as ‘Do I want to create a mechanistic Newtonian framework, sitting over the dancer like a compressional structure, OR…do I want a relative structure which reflects changes which have occurred as part of the unravelling of the dance in time and space?’ (Stover, 1989, 185). We considered all the questions raised like the one before in order to help structure and formulate our score. When testing our score at the end of class it became evident that elements of it needed changing in order to engage and involve the audience more.

Stover, J. (1989) Some Considerations When Structuring an Improvisation (to be seen by an audience). Contact Quarterly/ Contact Improvisation Sourcebook II, 14, 185.

This week we had our second research lab, this time we were interested in exploring the use of space within Contact Improvisation and speed in particular relation to tone. We began just looking at space and had pairs working only on a low level and then have another pair working only on a high level. In both these improvisations, we found that there was little variation of surfaces being used and not much variation of height within the chosen level. However, we found that being restricted to only one level helped to brake some of our habitual movement as most of the time if we are stuck on what movement to do we instantly drop back down to the floor, but when we were restricted to staying on a high level we had to figure out what else we could do instead of this. After this feedback we repeated this exercise and the movement was much more varied as the dancers were varying their levels more and finding different surfaces to work with. The pairs also looked much more comfortable as they were not thinking too much on the restriction of not being able to move up or vice versa.

Photos from myself and my partner working on a low level.

Photos of the pairs doing Contact Improvisation at a high level

After this we thought about given direction to our improvisation, asking pairs to travel across the space using both levels. We found that the duet only travelled in a linear pattern, so this could have been developed more to have the dancers thinking about traveling out in multiple directions. However, the improvisation itself looked very natural and fluid. We noticed that the dancers found it easier to travel whilst they were on a higher level as they could use their feet more so I think we could have explored this more to try and get the pairs to travel as far on a lower level which would have made them really explore the ‘push’ motion that they need to enable in their feet. Also, although the dancers travelled further on a higher level we found that there was a slight loss of connection between the pair, so this would need practicing so that they could establish a constant connection between each other. Moreover, although the improvising as a whole felt more natural, the transitions between the two levels still felt a bit awkward, meaning that in our further improvisation this would be an area that we could look at strengthening.

Above are photos from the pairs experimenting with both levels and trying to travel.

We then began looking at speed, we wanted to see if there a direct correlation between speed and a specific tone or whether you could do any tone with a chosen speed. Firstly myself and my partner used a slow speed with a hard tone, then repeated this with a soft tone. We found that we could quite easily use the different tones at this speed. However, the audience could not see the difference between the two tones and felt like it looked like it was all with a soft tone, this was interesting as it was very obvious for us dancing but we were not aware that the experience was so different for the viewer. After this we tried using these two tones with a fast speed and the pair improvising found it very difficult to move with a fast speed but a soft tone which dropped the pace of their movement. Although they found using a hard tone easier, from an audience prospective, again the resistance between the two dancers was not clear from an audience’s perspective, the movement also lacked fluidity and looked clunky in places. After exploring both of these we came to an agreement that in Contact Improvisation you cannot set a specific tonal quality to the movement, rather let your body decide which tone to use and use hard tones in order to gain momentum into movement in order to get that required ‘push’ action.

Photos from our improvisation with use of tone and speed.

Our jam this week was different to all of the others that we have previously taken part it as we were blindfolded for this one. I was excited to explore Contact Improvisation in this was as I was interested in how much it would affect my improvising. The most noticeable thing for me was our heightened sense of touch and sound. In order to try and locate partners I have to listen and feel for the vibrations on the floor in order to calculate how close a potential partner was. I found the use of touch very beautiful in this jam as everyone had to completely trust and connect to their partner just through touch which brought out some beautiful movement. In my opinion the movement created was very different to what we normally create as we did not take as many risks however, people still did lifts and gave each other’s weight throughout which surprised me. The last discovery I had whilst undertaking in this jam was that because you were not bias as to who you danced with it meant that everyone danced with people which they normally did not and some lovely connections were created between these new pairs.

After exploring different ways of lifting each other last week, we added onto this knowledge by learning even more ways to send our bodies up. There was one lift in particular which terrified me as you sent your weight over your partners shoulder meaning if done correct you would just balance on their shoulder however, I struggled to gain the confidence to send my weight over my partner’s shoulder. If I had more chances to practice this lift I believe that I would gain the confidence needed for it.

My favourite lift which we explored in this session was probably one of the easiest lifts yet, I found it the most enjoyable and relaxing. All this lift consisted of was you and your partner being back to back and leaning onto one another so that the ‘over dancer’ would come off the floor. The key to this lift like the rest, was what we explored a lot last week about the ‘over dancer’s’ pelvis being higher than that of the ‘under dancers’. As well as being relaxed I enjoyed this lift the most as I feel very connected to my partner, whereas in other lifts I feel this connection is sometimes lost.

Images from the lift mentioned above

We also watched two pieces of Contact Improvisation, the piece which I particularly connected to was by Mirva Mäkinen and Otto Akkanen. The thing that really intrigued me was that they almost always had a constant connection, this connection made their movement much more fluid and made their relationship look strong. Watching this video, created almost a ‘light bulb’ moment for me as I knew in my mind that that was what I wanted to be able to achieve. Thinking about this idea of being constantly connected to my partner I participated in our weekly jam, I was generally finding that my movement was becoming more fluid however, I was still unsatisfied. Later in the jam session I began to work with a semi-regular partner. Normally our duets are ‘nice’ but nothing too special however, this week something clicked for both of us and we found ourselves using momentum in ways we hadn’t before and travelling around the space more. This was due to us both remaining in constant contact with each other which gave our duet great fluidity even though we were travelling a lot faster than we normally do in Contact Improvisation. This duet between myself and my partner made this week’s jam my favourite so far as I really feel both of us experienced something really special which you don’t always get when improvising and it is difficult to put into words. I think this quote by Bruce Curtis helps to explain why this impulse of movement happened between myself and my partner, ‘What is most important to remember is that each body, disabled or not, is unique and presents another opportunity to explore what movement is possible’ (1988, 157). I think we were both ready to explore movement at this next stage.

Video of  Mirva Mäkinen and Otto Akkanen doing Contact Improvisation

Curtis, B. (1988) Exposed to Gravity. Contact Quarterly/ Contact Improvisation Sourcebook 1, 13 156-162.

Omegabranch (2011) Contact Improvisation Mirva Mäkinen and Otto Akkanen. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMLbWxujoGw [Accessed 17 November 2014].

After a few weeks of studying Contact Improvisation, our movement and partner work has developed significantly since the beginning, the main thing missing for us however, was more complex lifting and to have confidence for us take each other’s weight at a higher weight. After exploring trust in our research lab last week, we discovered that everyone’s ‘safety’ movements were lower to the floor as it is easier to take someone’s weight when you have a larger surface on contact with the floor. This week we developed movements which were on a higher level in order to bring variation to our movement and to stop us always relying on our ‘safe’ movement.

In our class we tried a variety of lifts and jumps which we could incorporate into our improvisation. The main aim when doing any lifts or anything as the ‘over dancer’ is to make sure that your pelvis is higher than your partners, otherwise you will always struggle to achieve the desired outcome, whether it is a lift or simply a roll over your partners back. Keeping this in mind the first thing we tried was to use counter balance to get your partner to the floor, the use resistance and a ‘pull’ action to pull your partner up. As the partner is being pulled up they had to activate their legs and jump as high as they could so that they’re pelvis was higher than their partners, in order for the partner to catch them. We did this several times and I began with a partner who was a similar height to me but then we switched and I was with someone who was smaller than me, instantly I found it harder to trust them as I didn’t want to launch my weight at them. After the first time though, and discovering that they were fine to catch me, I was much more trusting in this lift.

We did several other lifts however, my favourite lift involved jumping into your partner so that your stomach was toughing their chest. I found this lift easier than some of the other lifts, but I also found it the most fun out of all of the lifts. The principles for all of the lifts we looked at were all the same; 1) the ‘over dancer’ must get their pelvis higher than their partners, 2) the ‘over dancer’ must use their jump to gain as much height as possible. I enjoyed this week’s class very much and I am excited to further develop my skills in lifting work next week.