In class this week we looked at being off balance and falling with gravity rather than working against it. We discovered ways to you gravity to enable us to fall and move without causing injury. For dancers, especially in release based movement, gravity is ‘considered a partner, used to lead and guide any movement’ (Ravn, 2010, 26). We began exploring this idea of becoming a partner with gravity by first performing ‘the small dance’, where you stand still and notice the tiny movements your body creates in order for you to stay upright. After noticing these instead of resisting gravity to stay still we began trying to allow gravity to move us, for me this we usually forward or backwards. We developed this further by allowing the movement to take us to the floor through falling, this was very difficult for me to do at first as I was scared of injuring myself however, I did begin to ease into this exercise the more times we did this. As a note for if I did this again in the future, I would try and be more daring as I never really dared to fall backwards as I couldn’t see what was behind me I feel it is harder for your arms to catch you from behind. Moreover after doing this exercise I realised that I didn’t fall straight forwards either as every time I did fall forwards I turned so that I would land on my side, so I would try and stop myself from doing this reaction if I tried this again.

After this we got into pairs, one person was the ‘cat’ the other the ‘owner’ the owner had to create surfaces for the cat the rest and lean their weight onto, like a real cat would as the rub their weights into your legs for example. We then swapped roles. I personally preferred being the cat as I enjoyed exploring new ways in which my partner could take my weight. The roles then became more fluid so that we were both cats and both owners. For me the quality of the movement became much more fluid, which helped to allow both of us to push ourselves further. My partner had never trusted herself to take herself completely off the floor in improvisation before but in our duet she trusted me enough to explore this which for me made it a lovely duet as we connected and trusted each other fully.

We ended the class by splitting into groups of four and writing down any questions we had about Contact Improvisation which we could explore in the following week.

We then focused on one of these questions and thought of exercises we could undertake in our next class in order to answer this question. Our question was ‘Can you apply the same trust and relationship with a new partner that you do with a regular partner?’ I’m excited to explore this question and to find an answer to it next week!

Ravn, S. (2010) Sensing weight in movement. Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, 2, (1) 21- 34.