“The touch that we remain most interested to explore in relation to learning in dance is touch that stimulates awareness, excites curiosity and increases a facility to form accessible active knowledge”
This statement from Touch: Experience and Knowledge article relates to my own personal view on how touch can be very experimental but this also relates to the tasks that we did in class this lesson. Throughout the lesson, the question I had in mind was: How can I use contact improvisation to engage more effectively with my surroundings and inner self?
To begin, as we do with each lesson, we started by energising the room by rolling on the floor with awareness of the skinsphere and then gradually moving up to a standing position to experiment with the upper kinesphere. Soon after, we incorporate both elements and use the whole body to experiment with movement and the space around us. This immediately wakes up our body but also relates to my question, as not only am I making use of the space to become aware of my surroundings but the skinsphere exercise is enabling me to be more intact, connected and aware of my body.
The first task involved getting into partners and one partner rolling over the back of the other partner. Initially, when I was rolling over my partner, I was very conscious of hurting her if I was to give her all of my weight. However, I came to realise that she would be fine if I moved in a safe way and stayed away from sensitive areas, such as the back of the knees or the head. Once I overcame the fear of hurting my partner, this enabled me to make more risks and be more experimental with movements. From the article Touch: Experience and Knowledge, they mention that it is argued that if we become fearful and don’t learn with touch then we don’t learn one of the most basic and informative sensations. Therefore, I kept this idea in the back of my mind and became more confident in the way in which I was moving. The next task involved sitting back to back with your partner. We started by moving our backs in different directions so there was a sense of connection and you were aware of where your partner was. One partner would drop to the floor and roll continuously, imitating a wave whilst the other partner would have to follow them and find different ways to roll over their partner. Then the roles of each partner would change alternatively. When I was the wave I felt much more in control than I did when I was the person who was rolling over their partner because I had to continuously try and catch up with my partner and I had to think quickly of how I could experiment with movement and roll onto them. Previously, I believe that I have spent too much time on deliberating with how I could experiment with movement. However, contact improvisation is about going with the flow and not thinking it about it too much, therefore this exercise helped me developed an immediate reaction and made me not think too much on how I could experiment with movement.
The next exercise consisted of getting into different partners and one person would move in a ‘structurally way’ whilst the other person would say stop and then that person would have to freeze and the other partner would have to find different ways of leaning on them. When I had to lean on my partner, I was still conscious of taking risks as I didn’t want to hurt my partner or myself. However, I didn’t think much about what I was going to do and this lead me to be more adventurous with my movements and more risk taking then I had been before. Afterwards, in our pairs, we put all of the exercises that we had performed throughout the lesson together to create a small performance piece. We discovered that if we were unsure what to do we would go back to the first task of the lesson of rolling on each other and then we would carry on with our improvisation. Although, all the tasks have given us an insight to how more experimental we could be with movement. This is because the idea of touch helps us to connect and engage with each other, which leads to a higher level of trust so we can be more adventurous. Also, touch allows us to share information and guide each other into how we can move differently.
With reference to my question How can I use contact improvisation to engage more effectively with my surroundings and inner self? I felt that this was partially answered as throughout the lesson I had to be spatially aware of my surroundings, which meant being aware of the environment but also other partners around me. The partner touch exercises helped me engage with my inner self as it made me feel more confident on what I could do and has lead to me to see how I can experiment more with movement. However, this question still has more scope for investigation.
Bibliography
Bannon, F. and Holt, D. (2012) Touch: Experience and Knowledge. Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices, 3(1/2) 215-227.