Releasing the head and activating the eyes: Allowing the weight of the head and focus of the eyes to assist easy changes of direction and level.
“How are our bodies?” – Kirsty Russell
Achy af! That’s how my body has felt all week. Fortunately, discussing the reading and watching footage of contact improvisation meant that we didn’t have to spend that much time moving this week, although I’m sure we’ll make up for that in week four!
I found it interesting that the footage of Magnesium by Steve Paxton (Nelson, 2006) from 1972 and the video of Blake Nellis and Brando (Aaron Brando, 2010) contacting from 2010 showed two very different sides of CI. As Paxton is ‘the father’ of contact improv’ I think his footage showed the most authentic examples of people improvising through physical contact. In the video, I saw people who were experimenting with how to give their weight to someone else and how to use another persons body to support their own . Perhaps because the setting of the film was in a sports hall with crash mats dotted around I was influenced to believe that these people were still learning the art of CI and were more likely to make mistakes and fall than Nellis and Brando. In my notes from watching the Magnesium video I’ve written ‘loud, no fear, v.speedy’, which sums up their style of CI really. The performers were just throwing themselves at one another, falling onto someone who themselves was falling; nothing in the footage looked premeditated or practiced and surprisingly I thought it actually looked quite fun.
Nellis and Brando’s exploration of CI was very different to the style shown from 1972; I felt that they carried each other a lot and had minimal use of falling and catching. The pace of the movement was quite slow and steady, even when they did have a shift in dynamics I don’t think it was to the extend to have significance. I would describe the style of improv’ in this video with the words dip, dive and roll because the dancers stayed at middle height so were not too far from the ground to travel around the space and each other. In class we have explored the idea of the ‘under and over dancer’, in Nellis and Brando’s video I can see a lot of under and over, and they exchange the rolls often where as in the 1972 video I couldn’t identify any exchange although I do think they used the concept. I found Nellis and Brando’s exploration very engaging because they never really left each other to find each other again; although this duet is improvised and the one I will be a part of is choreographed, I found it useful to watch how they stayed together for the whole time. I’m hoping to find a way to keep a connection like that while having literal distance between myself and my partner.
We read about Steve Paxton’s interior techniques this week, the reading was interesting because it highlighted some of Paxton’s intentions for CI and why he developed the practice. In the article, the issue of tension is discussed as Paxton believed that tension needed to be avoided because it inhabited the movements of the participants as they experience fear at the unfamiliar (Turner, 2010, 131). Well, I can testify to this! I was holding onto a lot of tension this week and I know it had a negative impact on my practice. I found it extremely difficult to engage with the group improvisation and found myself sitting up and detaching, not because I couldn’t physically do anything but because mentally I was having a freak out. I was so aware of my consciousness and felt that everyone else was in this ‘zen’ state that I couldn’t focus and as a result I was just saying to myself “I don’t know what to do”. Paxton explained that tensions could be resolved by “going back to bodily sensations and relaxing” (Turner, 2010, 131) which we did when we released control of our heads to a partner. I was the partner holding the head first, so when it came to me relaxing and trusting someone else with my head I knew what was going to happen which I think helped with focusing on the sensation. I felt myself taking non-habitual pathways once control was returned to me because I’d been so tuned into the sensation of being lead by my partner. I just need to focus on listening to the sensations of the group so that in the next class improvisation I’ll be able to ‘unconsciously’ relax into it.
Aaron Brando (2010) Contact Improvisation: Blake Nellis & Brando @ Earthdance. [Online Video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQRF2sLK1vY [Accessed 17/10/2015].
Nelson, L. (dir.) (2006) Contact Improvisation Archive DVD #2: Magnesium, Peripheral Vision, Soft Pallet. [DVD] East Charleston: VIDEODA
Turner, R. (2010) Steve Paxton’s ‘Interior Techniques’: Contact Improvisation and Political Power. TDR: The Drama Review, 54(3), 123-135.