The rolling point and the interchangeable role of the under and over dancer
‘If the body had been easier to understand, nobody would have thought that we had a mind’ (Bannon and Hault, 2011, 217)
I was nervous and apprehensive for this lesson because we got told this session requires more weight baring work. I was scared at the thought of this because I am self-conscious of my weight and the thought of placing all my weight on another person makes me feel like I going to hurt them.
We started this session off with an exercise that involved melting and be picked up/ picking someone up. This enabled me to ease in slightly with giving people my weight and learning to become more comfortable in doing so. Throughout this exercise I feel like our class became more comfortable in giving and receiving other peoples weight which is one of the most important qualities of contact improvisation. I felt more confident as the exercise continued in completely letting go of my weight and being able to give it in the hands of someone else. We were not allowed to talk through this exercise which surprised me as I felt we didn’t need to talk to each other in order to communicate. ‘Touch is more than making of contact’ (Bannon and Hault, 2011, 219) I feel this quote relates to my experience of this exercise. I felt like the touch of hand and helping another one of my classmates up, spoke so many words which showed the friendship and trust we have within one another and not just the touch which was the point of the exercise.
One of the safest place I believe to have a sense of touch is the back area. I think I feel better because it has the largest surface area and because of that I feel more safer when improvising. We completed an exercise when the only body part we had in contact with someone else was the back and had to try and improvise with always having the back in contact. This enabled me to practise even more with placing my weight on other people. I really tried to be more experimental in my movements with Ellie whilst trying to remember to not be afraid to let my weight drop on Ellie.
We then did an exercise which involved completely dropping the weight onto another person by just lying on top of them. We then switched around, and it was me being the underneath character. I prefer myself to be underneath as I prefer to take other peoples weight instead of giving my weight to my peers.
I completed another exercise however using parts of the body in my opinion were more vulnerable. For example holding on to just your partners wrists whilst leaning away from each other and walking. This was a tricky exercise because it involved a lot of balance and concentrating. The wrists is a small part of the body and I believe they can be quite weak as they are flexible meaning they don’t hold a lot of strength. This is why I was nervous for this exercise as the way it works is to completely give the other person my weight.
‘ Touch is a bodily idea’ (Bannon and Hault, 2011, 218) This quote sums up this lesson for me. I believe our sense of touch is one of the most influential senses. This sense has so much more exploration to what initially meets the eye and the literal meaning to it within dance. I feel throughout this module I will begin to start to underpin in more depth what the sense of touch really is within the genre of dance and how this infomation will help and mould my dancing in the future to come.
Bannon, F. and Holt, D. (2011) Touch: Experience and Knowledge. Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices, 3(1&2) 215-225.