Today we began by watching a short video of an animated skeleton, the skeleton enhanced how even when we are standing in a still neutral position the body always has slight movement. According to Steve Paxton this movement is known as the small dance.( ZayacZhe, 2009). We experienced the small dance by standing with our eyes shut in the space; I felt my body rock forward and back. As I was standing in neutral for a long period of time I became more aware of the rocking sensation and felt that my Weight was never central. Even though the movement felt quite strong to me, I’m not sure whether it would appear visual to somebody looking at me or if it was more of an internal conscious feeling. To explore this further I would ask a peer to watch me in the still standing position to see if they can see my body moving. After experiencing Paxton’s small dance we developed the idea further by experimenting with your weight, taking yourself off balance, following your natural movement from the small dance. When I went off balance my natural movement took me forwards and backwards. I tried to fall out of the balance until the last minute which created quite a thrilling adrenaline rush. With this, gravity came into play, as I fell off balance gravity took over and my weight fell into the floor.

In partners we gently placed our hands together and guided each other around the space. The task focused on leading with the core instead of using the hands as the initiator. It was interesting to not use my hands, as I normally I find that during contact improvisation I use my hands the most instead of different body parts. With the same partner we moved onto weight sharing. We started with a simple back to back and head to head moving downwards and upwards staying in contact. With the concept of sharing and giving weight, we moved onto creating surfaces and structures to balance on. Partner A created surfaces for partner B to put their weight onto and balance in innovative ways. We interchanged between roles of who was creating surfaces and who was giving their weight, In my opinion when we interchanged roles more fluid movement was created and on the whole the dance flowed my effectively and looked visually interesting.

In sensing weight in movement , Susanne Ravn explores how the weight of the body can perceived from within when moving and how mass and gravity informs the shape and posture of your body. (Ravn, 2010). When I was experimenting with taking my weight off balance my posture and shape was instantly impacted, it was not in alignment and a more disjointed shape was created. What’s more Ravn also discusses the weight in movement in different styles of dance; her exploration of weight in contemporary is particularly interesting to me as it is my strongest style of dance. She states how contemporary dancers allow their body to be connected to gravity with a sense of giving up control, gravity is considered a partner used to lead and guide movement. (2010, 24-26). In the class I felt I could connect to Susanne Ravn’s statement as gravity took control and my movement was a reaction.

At the end of the session we were set into groups to devise a lab research plan. To begin we brainstormed questions that we had towards contact improvisation, my personal questions were:

-How would working with new or different people effect my contact improvisation?

-How can I give and take weight more fluidly?

As a group the question that we selected for our research lab is:

‘How can we explore momentum alongside the idea of coming off the floor without using the support of our hands and how does this change when working with new or old partners?’

For me, trying not to use my hands will be relatively difficult, however I believe the research lab will help me develop new ways of moving. I will try and use body parts that I would not normally think about, for example my ear or elbow to help create inventive movement. In addition to this I feel I need to challenge myself by working with different people to see how my contact improvisation differs.

Works Cited

Ravn, Susanne. (2010) Sensing weight in movement. Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices,2 (1) 21-24.

ZayacZhe (2009) Steve Paxton. smalldance [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sJKEXUtv44 [Accessed 13th October 2014].