In today’s session we began by watching two contact improvisation videos, both videos consisted of a duet between a male and female partnership. The duets equally portrayed a fluid and flowing dance which never broke out of contact, the dancers moved with ease. Martin and Neige who performed a contact duet in the first video moved effortlessly, the male acted as the more dominate under dancer although the female did at times support his weight. (Neige Christenson, 2009). In contrast, Mirva and Otto who performed in the second video shared the role of the under and over dancer equally. (Omegabranch , 2011). Throughout their duet they were constantly changing who was giving and taking weight. In addition to this both duets offered various surfaces and structures for their partner and initiated movement from the whole body.

After watching the videos we moved onto a simple exercise of rolling across the floor, the rolls focused on reaching with the arms and legs. The rolls on the floor corresponded to the technique that you would use when rolling on and off your partner. This exercise enabled me grasp an effective roll that I can translate onto a body rather than the floor. Moving on from this, in partners we laid across one another stomachs with our centres pressed together. To begin we created a small dance which was felt through the breath. During this I thought about Bruce Curtis’ article Exposed to gravity, Curtis states that a dance may differ visually on the outside but internally the same experience are felt through the flow of rhythm moving throughout the body (Curtis, 1988, 156). With my centre pressed against my partners I could feel a shared rhythm being created although our breath pattern was slightly different. This task progressed onto changing the position of the over and under dancer without loosing contact, developing into a continuous dance which gradually built up to standing. Myself and my partner were successful in not breaking the contact link, however compared to the videos that we watched earlier I felt that our movement was not as fluid as at times it was quite clumpy.

The second half of the session focused on the integration of more advanced lifts. We started off with a back to back lift, in order to safely carry out this out the lifters pelvis has to be lower than the persons being lifted. I enjoyed this lift and felt I was able to successfully lift a variety of people with different weights; my back was a strong and steady support. When I was being lifted I enjoyed being in the backbend position and felt like I could stay their all day. Another lift which I found successful was the jump back. This consisted of supporting my partner’s weight by placing my hands under their shoulder blades to give more height to their lift when they jump back. When I was being lifted my partner supported my weight to such an extent that I travelled back further than I imagined. I felt this lift and the back to back lift could be integrated easily into a contact improvisation dance.

The final lifts of the session consisted of the ‘paper clip’ and the shoulder lift. As the lifter I found the paper clip lift relatively easy, I believe it is a simple lift that can used to move and initiate dancers during a contact improvisation dance. The shoulder lift was the most difficult lifts of the session as it consisted of being lifted at a much higher height than the others. During this lift I was the person that was being lifted therefore my pelvis had to be higher than my partners shoulder. Overall I did not like the lift I was nervous to be lifted above the shoulder.

To finish the class we integrated all of our skills from previous sessions into a contact improvisation dance that was performed in a round-robin. This was one of the first times that we have performed our contact improvisation dances allowing others to observe. It was interesting to watch others and see how they interact and move with each other, what’s more when I was performing in the circle I felt as if I was in my own world with my partner and did not fell as if I was being watched.

Works Cited

Curtis, B. (1988). Exposed to Gravity. Contact Quarterly/ Contact Improvisation Sourcebook I, Vol. 13. Pp. 156-162.

Omegabranch (2011) Contact Improvisation Mirva Mäkinen & Otto Akkanen.[online video] Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMLbWxujoGw [Accessed 12 November 2014].

Neige Christenson (2009) The play of weight.[online video] Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ltq6y06E8ew [Accessed 12 November 2014].