This week I was excited to see what we would be doing in class as it was ‘flight’ week. From having a week off it gave me chance to regather my thoughts and start this part of the semester with high hopes and positive thoughts. From the start I knew we was going to be performing many different lifts this made me nervous as I had never had the chance to experience lifting anybody or even being lifted myself. The first exercise we did was based on weight baring. The table top lift where you relaxed your body weight onto our partners and lifted both hands and feet off to floor to then balance on them. Charlotte and I felt comfortable with giving each other our weights so this made it easier for me to put all of my body weight on Charlotte. This also allowed me to be able to hold the position for a length of time with feeling safe and secure whilst in the air. After swapping over and me being the base I had noticed that I felt more secure in the air rather than being the base, I am unsure why as I enjoyed being both the base and the flier but I enjoyed being the person being lifted the most.
An extension of this task was to then turn whilst being in the position on your partners back. I found this difficult to do as my hips and ribs were digging into Charlotte’s back so it was uncomfortable for me to do. For me being on my stomach was the most secure way of being lifted. Another extension of this was being able to get off our partner’s backs, by putting one hand down and flipping over. When I first saw the demonstration I was worried as this is not my strongest technique as being upside down scares me. After trying my hardest to get off her back the way we had been showed it finally clicked with me and this gave me a sense of achievement and I could not stop doing it.
The next few lifts had more safety implications and we had to focus more on the thought that we had to have our partner’s full weight in the air and we was responsible for them. The superman lift was one of my favourites I was again with Charlotte and when I was the one being lifted we got it straight away. I was even brave enough to take my hand off so my feet was the only connection we had. On the other hand when we had swapped over it was not the case. I had always put more weight in one foot than the other, this lead to us both falling to the right side and not being able to hold the balance for long. The key here was to get into the lift we had to go down to come back up again, this gave your body momentum and stability to grasp your partner’s weight and lift them in the air. When you was being lifted in the air it was important to hold no muscular tension in your body as this made your more awkward and heavier to work with, which could have resulted in injury or the lift not working.
Another key point about lifting is the timing. The timing off the lift is crucial to get the lift happening safely and correctly. A task which we performed included us getting into partners again and one partner doing a pencil jump whilst the other person pushed down on their shoulder. After a while when it was the right time the person who was pushing down on their shoulders had to grab their partners underneath their buttocks. In this exercise if you did not get your partner as they were on the way up it was not successful. Typically I got this on the first time with my partner but then once we had tried again I could never get it right. Height was a key factor so that your partner had more time to catch and think about when they were going to grab you.
From my experience today I feel more daring with performing different types of lifts but at the same time worried. Personally I think it depends on the people who I am working with. With some people I felt more comfortable than others this could be because I felt like they could take my weight more or I did not think they was confident in themselves. Your centre of gravity and knowing where your centre of gravity is, is key in lifting. In this week’s reading by
Amy Woodhull states that ‘We change centre of gravity when we change shape, and often compensate so automatically that we aren’t even awake of it’ (Woodhall,1978,46) When performing a lift you automatically think about where your safest part of your body is or where your feel the most safe. Your centre of gravity will automatically change with you and this is something which I had never thought about. From reading the reading it has made me think about where my centre of gravity is at all times and how this shifts.
Woodhull, A. (1978) Center of Gravity. Contact Quarterly/Contact Improvisation Sourcebook. 4(1) 43-48.