This week was our second to last contact session and I think over the past few weeks my confidence and movement vocabulary has grown. Especially from week 1 and 2 when I did not enjoy contact at all, to where I am today my thoughts have completely changed for the best. To start off with we ended up doing a jam straight away it was unusual but was great. As it was unexpected the movements were non habitual as I did not have time to think about which movements was coming next, or to think about who I was going to work with as we was all in the space. The movements which I created I enjoyed dancing and especially creating the connections with different people. Maybe this was because we had a contact class on Saturday our connections with each other are stronger than ever allowing me to have complete freedom in my movement choices. I thoroughly enjoyed this exercise.
When Kirsty announced we was going to revisit some of the contact work we learnt on Saturday I was excited. As I had the opportunity to be both the under and over dancer this pushed my boundaries of having the fear of going upside down, having the chance to look at this again allowed me to refine the movements. From doing this I started off quite nervous as going upside down is something I am not confident with but once I had done some of the exercises a couple of times I felt an adrenaline rush go through my body due to the speed which my body was moving. Rebecca and I worked well throughout this process and felt really good to revisit it all. The next exercise included us improvising incorporating the small weight baring lifts we had just completed. Once we had done this exercise Rebecca and I found this extremely difficult as we lost the connection and found it difficult to get back into the movements to make it flow. Once we had the chance to go again and understand where we was going wrong the movements were fluid and they were coming naturally to us even the lifts felt good doing this across the floor. We noticed that if we held the connection throughout the exercise our movements would come naturally and we would not get stuck. We was both so happy with ourselves at the end of this exercise as we both felt like we had achieved something which would have never expected we would have been able to do which was a fantastic feeling.
This week we created our own scores, our score was called the halfway score and the audience were stood in a line down the centre of the room with the two spaces either side. The rule we had was that you could only enter with a partner not individually but once you was in the space you had the freedom to do what you wished. We played different types of music to see how our bodies would react, as I was involved in the score I did not let the music lead my movements which I found difficult as this is something I normally do. As I was in this score I felt confident and enjoyed working with other people. I never seemed to be observing for longer than 30 seconds which is unusual for me. The score was ten minutes long but it felt like it flew by, this could have been because I was always in the space either improving on my own or with different people. As we had two sides of the space open it felt less daunting as I didn’t feel like everyone was watching me as the audience was stood in the middle they could choose which side they would want to watch.
When participating in other groups scores depending on what the score was about I didn’t feel as comfortable all the times. When giving restrictions and working on my own I felt open in a way that I was out of my comfort zone and this is something which I don’t like. So when being told to work in either side of the space and only allowed to have two couples in the space with everyone else improvising on their own, I felt like this took away the fluidity as I had to concentrate on who is in a duet and who isn’t. Being in the round I found easier than normal as I feel like this is the most exposing space to be in, maybe as my confidence has grown massively I found it less daunting. I tried my hardest to push my own boundaries throughout all the scores to be more involved in them and work by myself using dynamics and speed as a stimuli.
This week I personally feel like I have pushed my own body and gone to a place in contact where I would have never thought I had been before, doing lifts, going upside more often and creating a connection with my peers. I have learnt more about my own body then I thought there was possible and thoroughly enjoyed the module. I am looking forward to next week which is our last session where we get to show our duets and participate in the Underscore.