Contact Improvisation

Contact Improvisation is a form of improvised dancing which was developed and has been growing worldwide since 1972. It involves using and exploring each others body by using the fundamentals of sharing weight, touch and movement awareness.

This style of dance was created by Steve Paxton by drawing from his past experiences with martial arts and the main factor was he wanted to explore and push boundaries of his students and colleges. This form of improvisation plays with falling-off balance, counterbalance, breathing techniques, learning the mechanics of the body to be able to handle someones body weight or lift them and finding the shelves of the body to do this.

Contact Improvisation Workshop

Before the workshop we watched videos of contact improvisation and I was not really comfortable with the whole concept of putting your whole body weight onto someone else’s. We experimented with different moves that came from a task called ‘jungle playground’ with included rolling over each other, climb on each other and roll off. At first I was quite hesitant to do it but once we did some moves together I began to like doing something different that consisted of trusting each other. I did feel scared of being dropped because a big part of contact improvisation is making the moves flow nicely while you are holding someones body weight but after messing around with moves my confidence did seem to build.

After doing the workshop I learnt that it was a style of dance that included loads of balance and strength so to perform this style well, takes patience to get to know your partner or group. At the beginning of the workshop I thought it would be a bit of a laugh doing contact improvisation but in the end, after trying myself, I had a lot of respect for dancers who can perform contact improvisation because it takes physical strength and a level of mental strength as it takes a lot of courage to get over the awkwardness and fear of trusting someone with your body weight.

Characterisation

When I was told I had to pick any emotion and create a piece of movement based around that emotion I felt that I would struggle to do it. This is because if I am not feeling that emotion in the moment I thought I would find it difficult to convince people that’s how I felt as I’m not an actor and struggle being expressive with my emotions through dance. Also I found it difficult to think of what movements could portray different emotions so I decided to pick the feeling of being ‘lost’. This prevented me from limiting my style of dance and movements as it is quite a broad idea and can be interpreted in different ways.

When coming up with moves I tried to think of what it felt like to be ‘lost’ physically as well as mentally and it occurred to me that every person reacts to it differently. Personally, I get stressed out and upset so the style of dance that would allow me to show this well would be contemporary as it will get across the dramatic and chaotic element of being lost. Movements that I thought would express the anxious aspect of being ‘lost’ could be shown in big bursts of energy through leaps and turns and finishing it off with being still in a certain position for a few seconds to show to realisation of being alone. Then I was going to focus on moves that were low to the ground or ground level in one certain area e.g. : floor work, rolls to the ground and finishing off a movement with reaching in different directions to try and convince the audience I was upset and needed help to escape or be found.

As I watched other peoples dances it made me realise that you create so many emotions with just one single move, this is because most people slightly enhance a movement to make it their own so they can show the emotion. So although many of us used similar or the same moves it came across to the audience differently as we had all put our own twist in to make it match our emotion or character.