Today, we started by warming up on the floor, something which I found quite odd. I didn't see how we could warm up all the parts of the body if most of the body was relaxed. We were asked to close our eyes whilst lying on our backs, then we were to bring our feet together, pull our knees up to our chest and then allow the knees to drop either side of our body before returning them to the original position. The best way to imagine it is like doing breast stroke ... on your back ... without the water. We then did this again but in the opposite way, bring the knees up to the body seperated, joining them at the top and allowing the feet to return to the starting position together. We completed this warm up by adding the arms, whenever the legs and feet were stretched out, we had to also stretch our arms, whenever the legs were bent and close to the body, so were the arms.
We stayed on the floor after this, we rolled over onto our bellies, initially we used very small movements. We began this exercise by pushing slightly with the hands and arms to lift the top half of our bodies. After a while, we made this motion bigger, after pushing with our arms, we had to roll back onto the balls of our feet. We rocked between these two positions, pushing and yielding with our arms and legs until we were able to stand up using the force from the original pushing action. We then performed a cycle whereby after standing we would go back down to the floor and then down onto our hands. I din't particularly struggle with these exercises but they weren't as easy to comprehend or put into practise as some of the others.
We then continued with this idea of yielding and pushing with different parts of the body, we were all asked to find a part of the wall and lie down with our feet against the wall with our knees at a 90 degree angle. The first part of this exercise was to transfer force from the feet into the wall, and then push with the feet and legs to rocket ourselves away from the wall. A lot of us felt quite silly shooting around the room, but I could understand that the principle of the action is the preparation before the actual movement takes place.
Again, we worked on the idea of yielding and pushing, this time in pairs, one person positioned themselves in a sort of squat, trying to keep their back as straight as possible and their head upright. The other person then placed one hand on the hand and tried to push the person squatting down towards the floor, the person squatting had to bend their knees to move up and down working with and against the force of the other person. We then worked in these pairs to lift one another either from the waist or from just below the bum cheeks, as the person yielded and then pushed, we would support our partners to lift them through the space. I was confident in my abilities as a partner, but my partner wasn't comfortable with the idea of where we were lifting from so we instead focused on the earlier exercise where the hands were placed on the head instead. This made me realise that I am willing to try any exercise which we are given, and that I am open to trying new techniques and ideas, but it is unfair to expect others to be as open to new suggestions as I am.
Upon finishing this task, we formed a circle as a whole group, we did something similar to the rocking of Qigong from the previous week, but both feet were placed in parallel to one another, we rocked forwards so that our chest would come closer to our knees and then placed our hands on the floor. Eventually we made the motion bigger and faster so that we were soon rocking from a standing position into a half handstand, we lifted one leg higher that the other and the lowest leg left the floor for only a small amount of time. To make sure we were tucking our heads right under to perform the exercise properly we were asked to look behind us as we reached the closest position to a handstand. Again part of the yielding and pushing process, I didn't really see the use of this exercise after some of the other work which we had been doing as for me it felt like a small step backwards. Perhaps it was used as part of a warm down but I'm not entirely sure.
As a definite warm down, we worked in pairs, one partner lay on the floor on their back, they had to try and completely relax their whole body. The other person would lift one of the legs using both hands, supporting the leg by the ankle and knee, the person lying down had to try and give the entire weight of their leg to their partner who was exploring the possible movements of the leg, starting off slowly to give the person on the floor a chance to become accustomed. It was really hard to entirely trust the partner with the weight of my leg, I felt comfortable with all of the movements my leg was doing but i definitely wanted to be in control. When lifting my partners leg I had to remember to keep my own back straight so that I was comfortable and under no strain. After the exercise, a lot of people agreed that one leg felt more relaxed than the other.
Screening Number 1 (Thursday 7th February 2013)
This week we also had our first movement screening. We watched a DVD called "Breath Made Visible", a documentary about the life of dancer Anna Halprin. A lot of her work is based on events within her life, such as the time her husband was in intensive care, when she discovered that she had cancer etc. I found her movement very free, it looked very natural and as though it was not too considered. I did feel that a lot of her work was very abstract, and although it worked on a personal level to help her through some troubling times, I did not feel it was suitable for an audience as it was quite hard to watch. It was good to see how deep of an understanding she had for her own body and the ways in which it could move, even at the age of 86!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBE2ljCUokE This video is a trailer of the movie, it includes quotes from Anna Halprin herself, one of my personal favorites is "I danced for the fun of it". It's great to see how much she enjoys dancing, but how she uses something that she enjoys for such serious issues later on in her life.
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