After this we worked as individuals, we remained on the floor, and started to work on the patterns of total body connectivity but looked at this from the point of view of evolution. We began by imagining ourselves as blobs, no main frame or structure, we simply wriggled through the space supporting ourselves with our breath. This developed slightly so that our head was used in order to lead our movement through the space and we felt more centred, which was followed by the introduction of the spine, we were now able to wriggle more efficiently through the space towards a particular direction. This then developed so that we had very small limbs, we were able to use our spine a lot to help with a swinging motion which moved from side to side, our arms and legs were used to pull ourselves along the floor. We then developed full limbs and began to move through the space by crawling, our legs and arms did most of the movement for us, our spine helped to keep ourselves centred, and again the breath was used to support all of the movement. I found this exercise very useful, it showed just how important each of the individual patterns are, and also reminded me that the breath is always the most basic and important pattern to use, even once the creature had evolved fully.
In small groups, we were handed a sheet of paper which had diagrams showing the skeletal structure of a group of monkeys (Gibbon, Chimpanzee, Gorilla and Orangutan) against that of a human.
In our groups, we were asked to pick one of the skeletons from the sheet other than the human, we were given a few minutes in which we had to decide how an animal with this skeleton would move through the space. We then performed these to each other without revealing which had been chosen, and the other groups had to guess which one we were representing through our movements. Some of the demonstrations were very clear due to certain features, for example, my group chose the Gibbon, we performed this by really emphasising the fact that this animal stands quite upright as opposed to the others, and also by extending our arms above our heads to show how the animal has had to adapt its basic posture in order to facilitate such extended arms. A couple of the other monkeys were quite similar, the chimpanzee and the gorilla in particular, were hard to differentiate. Because we were using our own bodies to show these, it was hard to show how differently sized each of the monkeys was. What we did notice when watching each other perform was that despite each of the skeletons being quite similar, the movements because of the odd feature were so different to that of a human.
Leading on from this, we looked at the pelvis of the human as had previously been explored. We were asked to stand still and focus on the movement of the pelvis, we tilted the pelvis forward and backward and from side to side, whilst trying to keep the head and shoulders still in order to emphasise the pelvis' ability to move seperately. We also worked on the idea of the thigh bones which are connected to the pelvis, the greater and lesser trochanters. We moved through the space, trying to lead the movement with these parts of the body, we tried moving whilst relaxing different muscles within the legs to see what difference this made to our motion. I found it hard to relax certain parts of my legs whilst using others, and realised that it was a lot easier to move when using all of my muscles. This helped to show the importance of all the muscles within the legs.
Screening Number 2 (Thursday 21st February 2013)
This week we also had our second movement screening of the semester. The two videos were focused mainly on contact improvisation, and one of the pioneering practitioners, Nancy Stark Stark. The first film "Fall After Newton" explored the idea of gravity and its importance within contact improvisation. Throughout the video there were many clips of performances Nancy was involved in, her movements were very impressive and seemed effortless, she and her partner remained in definite contact at all times despite the big movements they were performing. It was good to see how by working with each other for so long they became so connected to one another that they were able to trust each other completely to explore their bodies so freely. It was also good to see that whenever she came into contact with the floor, she would use her breath to allow her body to relax into the floor, something which we have explored a lot in our workshops.
The second video focused more on the origins of contact improvisation with Steve Paxton, who, as part of a dance group, began to develop contact improv in the early 1970s. Although this video was interesting to see where the form of dance/movement had begun, I found a lot of the performances similar to that which we had already seen in the previous video. Especially as these two artists have collaborated quite a bit, especially within the earlier years.
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