We warmed similarly to earlier weeks, on the floor, we rolled the knees and other joints slowly to warm these areas up. We then lay in a semi-supine position, with our hands placed firmly on the floor. We were asked to lift our pelvis away from the floor, trying to lift our spines slowly, one vertebrae at a time so that only our shoulders were on the floor and our pelvis was being lifted towards the ceiling. This was good for warming up the spine and also increasing my levels or awareness and concentration as it was quite a particular exercise. We performed the exercise several times.
After this we stood up, we were to imagine that different parts of our bodies (knees, hips, sits bones) had eyes! We were to allow these eyes to look at the space around us. This was really hard to comprehend and nobody wanted to commit to the exercise fully to begin with, once we began to become more comfortable the movements became a lot greater and more structured so that they had a purpose. I found it hard to imagine what space the different parts of my body were looking into, I think this is to do with spacial awareness, something which I have really been trying to work on.
The next part of the workshop was focused on the arms, the first time we had used these specifically within an exercise for today. We stretched our arms above our heads, and tried to release any tension from within our shoulders. I felt confident about doing this, my arms felt very relaxed, which surprised me as I have started noticing in my everyday life that I tend to sit with a slightly hunched posture and I have to really focus on lowering my shoulders. We explored which muscles were used in order to lift our arms, and looked at the role of the rib cage and muscles in this region to aid the motion of lifting the arms. I was surprised that so many muscles were part of that one basic movement.
We then returned to back (sort of). We worked in pairs, one partner was assigned the role of 'leader', they had to place one hand on the other's lower back (the centre of the body), and use this as a way of leading the other person through the space. Liz encouraged us to use a variety of directions and pace so that both partners had to remain focused and aware. It was hard to feel through this part of my body which way my partner was trying to go, I found myself trying to look at my partner more in order to anticipate their movements rather than relying on my awareness of them through my lower back.
The next emphasised the importance of work with and against our own centre of gravity. Whereas in the previous exercise we worked to move with our centre, this next one proved to be really testing. In different pairs, we were told that one person should stand behind the other and hold onto their pelvis. The person being held onto was then instructed to try and break away from the other person, using a variety of pace and direction once again. Our centre of gravity was being pulled away from us, and with the change in direction it was sometimes quite hard to remain quite grounded. To begin with, a lot of us lacked creativity when trying to break away, we simply ran through the space. Liz demonstrated how using different movements worked more effectively as a way of breaking away. Towards the end, it became a lot harder to hold onto my partner's pelvis, this exercise was really exhausting, and so we only performed it for a few short periods of time.
As a way of continuing the work on our centre of gravity, we worked as a whole group, we were instructed to stand in neutral positions within the space, every now and then someone would move through the space and upon seeing a free hanging arm, they would first yield themselves into the floor and use the force to lift the other person's arm slightly. This was continued and developed so that we were able to lift one another from our centres. This part of the exercise was finished by allowing everyone to move through the space at the same time, the same idea of yielding was used but this time in order to lift ourselves as we performed a (karate style move???) whereby we would go to strike one another, but stop before making contact. The person who had been struck would then have to crease at the hips as previously explored to lower themselves to the ground. I found these exercises hard to complete as it became a mad rush where everyone was striking one another at the same time, there were no real moments where nothing happened and people simply moved through the space. However, there were some great moments where I really felt that my centre was being lifted and supported from the initial yielding action.
In pairs, we developed the idea of the striking action and our centre of gravity even further, to begin with, we stood facing one another, one person would perform the striking action and place their hand on the others shoulder. We tried this with both arms several times. After, we started to work on our positioning, instead of placing our hand on the other's shoulder, we were told to wrap our arm over the shoulder so that our armpit was above their shoulder and the rest of our arm went down their back. So far me and my partner found the exercise quite simple to complete, we felt quite confident going into the next part. This involved both people yielding into the floor, one would 'strike' the other, as both went down towards the floor, the action involving the shoulder and the armpit was completed and then the partner who received the strike would push away from the floor with their legs to lift the other person slightly. This was continued for a long period of time so that we developed it to a stage where we could lift our partners off the floor quite high and then either push them in a certain direction away from us or spin slightly to move them around the space. This was a lot harder to complete, several attempts ended after we tried to hard to perfect the first part rather than allowing the action to happen. I feel that I was trying to focus to much on some of the actions because of my responsibility to my partner and so I kept making small mistakes such as forgetting to sue my breath which meant the action could not be completed. We did manage to perform it a few times but did not get the chance to explore some of the bigger endings to the process as other pairs did.
We ended the session by watching a video called "Ionization". This was a very unusual piece, and is definitely something I had never seen before. The performer and choreographer Bill. T. Jones was very powerful in this piece. His approach to the movement was not to perform big expressive dance moves, instead he worked with the music, which the piece was named after, in order to move. A lot of this dance was based on the individual muscles within the body, which were very clear to see, each was moved in accordance to the music. This was good for me to see as I realised a powerful performance doesn't always mean doing the biggest things that I am capable of, and it is more important to consider my surrounding factors within a performance.
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