In class we watched Steve Paxton’s small dance. This is where when you are standing still, your body is never fully still as gravity is trying to push you down therefore you are constantly moving as a reaction to gravity although this is not a conscious thought. We tried this but made it a conscious thought so being
“Directed by gravity working on the body” (Ravn, 2010, p21-34)
To force your body to go with gravity and create a run. I found that during this I generally went forwards or on a diagonal. Once we were comfortable going with gravity we then developed this into a fall to the floor, at first I was scared to do this as I didn’t want to cause injury but after a short while of doing the exercise I felt comfortable throwing my body around and going with gravity instead of going against gravity as I realised that it is when you go against gravity that you would cause injury.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sJKEXUtv44
After this we did an exercise where we were then taking and receiving weight, one person would be the ‘cat’ and the other would be the ‘cat owner.’ The cat owner would give surfaces of their body for the cat to give their weight into. At first me and my partner, Abbie, really struggled to give each other weight and so we stayed close to the ground until we felt completely comfortable then we explored more whilst being stood up. At first Abbie was the cat and I was the cat owner, we then swapped so I was the cat and Abbie the cat owner but eventually we just naturally flowed so that we were both cats and cat owners. This made the movement more flowing and easier to do, whilst having someone set as the cat and someone set as the cat owner I found myself thinking about what I would do. Whilst both being the cat and cat owner I found that I didn’t think about the movement at all and that the movement just flowed naturally.
Ravn, Susanne (2010) Sensing weight in movement. Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, 2, 21-34
Steve Paxton (2009) steve paxton. smalldance. [online video] Available from, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sJKEXUtv44 [Accessed 13/10/2014].