Overview of Movement Module

This movement module has definitely brought our whole class together, as the exercises we have to do break the personal boundaries and ensure that you get to know everyone in the class. However, in terms of my learning and progression in my skills and abilities in dance or movement have not really improved to the standard I'd hope they would. If I had one issue with this module, it would be that we should do more dance based exercises in order to further our understanding of dance to give us the best possible foundation in the performance industry. But i did enjoy this module, it was just that it wasn't what i expected. It has however, taught me to be more open and less self conscious of myself, which is always a positive thing, but I feel that along side a dance module it would have been more beneficial.   

Movement Assessment

The movement assessment was on the 29th April 2013. I found this assessment good, and i thought my progression from the first lesson to now has been extremely strong. In the assessment, the contact improvisation piece was now a group of three of us rather than two. This provided significant    issues, and meant it was a lot harder to remain in contact with the others at all times. I really enjoyed the part of the assessment where the space was opened up, this allowed for freedom of expression without being judged. This meant it was a safe space and it allowed for me to be a lot more free and able to express my own style of movement rather than following some one else's. Overall, this movement assessment went well, especially as it was my first assessment as i wasn't able to participate in the formative assessment due to my injury. 

Semester Two - Week Seven

In this workshop we explored the telling of stories through different means. We were given a topic and then asked to portray this through movement and words. At first, it was hard to not do 'literal choreography' where you portray exactly what you are telling, this however is not truthful. The movements need to be an extension of the feelings and emotions of the words not just a physical representation of these words. This was quite hard to grasp, however, was a lot easier when we just used sounds or silence rather than words. Movement is sometimes devalued or hindered by the lexical or verbal language, and this workshop helped me to appreciate the beauty of movement and dance, as sometimes the physical language is more powerful and can say what the verbal language can only hint at. 

Using all the knowledge we have built up over the past year to do with the spine and body connectivity come into play here. As you cannot move without being aware of how each part of your body connects to one another and having support from each area do to move adventurous movements.   

Semester Two - Week Six

In this week's workshop we experimented with different parts of the body leading us, for example, one area of your body having eyes and how that would change your movements. 

We then started on preparations for the movement assessment. This involved a 'duet' piece focusing on contact improvisation. I found this quite difficult due to the injury I sustained in semester one. I find it hard to support my own weight onto my arm/elbow, so when you add someone else's weight on top of that, it was very painful and i wasn't able to support their weight. This therefore sometimes affected the fluidity of the piece as I would be more concerned with not sustaining pain or another injury. However, most of this was in my head and i am not probably going to injure myself. I find contact improvisation very uncomfortable to participate in. I am extremely self conscious about my weight and find it hard to trust someone with sharing my weight with someone. This therefore is a very hard task for me to come to terms with. 

Semester Two - Week Five

This workshop focused on the work we had done at the Hancock Museum, we had to physically explore the differences in movements in some animals, we looked at the differences in the spine in fish and apes. In this workshop we had physically take on the different spinal positions of these animals. This was quite tricky as the spine is fixed and not easily manipulated to imitate other animal's spines. We were given a list of different apes and asked to portray one of them, we chose a gorilla, then we had to become this animal, and the other groups had to guess who we were trying to show. We could tell what animals the groups were based on the position of the spines. This just goes to show how much our spine has on our movement. The spine is the 'backbone' of our body and therefore controls but also constricts some of our movements.

Hancock Museum

This week we went to the Hancock museum, this task was to explore the skeletons of different animals and compare them to our own. The most interesting part for me was the T-Rex, to see the difference in our structure and how this difference affects our ability to move in a certain way.

As you can see the T-Rex's structure is very different from our own, their ribs are much larger than ours, which means their organs must have been bigger or more spread out and more protected. Their skull is also a lot bigger which means its heavier and will affect their movement, as they wont be able to turn their head as quickly. We will be exploring these differences in movements in our next lesson.

Semester Two - Week Four

This week was extremely informative, we worked onthe joints of the body. The joints provide us with the majorioty of our movements. Althoug, the joints are where we hjold a lot of our tension and will therefore find it hard to move correctly and freely. To ensure we were relaxed we worked on massaging each other's main joints. I found working on the thigh joint relatively easy and i found it easy to give my weight and control of my leg to someone else. However, when it came to the shoulder and arms I found it extremely difficult to give the weight to someone else (it was the same person both times). Therefore, I discovered to the extent how much tension I carry in my shoulders, this was very enlightening. We worked on massaging for about 10 mins and for those 10 mins I did not manage to fully give the weight of my arm to scott (who was massaging me), this has made me feel slightly annoyed with myself as I couldn't fully get the benefit from this task and do what I was supposed to.

 

Relaxing, is something we do not do a lot of in today's society, the activities we call 'relaxing' like watching TV are not really relaxing our mind and body. This therefore, means we do not relieve the tension and stress and hold in it damaging ways in our body. I found that this exercise really helped me to appreciate the importance of relaxation, and I feel that in time I will be able to relax fully and this exercise will be extremely benefitical to me. After this class I went and researched the importance of relaxation and here are some links to various websites which I will use to help me relax and to find out the importance behind relaxing:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/emotional_health/mental_health/coping_relaxation.shtml
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/Pages/ways-relieve-stress.aspx
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~healthed/relax/index.html
http://www.rxadvices.com/relaxation-techniques/why-is-relaxation-important-what-are-the-benefits-of-relaxation/

Breath Made Visible

This week we had to watch a film about a dancer called Anna Halprin. This dance is very similar to the movements we do in our workshops. Anna does not focus on perfecting structured and rigid dance movements, but using dance to freely express our innermost thoughts. 

One bit that has stayed with me, was the part where Anna was teaching children a dance lesson and allowing them to express themselves. I found this extremely inspiring especially as I work with children and the beauty and innocence of a child is expressed through their seemingly random movements. I feel that Anna Halprin allows adults to express their 'inner child' in a way. 

Some parts though, I thought were slightly odd. When the dance group were dancing with brown paper. I am not entirely sure what was the point of that movement piece and what that means. But as I do not come from a dancer background I feel I may not be able to understand it fully as I would have done. One of my friends, who does come from a dancer background, really saw the beauty and understood the reasoning behind it. 

Semester Two - Week Three

This lesson really pushed me to the edge of comfort zone and I struggled with the strange abstractness of this workshop. 

We started by lying on our backs with our feet on the wall and our legs at a right angle, and had to yield and push ourselves off the wall with force. This I really struggled with, I could never get enough force to push myself that far away from the wall. Tom and Scott, who were next to me, managed to push themselves very far, i'm not entirely sure what they were doing differently to push themselves further or if it was just that they have more strength in their legs.

We then experimented with pulling and twisting people on the floor, this was quite fun although involved trust as you had to trust that the other person had your weight and that they weren't going to let you come to harm. I struggled with this at the beginning as I am very weary of injury after my previous injury. This means that it takes me a little longer to fully commit to giving my weight and trusting my safety with someone else. 

This next part of the workshop was the most odd which involved the yielding and pushing motion we used earlier. We had to yield and push off the floor and let our partner support us either from our ribs, hips or sit bones. This part was extremely odd and embarrassing to participate in. The relevance of the exercise to the performance degree is still something i'm questioning, although has allowed me to trust the peers in my class more. 

Semester Two - Week Two

This lesson was very physical and took a lot of energy and commitment. We started off in pairs having to copy the energy,tempo and speed of the other person's movement without copying their movement exactly. For this I was working with Scott, who is much more of a dancer than me so my repertoire of movements is much more limited than his so at first I felt a little bit uncomfortable working in this way, however with time i loosened up and really enjoyed this task. We then had to find ways of going against the flow of the other person's movement, I found this easier than trying to copy as me and Scott have very different styles of moving so this task suited us a bit better. Overall this task was very enjoyable and allowed me to express myself without fear of being embarrassed. 

The next task was called 'a little bit of me, a little bit of you'. This game involved us doing some movements and then watching someone else do movements and then copying some of the movements to make our 'dance' a little bit of our style and then a little bit of someone else's style. This was extremely tiring and took a lot of physical activity and concentration, but was a really fun task and helped me to become aware of everyone's different styles of moving, and no one style is correct or incorrect.

Semester two - "Welcome back!"

This was the first lesson back after the Christmas break. This workshop was the first workshop since my injury in which I was able to partake, obviously not to the same level as my peers but still participating is better than just observing. However, this workshop proved quite tricky for me in finding where my limits are in terms of my injury. I still feel extremely scared of hurting it again, but I do want to participate to the best of my abilities otherwise I fear I may fall behind. My arm, especially the upper arm which hasn't been used really for the past 2/3 months is extremely stiff and find it incredibly hard to lift my arm above my head, this meant some of the warm up stretches I couldn't do.

During this lesson I felt my focus was elsewhere, I feel I'm an still not used to being able to move my arm and am busy worrying about someone hurting me that I'm not fully committed to movement. This means I am not getting the full benefit of this module at the moment. This is a psychological barrier I have to overcome, which I feel will come with time, but at the moment movement is still a challenge for me. After coming out of this class, I also noticed some tension and aching in my arm when trying to do my physio exercises or any other tasks that involved using my arm, this made me think that I was pushing it too hard, and should be a bit more careful in future lessons.

Anyway, in this lesson we started off with Do-In which is an exercise to help you become aware of your body and the tension in your body and hopefully relax any unnecessary tension, in order to prepare you for movement. Personally, I feel this does make you more aware of your body but I don't think it prepares me as much as other warm ups for example, the Peggy hackney patterns of total connectivity I feel better prepares me for this type of movement.

This workshop focused on the spine and how we can manipulate this for movement in performance. The discussion on the vertebrae of the spine was extremely informative and enlightening.

Update #2

I had my accident a couple of months ago, and have had to get used to coping with life after the incident. I have been having physiotherapy to ensure that I get full mobility in my elbow in the future. This physio is extremely hard, as I have to push my joint through some pain, but if I don't then my arm will never be as strong.I am constantly worried that I will re-injure myself during some movements, but i'm sure this is mainly psychological. Although, I still can't straighten my arm, it is much more mobile that it has been. I still have a lot of stiffness in my elbow and upper arm as I haven't been using it over the past couple of months. My exercises that will push my elbow use a 'theraband'  which increases the power in the exercise to push the elbow more. My physiotherapist says it still may take a year to full be able to use my elbow and straighten my arm, this slightly worries me as I feel my achievement in this module may be affected by this injury. The psychological impact of this as well is something I did not anticipate, not being able to participate in my lessons or not feeling like I am performing to the best of my ability has made me feel upset and doubt my capabilities and feel extremely vulnerable.   

Movement Assessment

My movement assessment kicked off a week of assessments for my course. As I have said before, I have not been able to participate in lessons due to my injury, and I was also not able to partake in the assessment. So, I was given the job of timing the groups so that they all had three mins to complete an improvisation. 

One piece in particular that stood out to me involved a lot of different movements that all juxtaposed. The pieces that worked, and were interesting to watch contained a mixture of sharp movements and flowing ones, they also explored the differences in tempo, energy and how contact can change the piece. Some people's contact work were extremely strong, as they really connected with each other and reacted to the contact. 

I feel the standard of work in this assessment was extremely high. It was extremely useful to watch the other groups and how inventive some where in their use of different movement scores. I only wish that I could have participated in this assessment as it would have been a good chance to practice the art of contact improvisation.