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.