June 4, 2011:
“river of sensation” and “wind in the face”
Partner Shoulder Work
Spirals
Partner Rocking Sacrum
walking triangulation (like a meditating mind coming to silence)
“I’m the kind of person who...)
June 5, 2011:
· Began on our own
· Standing Bobbing (scapula) to foot to foot then standing spiraling then vigorous bobbing
· Let the bike tire ride down the hill and back up, ie, down to go up (cause you gotta get up to get down and the other way around
Tracking the duet between head and tail, then choosing 2 other points on the body to track/duet.
90% less effort
· Spirals on the ground : begin on back, reach up with fingers, take fingers and eyes into spiral onto belly (empty the legs). Try with each limb.· Migrating
· Mote – Spirit of Aloneness then Spirit of All One-ness and spirit of invitation.
Circle up, name your place on the spectrum from river of sensation and wind in the face (2 of the 5!) and partnering at that level à Warm-Up duet in which the tasks were : look over the shoulder, See eyes of person in another duet
· Spine Body Work with Partner. Feeling the spine. Palpating and mobilizing individual vertebrae from the spinous processes by grasping them with fingers through paraspinal muscles.
· Two hands on the Spine with same partner. Finger dance into duet.
Thoughts feelings
first duet of the day. My oh my. The category of wind in the face put me into a place of being looked at as such and therefore “I should” do this and that. We ended up lying flat on the ground, he ontop of me, both of us looking at the ceiling and oh thank you thank you push me deeper into the earth please thank you sweat, hands, weight, gratitude. I am indeed of this thing, this planet… looking at the sky.
Find the up in gravity, over and over and over again. Or not.
(Paraphrased)Boredom is the place where you habits have done their thing and you ready to discover something else
Spinal study: the subtleties. Ah the beauty of vertebrae and the closer the got, the subtler the movement the deeper the listening. Waiting. So deep the listening brought the duet into an authentic place. A wait-and-see place. New patterns await.
What is the propensity towards trust? Which is riskier, wind in the face or river of sensation? Which feels too intimate?
Sandbox game one without an objective. We are playing games and they have objectives and they are : so very motivating. To avoid being tagged: make nests between two people and one person is it, two people are out, you can, to be safe break into a nest but if you get bumped out of a nest, you are fair game to be tagged.[1]
“Pause and replenish curiosity”
“Embrace the Awkwardness.”
Afternoon
In trios:
- Bus Stop/ Gelato flip: feet or Avive. Avive means land on hands. Avive: Going over the the …fighting an impulse the impulse to right oneself.
- Bus stop to back flip: like a bus stop but don’t go all the way across to scoop, just scoop butt cheek to butt cheek. Assumed-avive. Partner does a back walkover and you follow!
o Steering! If you’re weight is more toward your head steer with your finger/arm; when the weight is more toward your feet, steer (spiral) with your feet. It works at every level (on all fours, standing, etc) and at every plane (standing side by side, eg).
Took a five min break then got back in our trios :
- Duet with the third witnessing from all levels (different parts in the room and different levels… lying down, standing)
- Third joined the duet after eleven minutes (and a min to let them finish conversation), and the trio cont for a minute until one left leaving a new duet
- Repeat
- Talked about experience
June 6
Individual warm up
Find pulse somewhere on your body.
Find your pulse: hands together, rotated slightly so fingers can drape. Hand on hand, find pulse, hand on forearm, hand on side of chest lower it to belly, find pulse.
Chocolate – history. Feeling it, (melting it) Look at, smell it, EAT IT over three minutes: no teeth. Allowing the foretaste, the peak, the after-echoes all to resonate
Partners, one lying on stomach on floor in front, arms down along sides. Other partner seated facing their partners back. Seated partner, the explorer, bring palms together and rotate hands to the fingers can drape. Allow these hands to feel what it is like to NOT be giving hands.
Exploring partner palpates the isolated bony process of spine in same way as earlier (by digging straight down between spine and muscle and grabbing bone. Palpate the sections again, also finding the rocking Partnered and palpated spinal column all the way down to under the tail bone with permission from partner then going back into rocking. Thoracic vertabra were mobile but lumbar not so. The thoracic vertebra were more mobile, and smaller than the lumbar vertebra. I craved feeling my partner move as I felt her spine. And lucky me, that came next. Partner began micro-movements and we tracked as they got bigger and traveled out to limbs. Feather-light, some centimeters away, a foot away. Switch. At the end of the switch was our first duet, started back to back. Spine is a string of pearls
Return to the ground with same partners. Return to spine rocking. “imagine, 4%, 10%, 20%...” and they take over (because 20% is enough!) J With hands grasping the bony process of one section of the spine, “Imagine doing this motion all on your own. Give 5% effort, keep imagining doing this all on your own. I am going to let go…now zero %.”
Lined up according to height. Martin broke us into trios and demo’d a sort of trust fall. Two face toward each other with third between who has her hips and shoulders pressed down to activate out the top of head direction. Then the partners pass the middle person back and forth. Variation: catch partner with non-hand body part. Variation: middle person pivots to face the direction of the fall. Variation: catching partner, to be done only if middle person is facing him, takes a few steps backward causing middle person to stagger forward while maintaining lean-tone of body and out the top of head directionality. Catching partner can catch her on his side, back, hands, or lift her with the incoming momentum of the fall.
“It is generous when somebody falls, because the falling is saying I don’t know how it’s going to end”
The discipline of the pause: Take time to stop to replenish your curiosity before you lose your attention, before you get overwhelmed. In dance. In life.
5 min duet, 2 min small dance. Repeat 3 cycles
Round Robin, ended with the good ole puppy pile. A Midwestern tradition? Perhaps. Like hot dish. We are all part of a very hot dish. 88 and humid.
Observations: “have whole body available”, at any time, can you receive an initiation from the middle of your back? The right side of your chest? The side of your thigh? Etc. When I danced, I felt…the ability to accept locally so that the rest of you is available for other invitations. The idea of leaving something behind. (reminiscent of first day being challenged when spiraling across the back of another who spiraled under me, to leave my legs behind, disengaged, for the floor to bear.)
Interview One topics: decision to stop teaching, the history of CI, contact dancers as detached from the world of news—retreated ,
I’m being generous! I’m falling The way in which Martin’s departure into the unknown is an act of generosity. How? Who knows.
June 7, 2011 Today is our “day of rest”
We are practicing the discipline of stopping to replenish curiosity. Martin has noticed that, on workshops longer than a weekend, the fourth day is all about managing energy, avoiding injury. He advised us to not dance today. In preparation, we all had a badass dressup booty party last night. “Laying on the floor while people’s yummies danced over our heads.” But today we have napped, chatted, journaled, read, canoed, saved a tent from the river, shopped, cooked, and hennaed. The importance to connect as a group, to get to know each other off the dance floor.
“What else should I be doing?” “You could be isolating your thoracic spine instead of kegeling that banana”
Mars brought the string of pearls, and we wore them.
June 8, 2011 Mazomanie air conditioned studio
Feet, pour as pancakes, crepes
Brazilian hugs with non dominant cheek, lose a centimeter by dropping height/softening at joints, drop into the hug, notice walking to the next person.
Non-dominant cheek slough down a person’s willing body. The standing body offering resistance, pathways. The slougher rolling up to slow it down.
Foot investigation in partners. Non-giving hands—exploring hands look for the pearl in the foot, 10 minutes per foot. Both partners have a turn and then spoon together, and duet, a wake up morning duet…
Dancing the wake up duet I felt the spiral as instrumental in un-weighting me to be available to go any direction.
Discussion: how a “river” can stay river even if it appears windy. (windy= effortful? Heavy breathing?)
Expecting a hug, walking towards outstretched arms, dive in turning back towards partner, hooking her wrist with your thumb-forefinger crook, riding her armpit on your shoulder, her chest on your back, her feet trailing…
LAB work: in trios (or one duet) we labbed an aspect of the question: “rides on the fly” for an hour and presented one or more findings to the group.
Labbing warmups: two olive oils wanting to slip to the top. 1,2,3->1,2, sound/movement->1,sound/movement, sound/movement. and another. The importance of warming up body/mind/imagination for labbing. being goal oriented as a way towards deeper understanding.
The space between bodies as pathway into lift
Turkish women’s greeting of carressing shoulders to hands
June 9, 2011 Sauk City cooler day, gray…
Began with journal acceptances of gifts/images from Martin about our dancing. Images to manifest, to embody, to put on paper and leave in our dance bags…
Dance is coming from my ovaries.
Whiskers coming from my spine, from top of head to tail
Tongues coming from my spine
Tongues in my hip crease in front
My family has been doing CI for three generations
You have a teaspoon of molten pleasure right in the solar plexus
bones softened by grief
you have two pendants, they are plums hanging off of shoulder blades, ripe and fragrant
your heart is drunk
kissing for miles and miles
there’s an artesian well of ambrosia, necter of the loving gods, just below your belly button
your ribs are fingers that can articulate seperately, fingers facing either front or back
every body part is a feather
Good morning dance came out of exhaling a tone into first our bodies, choose different parts and tone into our own bodies, and then into the bodies of others. Moved into duets
Spine work: with a partner, we again isolated the bony process from the muscle. Wiggle, tap the spine move from it. OH MY GODDESS was this an incredible dance. My partner Sarah from MN and I found the isolated, roving wiggle while standing and let it lead us into a dedicated dance that put me into an altered state, am I still in it, days after? What a deep, crazily focusing activity.
Honey, do you REALLY love me? One person moves away from another, leaving an invitation with their back. The other person pulls them back. Followed by duet
Closing circle… martin says that the point of contact is to dilate time before we die. Joey gets choked up because while dancing with Clare he thought that if nothing else, this [contact improv] is not a bad way to pass the time before we die. To close we clap silently in slow motion three times, pause, and then clap fast. It was a symbol for dilating time… we were chewing stretching the time when clapping slow. Luscious. Then when we paused it was the moment when you look back, and all you see are three quick claps. So loud. So rich. Passing so fast. Thank god there is more than one moment to dilate.
Parlour game redux: the metaphor game, the adverb game, psychiatrist, Baby do you love me, (please add more)
