Finding New Movement ~ with Flora Weigmann
~ Fall 2006 ~ 8:00 - 10:00am _ 11.14.06 / 11.21.06 ~
Beginning with a warm-up of post-modern dance exercises, we'll turn our attention inward to our own bodies and how they work. This individual focus will then be opened up to explore the choreographic possibilities of many bodies working together. Through improvisational structures, we will build our experience and ideas into both individual and group dances.
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Most of us thought it best that Flora visited us at the end of our semester together than at the beginning. This is because we spent a great deal of time in her class massaging one other and participating in what Sarah calls “touch-based dance.”
“It was surprising how comfortable I felt with it all though,” Sarah said, “and I think it was because we were all so used to being around each other.”
Qusai said that like Carol and Hana, Flora reminded him of the importance of massage and touch, “not so much as a luxurious treat but as a tool for body awareness, creating space for your mind to descent and expand.”
Some of her other exercises included pairing up with a partner and lifting each part of their body and then dropping it on the floor. Or they consisted of dancing for a partner, with our eyes closed, for around seven minutes and then recreating this dance together, start to finish. My partner, Mark, was able without even the help of his sight to find Katie and dance ballroom style with her for a minute or two, dipping her in the final moments of the exercise. Did you know it was Katie, we wondered. “Of course,” he said back. But how, we asked him. “It was in the grip,” he said back.
We were also asked to place our hand firmly on our partner’s pelvic bone, basically the bone directly atop one’s butt crack, and in a sense push them across the room from this point. “Ready?” I said to Mark. He did not answer.
A few weeks later, at the end of our final event, I sat and talked with Claude and Deena about their experience at Sundown Schoolhouse. “You guys seemed to have known each other for much longer than you actually had,” he said. “You were like family.” I do not know what I said back to Claude. All I know is that as he said this, I thought only about this moment, reaching for Mark’s pelvic bone as Flora looked on.