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.
~
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.