REHEARSAL 2 - 20/03/2024

With my second rehearsal, I wanted to start exploring contact in more depth as it will be an integral factor in the relationship between the dancers and their psychological journey throughout the piece. I want to get the dancers used to working in tandem and relating to each other. Within movement quality I want to explore the factor of sharing weight and pressure and what it means for the dancers to move as one unit, and subsequently, what happens when that unit is split. This rehearsal served as a time to experiment with some floorwork and contact improvisation for myself to get a choreographic visual as to what the specific two dancers' relationship manifests itself as through movement.

We started the session with improvisation, the dancers starting back-to-back and myself prompting them to move as one, listening to each other's needs and inviting movement derivative from the breath. There was a prompting of melting, communication, indulgence in intentions, letting movements finish themselves off and then how that can move them into a new place. Once we moved into more expansive movements, we explored the idea of care and what it means for them to support each other in their movements.

Video of Short Contact Improv:

From watching this in reflection, some of the movements are quite tentative, most likely as this is one of the first times we are practising contact improvisation, but I think we can actually play with it in their relationship-building throughout the piece, starting with some uncertainty and hesitation and then what it means to fully rely on that other person to move and get to the next place. It feels interesting concerning this idea of identity that we're exploring in what it means to have conflicting sides of the self and how those selves underlyingly interweave throughout life and through different lenses of perception; internally and externally. I further found a pulsing sensation throughout the movement, which was aided by the music I played in the background, having a steady tempo, almost like a heartbeat. From personal experience this idea of being stuck in your head can be grounded and centred by a heartbeat, its repetitive nature being a kinaesthetic reminder of time passing in both mind and body. I definitely want to continue working with this track in order to have a centring moment in the piece, the constancy of a heartbeat alongside the self both being a continuous backbone of living.

We then thought about repetition and how the act of repeating something in everyday life and routine plays into mental security and safety. So we just started by looking at what ways in which we can use contact to travel and get from one side the the room to another. We landed on a roll over the back that I took from their improvisation in rehearsal 1, where Emily rolled over Tilly in a child's pose. I wanted to play with the levels of that so we tried starting with a tabletop roll, then a child's pose on the forearms and then a regular child's pose. This fed into the repetition I was looking for whilst having a sinking feeling getting lower to the floor and closer together. We tried two versions, the first where they both did the roll over each other in each position and then the second alternating so there were only 3 rolls in total. We found that the first version felt quite clunky, but the second worked quite well, so I plan to revisit these when we start putting choreography together in the next few rehearsals.

Video of Rolls Version 1:

Video of Rolls Version 2:

The last thing we tried this session was Emily walking with Tilly on her back and then lowering to the floor. I wanted to try this to get visual of one self collapsing under the mental weight of another, probably something that will go towards the end of the piece. Structurally I want for Tilly to reach exhaustion like her train of thought is running 100 miles a minutes and tiring herself out, the weight of this exhaustion then having to be carried by Emily. Their two intertwining entities no longer being an equilibrium of shared weight, interweaving, and helping each other, but one self being so overrun that they are relying on the other to keep going.

Video of Tilly on Emily's Back: