saturday morning - 1.5 hr class, 1.5 hr jam

• principles:

  1. "going where you're going"
  2. sharing center
  3. following, not fighting, oneself
     • structural support, muscular fluidity
     • riding your own as well as other's momentum
     • faltering is to be entertained, not avoided

• rolling "warm-up"

  • slow slow roll - "falling", feeling each bit
  • faster - initiating various ways
  • crescent rolls - center
  • body surfing - feeling centers

  several people found details and dynamics - eg, rolling over the waist, rather than hips, etc - enlightening. the way people were sharing experiences, difficulties, insights, was great. there's too little exposure of the fact that we're all going through stuff, in this.

• coming to a stand - bit by bit, feeling structure at intermediate points

  • feel structural support along the way, settle into it, relaunch from there
  • more important to be thorough, ok to be sporadic
  • let the flow come with familiarity
  • let some stuff down to let other stuff continue up - a group effort in your body:-)
  • use spirals, backoffs to work through discontinuities

• back down to ground

  • some stuff up to let others down
  • tiny spirals
  • finding paths
  • searching and researching
  • filling out your presence

• sharing centers

  • leaning in moderately

  • feeling floor through other person's center

  • not getting planted, mobile - more about sharing balance than weight

  • sloughing - sliding down each other, sharing centers

    we didn't have time for this

    • sharing centers, one being supporter, other slider
    • though supporter is mostly stationary, both partners have fluid centers, able to adjust, reorganize together

  • angelic assistance, descending and rising

    • not just hands - once familiarity starts, supporter (angels) use body
    • first alternating roles after complete trips
    • then, roles (supporter/traveller) shifts back and fourth during transit
    • gradually get "corporeal", increasing physicality/weight of support

    a few people mentioned liking this, and someone commented that the gradual shift from angel/traveller to co-travelling enlightened them about sharing center.

    at this point, it was tempting to segue directly into jamming. i think that would have worked nicely, except that it lacked divergence, for circulation and partner-changing.

  • it would be very nice to bring approach to a mobile structure - so people learn about falling up and down together. i'm not yet sure how to frame this.

• launch - come to a stand, walking, noticing influences in and external, engaging them

  • use structure to come to stand, like before
  • walk very very slow, feel the faltering, go with instead of fighting
  • play with delaying the catch - greater energy
  • play with spirals, falling
  • into a jam

  i liked the way this lead into jamming.

  however, some people would have liked more physical, high-energy challenge, and i need to consider that for the future. considering the range of experience levels, i'm not unhappy with the mix we did. still, i now see the draw of, eg, learning to roll upwards on someone else's body. (i sorta started that with crescent rolls, and could build on that point about extending diametrically into your extremities to get over stuck places.)

satuday afternoon - 1 hr class, 1.5 hr jam:

• principles:

  1. building on morning's exploration, sense of finding one's path
  2. center flowing through falling - gravity and momentum
  3. bringing composition, collaboration into solos gradually
  4. bringing solo and collaboration together

• travelling across floor

  • start with basics of tangential falling

    from sitting, arm as guide into the floor, folding forwards and slightly sidewards to fall backwards.

    steps to come to stand.

  • rolling again, with various rolls, bringing center to various levels:

    • log and crescent rolls, again

    • shoulder roll

    • folding horsie

      `this returned a bit to the basics of tangential falling. i think it would have been good to emphasize playing with tangential falling as part of the traversals. i think that several people did, but this could have been a step:

    • should add: walking and falling, milking momentum in the falls

    • developing solos in moving from/following one's center

  • traversing the room, a la nancy stark smith's "come as you are"

    • "compositional moments"

    • solos, building on moving across floor traversing levels w/center

    • trios, but 95% independent, 5% indulging coincidence, cooperation

    • trios, 75% independent, 25% indulging

    • trios, 50% independent, 50% indulging

    • accumulations:

      moving through space, no longer with the end as a goal. one person starts moving, play with levels, their center, pace, "come as you are". the next person joins soon, when they feel some way to fit in or are just moved to get in the space. then the next, until seven people.

      once seven are in, someone watching points that out, and someone (not necessarily the first person in) leaves, until all seven are out.

      we repeat this process until everyone had a chance to go.

      there were some points where the joining and leaving got a bit quick - one time where 5 of the seven people joined at once. interesting. and, commenting on it seemed to return people to pacing it out a bit more.

    prompted by a comment from marlene, i realized that there's an opportunity here to instruct further.

    on the sidelines, marlene said something like, "it would be nice to have instructions about going from solo moving into contact".

    mulling it over, my eventual response was, "with your center".

    that is, in moments when there is an opportunity to share your center with a partner in one of these accumulations (or traversals), you can interject it. if they're also paying attention/receptive to center sharing, you get an organic engagement, that will last for more or less time depending on the situation.

    the amount you stuck with that engagement would depend on the percentage (85%, 75%, 50%) to which your choices were depending on your own trajectory versus joining that of your partner, and how the trajectories were going.

    next time.

    • instead of doing the launch described below, we did an accumulation that went to the whole room, and into jamming.

    i very much enjoyed seeing people's engagement with these structures, and the many sweet (funny, surprising, interesting, etc) moments and ecosystems. yay.

• launch - come to the floor, for underscore-ish warm-up into jamming

  instead of doing this, we continued the accumulations process to a total accumulation, into jamming.

  • tiny bit of preambulation, to find a place for
  • settling and shake down
  • curiosity about interior stillness and motion
  • curiosity about connection between space within and around you
  • extending to space further around you, without losing space within
  • sampling (grazing) connections - but continuing to move on
  • letting some connections develop, take a shape
  • open score

there are several places i could have injected a bit of higher energy stuff:

• play with falling-together skills
• rolling upwards on a person
• warmup into exercises with energetic (stuff that gets people's blood pumping) and circulation (stuff that gets people mixing, percolating together) exercises.

conversely, i think some people could have used more instruction on investing their center - feeling the ground through their partner's center. given how central i increasingly find that to be, i would lean towards elaborating that as the core for higher-energy stuff and other things.