Week #8

Arcie’s movement game of tag again reminded me that movement isn’t about necessarily about the correct technique or anything, it’s about improvising and doing what feels best. I’ve always thought of tag as a game where we just chase each other, but Arcie was able to break down the walls of us having to do that. I saw people hopping on one foot, crawling on the ground and just pretty much anything that came to mind. When people were tagged, there didn’t seem to be any thought of what they were going to do. They just did what felt natural to them and it worked. Arcie’s game really allowed to me see that sometimes we think too much about our actions. The best times may actually be when we have to randomly create something on the spot without thinking about it because we don’t stop ourselves from doing anything that we wouldn’t think is normal. I don’t think I would go crawl to play tag, especially at this age. When I was a kid, I may have done that because I didn’t really care, but now it seems I am too concerned about what I would look like if people saw me doing that in a public setting. Along with the movement sessions, we also went to see a dance performance. I was extremely impressed with all the dancers there used the space. They were rolling down hills and using trees. We tend to forget that the space around us can also be used in our movements because we just think movement has to do with ourselves.

Week #7

Fun and games was the message that I got from Brian’s movement. He was able to incorporate so many different ideas into his dance. I used to think movement as what I was doing, but in actuality, it also is about how you move with other people. Brian’s activity showed me that moving by yourself is one thing, but moving and coordinating with the people around you really makes movement exciting. Like in previous classes when we partnered up with someone and did those activities where we played off each other’s energy, that’s something that we can’t do individually and we often forget that. Pushing off someone else and then also following their actions creates a very interesting energy and can’t really be explained in words. There’s just something about movement with another person that makes it completely different from anything else. When we do create shapes by playing off one another, we seemingly copy each other’s movement without even doing it on purpose. The other performance with the cha-cha-cha dance also brings a different light on movement with others. Instead of copying what the other person is doing, we actually plan movements so that complement the other person’s movements. I find it very interesting that the male and female have different movements, but they all have meaning. It isn’t like they’re just moving in random places, they’re moving with each other, but also against each other in a way.