Learning – Andrew Dance

Grounding exercises for contact improvisation

I attended a class on 10 June lead by Justin Philpot with Soledad at CI Goldsmiths, University of London. Two exercises which he presented, left me questioning how we teach and what the exercises taught us. Here, I discuss and analyse them.

Beginning Contact Improvisation, January 2023

I taught a day workshop on 22 January for people beginning contact improvisation. My good friend and dancer Aundre Goddard attended. During the Covid pandemic we’d created dances outside in the park but now ‘post covid’, I could finally introduce Aundre to my favourite dance practice: contact improvisation.

Remembering Hugo Demartini, artist

On 10 February 2022, I stood in University Parks, Oxford with 100 small sticks and paper slips between my cupped hands. Raising my hands upward, the sticks and paper were lofted into the air. As they were rising they slowed until, for a moment, they were suspended, neither rising nor falling – a cloud of sticks before me, about to scatter and return earthward in a shower.

Dance as sculpture | dancing as sculpting | dancer as sculptor

I began to research art manifestos with a view to writing one for dance. Taken together with my recent practice research for the dance ‘Torus 2.3.3’ then I came to the conclusion that dance could be re-contextualised and situated as sculpture.

One year on: stay home, save lives, do Qi Gong!

It’s about a year since the Coronavirus epidemic began in the UK (March 2020) and there have been two periods in lock-down (stay at home order). During this period, I’ve had a regular practice of Qi Gong (Qigong) – the 18 movement form – and this is what I’ve found in it.

Taking a point of contact for a walk

The artist Paul Klee is famously quoted as saying “a drawing is taking a line for a walk”. Can we choreograph a point of contact as it is drawn over the body? Or – as we might say – can we take a point of contact for a walk?

Lessons from dancing with sticks – the semiotics of stick dancing

When I began teaching and facilitating dancing with sticks, I draw on my experience of contact improvisation but quickly found it wasn’t enough. I needed new concepts. A movement practice with sticks, has its own semiotics (meanings) and its own physics.

The somatics of cleaning your teeth!

A few years ago, I attend sessions with a teacher of Alexander Technique. At the time, I had a stressful job which created discomfort and tension in my body. Alexander Technique was incredibly effective in bring relief to me but it’s only more recently that I more fully understand its application – including cleaning my teeth!!

Embodied decision-making?

The University of Oxford has been using the humanities for leadership training – mostly for leaders in business. Acting and singing are two humanities featured in their programme but what about movement or dance? I draw-up a two day course based upon my movement practice of contact improvisation. [Research by Fiona Bennett]

‘I learn so much from my [dance] students’

‘I learn so much from my students’ is often said by those who teach. But is it true? Teaching/facilitating at a session of Oxford Contact Dance in October, I had something of a rude awakening!