So this week is the first of many more to come of our year two contact improvisation class. It started off just like most classes do in the first week with going though the handbook to see what is expected of us and what our week by week plan is. We then moved onto the readings with one of my favourite quotes being. “Depending on your perspective, the skin can be considered the outer surface of the brain, or conversely, the brain can be considered the deepest layer of the skin.”(Heitkamp, 2003) I like this because I had never thought of the skin as being a brain but when you think about it, it makes complete sense that it is. The skin tells us so much information every second from what we are touching to if we are in pain and in fact it is the nerves in the skin that tell our brain that we are in pain so does that make our skin more important as an organ than our brain?

After this we moved on to have a short talk better known as a paw wow in the contact world. This is where we discuss what we will be doing in class. We also talked about what we will do before we start every class as the paw wow is only one of many things that we will do before each class and jam.

Before every contact class we:
• Enter room
• With our body’s
• With our minds
• Paw wow (Talk at the start of class )
• Walk around (energising the space and getting to know the space )
• Skinesphere ( waking up the skins sensors to touch)
• Lower Kinesphere
• Upper Kinesphere
• Whole Kinesphere
• Grazing ( short contact moments with a partner before we moving on to the next person)
• Encounters (longer contact time spent with a partner)

After completing all of these tasks we moved on to pushing, pressing and sliding this was something that we did on our own. After some time had passed we were asked to think more about what body parts we were using to press into the floor with. I then noticed with I was manly using my hands and feet so I tried using other parts of my body like my head and back and found that by doing this I was making more interesting shapes and the task a lot more.
We then carried on this past in partners. Me being partner A and Leanne being partner B partner B would carry on with the pushing, pressing and sliding as partner A tracked their movements with their hands. As partner A I felt quite relaxed even with the speed needed to keep up with my partner but with I was partner B I felt very closed in and felt the need to get away. The next and final step is that we both do each part of the task at the same time. This I found to be very relaxing at a slow rhythm and found that I also used my feet, knees and elbows but when asked to increase the rhythm to me it felt like I was in a fight with my partner and used more force and presser on her.
Heitkamp, D.(2003) Moving from the Skin An Exploratorium.:CQ/CI Soursebook 2