Day one of PADL. This photo is from a screenshot of my duet with David Mariano. I asked my new friend Miguel Gonzales to record it for me, whom I had the pleasure of working with during the first day of Sara Shelton Mann’s Workshop. Miguel and I worked on leading the focus and following the movement of our partner’s hand. Miguel equated it to using tablet and having the body react to the minimal movement of the wrist such as a spiral to the floor when rotating of the wrist inward. I was a very simplistic concept but feeling the minutia of the others body took a couple of practices for me. When I talked with Miguel later in the evening we talked about how he had been Contact Improvising for over 20 years and was introduced to the art from Steve Paxton in New York City. Back then he didn’t know who Steve was or what contact improvisation was either. He reminded me of my Uncle Ramon with their similar tanned skin and long grey hair. I found out he was from el D.F. in Mexico and that when he moved to New York City that his mutual friend had connected him with Jose Limon because he was the only other person from el D.F in Nueva York.
The second photo is of me and my new friend Zach King we were accidentally wearing matching shirts. Zach is a local to the City Heights area and one of the local artists of San Diego that I met during my stay. He has a lot of body art and I couldn’t help but stare. Some of my favorites pieces were the elvish greeting, from the Lord of the Rings across his right shoulder. Another piece was the water, earth, fire, and air stone tablet from the Avatar series that was on his left forearm. I could go on about his pieces form hours! I worked with him during the Contact improve foundations class that was held in the afternoon and taught by Anya Cloud. During this free class we started explored “the Small Dance” the subtle shifting of the micro-body as you simply stand. Then we explored the falling motion of gravity and the sensation of rolling through a connected point to the floor. Some questions we were asked were: How do you bring the momentum of rolling from the ground until you are to bring yourself up to standing position and then back down to the ground safely, How can you connect laying on one side of your to laying on the other side of your body while connecting all your limbs to the floor? Zach and I worked together on differentiating the difference between sliding along the body, skipping from one point of contact to another and rolling through a single point of contact. We were exploring this rolling movement and how to maintain the connection while moving it around the body. We actually got stuck in the webbed skin of our thumbs for a while because we couldn’t get the point of contact to roll or move without skipping or sliding.
The third photo from left to right shows, Nhu a local dancer to the San Diego area, Kata and Miguel, both of whom are from Tijuana and came to San Diego for PADL, Anya Cloud who was the facilitator for this part of the workshop, And Thomas who is a native of Poland and was visiting the United States.
These two photos are great examples of the diversity of partnering that can be explored during a contact improvisation jam. Christian and Anya are demonstrating what weight sharing looks like in the lower right of the photo. Where as Thomas and Miguel are using the focus of the body to give the duet direction the the left part of the photo. In the center of the photo you can see Justin and Edrian working on some lifts, another essential part of contact improvisation.
the last photo is of the City Heights Performance Annex building this will be the space that I am preforming in this week!
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