From Contact Improvisation into Cyr Wheel

This research has been conducted at the National Centre of Circus Arts in London in July 2018.
Cyr Wheel students from NCCA and students from London Contemporary Dance School LCDS had the opportunity to relate their practices and advance in understanding how another technique feeds creative approaches and opens new pathways towards technical integration and skills.

This research was led by Laura Doehler (NCCA)
Assisted by Rick Nodine (LCDS) and Amy Welbourn (NCCA).

Participants:

LCDS:
Alejandra Gissler Hernandez

Alexandra Paal

Olive Hardy

Sam Tyson

Sebastien Kapps

Yane Corfu

NCCA:

Adam Fullick

Chloe Buyer

Fran Grisdals

Jaide annalise Brewer

Josh Curtis

Click here to view the video

Cyr seeks contact was a studio based research that explored how CI can further the practice of Cyr wheel. Over the duration of a week the premise of this research was to further technical development, a new approach to teaching and to expand how we understand and can break perceptions of each discipline by integrating the other.  While the objective was primarily to expand the practice of Cyr wheel it has in many ways allowed dancers to refresh their own practice, technically and artistically in many ways.

The combination of Cyr wheel and Contact improvisation is a research proposition for artists that have body/object and motion as dance partners to meet the challenge of relating those disciplines - as performance makers and performers that make – for contextualization and re-fin(d)ing what moves us.

CI supports a preparation and practice that integrates a great variety of elements we aim to train (in dance and Cyr wheel) and does so by furthering our own human principles of movement that concern foremost how we engage with our environment. Through the facilitation of CI classes as preparation method for meeting the wheel we created a daily structure that would help us as facilitators and the students to embark on explorations and findings.

While we had an agenda to re-think our practices, the purpose of the days we spent in the studio was for dancers and cyr wheelers alike to connect to what is unknown territory and let curiosity rule over personal agendas making. An integral part to CI already, the method of engagement and exploration that does not target outcomes, is simply to play; facilitated through the nature of cross-disciplinary work it has allowed for new ways of seeing for both dancers and circus practitioners. Giving a CI class at the beginning of the day allowed for movement principles to be integrated and served as support towards explorations.  Further down the line I will share thoughts how CI preparation methods serve the Cyr wheel but to start with I would like to point to the relevance of play as an integral part to learning, an integral part to dance and specifically to CI practice already that at times in the world of Circus can be underestimated.

We all need playground and dialogues, verbal and physical to happen between people and people and environment such as the wheel and playgrounds, to bring awareness towards what is happening rather than predetermine a journey or outcome. With play we can be surprised by new findings by allowing time to explore and we have the opportunity to change perspectives, adding greater complexity to a discipline in both understanding and execution. Although most of us perceive the importance of play, it is far too often underestimated in the realm of teaching and its role in learning. The tools of establishing play for a teacher are versatile however in this context it was foremost the nature of cross-disciplinary involvement that created a contextualization which allowed for new entry points, an abandoning of habits and a re-thinking of values and content.

For dancers to apply contact work to an object shifts perception of partner work from human to human into human and object, reconfiguring approaches and meaning of interaction, care, support and so on. It added precision and discipline within the play which I would surmise as a more acute attention because the wheel is an unforgiving partner that will not adjust, as humans do; its weight and impact are a matter of physics and the handling is comparative to calculation and craftsmanship.

For Cyr wheelers the mere aspect of play, of taking time to explore and to abandon the direct application of tricks, to allow for an unknown and also for things to not work out, that in itself marked a clear progression. To establish play as a tool towards finding and within it the opportunity to develop curiosities which are by nature personal, marked a new process that can lead to the development of personal material incorporating reflections why we like what we like and why we do what we do. Working with dancers has made a new movement spectrum available especially one that is not trick based. Experiencing the relevance of movement that transitions for example and observing how dancers hold the skills to make a physical and emotional resonance visible through movement has allowed a new understanding of the role of movement that is other than tricks. 

Whilst play appears to have been integrated into contemporary dance and CI work especially via the realm of improvisation, Circus practitioners can find it hard to let go of an attention that is trick focused. This collaboration however enabled an integration of play in a matter of fact manner its importance and relevance becoming clearer to Circus practitioners. There is a strong argument to repeat the process we underwent during this week on a regular basis to further the integration of play  and to allow for a re-thinking of the role of movement, the expansion of vocabulary, skill and integration in performance making.

Although the term presence is much disputed in the performance arts the argument also stands that play trains presence and in itself it is a performance supportive development. Lastly, play owns a capacity to integrate confidence towards ones ability to figure things out as they happen which is, if not to say, should be, a major learning target overall.

“Rather than focusing on it as a skill, focusing on it as a movement”.

Jade Annalise Brewer

The shifting of attention from trick to process could be described as the overarching frame within which we explored the various building blocks that train and make the contact dancer.

CI being a form of improvisation and exploration, training awareness and training physical skills are inextricably entwined. The sensitizing towards gravity, weight shifts, balance, reach as a muscular tone that incorporates softness, strength and the ability to respond to change, a three-dimensional spatial awareness, spherical vision, upside down and backwards motion, inversions and lifts are all aspects that are integrated by bringing awareness towards them while moving rather than through the delivery of set exercises that repeat and produce a limited attention. CI does feature exercises and repetition too however it is in conjunction with explorations that support those exercises and allow for an execution that is accessible through many kinds of attention. To give an example, if an exercise is a leg bend we produce a focus on the legs bending and undermine the organization of the rest of the body. Even if we impress to maintain awareness our main attention is on our legs, that’s what this exercise asks us to do. Going through explorative material or juxtaposing explorative material allows a shifting attention. While moving we observe how we shift weight and every moment we execute a move, we do it in another way, in other parts, with different speed levels etc.

About CI as technical preparation:

The focus that we ask students to apply in CI is on aspects of movement that are inherent to our anatomy and inherent to physics which offers a development that is restorative and allows for a greater understanding of movement as it has been laid out by nature. CI practitioners aim to understand and deliver the actual physics of movement in order to make the most of it; skill wise and creatively. The methods CI practitioners/ teachers make use of (besides CI fundamentals such as rolling point of contact, slides and the physics of sharing weight) are Laban/ Bartenieffs Developmental Patterns, BMC, Feldenkrais, Ilan Lev, Rolfing, Alexander technique etc which all aim to rebuild while building. Many of them are healing practices to start with and are integrated into CI to use our bodies in ways that is not damaging, producing strength as a product that derives from a strong foundation to start with.

                                     

The experiential understanding that we build by doing CI offers trust and confidence. Considering the element of risk that is involved in doing Cyr wheel, such as moving into unknown spaces like the backspace and upside down motions, to fall etc, it is relevant to equip our bodies with attention and an experience of contact prior to working on the wheel that will create impulses in our bodies, instinctive reactions, to look after itself in moments that are out of our control. CI is the crafting of attention in relation to a partner and our dealing with weight shifts, backward motions, falling etc and are a matter of experience to bring about an alertness, an acute attention that is grounded yet sharp and finely tuned. The integration of CI is to become a support for the cyr wheeler, a platform to move from that allows the circus artist to approach even more challenging material when meeting the wheel. It increases their ability in how they move with the wheel based on an intuitive physical recognition on how to deal with falls, shifts ect and a confidence based on awareness.

While the argument is not for cyr wheelers to not go into the space of repetition and working on tricks I would propose it is the last stage of a training. Starting with CI as warm up, then taking CI in its more complex body work and applying methods while working on the wheel, these two stages facilitate the final trick stage because they ready body, awareness, and trust.

During the studio based research we underwent this has constituted a major shift because cyr wheelers and dancers alike were able to see what they were working with in a new light. Led by curiosity the crossing of dance and Cyr wheel allowed for a new understanding of the wheel; it turned from being an instrument into an object that holds space, and time, that is symbolic and ultimate even. In its connection with human touch we produce a relationship that is infinitely potent. Standing outside the wheel and not inside, watching people brushing past and catching its momentum without even touching it, that ultimately has become the game changer. For dancers alike, to find themselves in dialogue with an object and also what we started to call, the unforgiving partner, constitutes new ground wherein the wheel has autonomy but at the same time is an object whose movement is bound to mass and weight and will follow without emotional human creative distraction as we usually encounter with our human partners. It is a thing, an environment that speaks it’s own language and holds its own choreographic capacities.

A space gone wild; this new perception on object also reconfigured a new perception on space overall, how we relate to it with our own mass and that of our partner. CI has brought in new tools to train and bring awareness to how we deal with the shifting of weight and mass and that way prepared both dancers and circus artists alike to work with the wheel with skill and confidence.

Should this research happen again and expand, yes it most certainly should.

It was funded by the Conservatoire of Dance and Drama as a pilot research, however if it can become a regular interaction, an exchange facilitated by dance and circus school as partner, the development on each side is definite and the potential for more findings at this point is vast.

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