Exercises from the Human Contact Project

The following is a partial list of the exercises that will be explored in the Human Contact Project. Many of the exercises are ones that i keep coming back to in workshops. Like doing a Tai chi form, the forms themselves intrinsically teach some things through repetition and serve as a setting in which other techniques can be taught or encountered. I believe in coming back to them repeatedly, because different layers are revealed in the work over time. While the first attempts at some of these exercises gives something interesting and useful, the deeper layers come out over time. I try to teach the exercises to multiple levels of understanding at the same time.

The list is mainly presented as a reference for past students who have already done some of the exercises and as a pneumonic for those participating inthe Human Contact Project to remember them.

Exercises in bold will be repeated in all the workshops, in some variation.

Release/Passive Sequencing Work

The Aims of this work are an arriving at a calm dynamic availabilty that allows free movement of the inner animal. We aim to increase proprioceptive awareness and presance, functionally perceiving the world in more “frames per second”.

• Passive sequencing study/non-triggering manipulation
  • Core Spiral manipulation: Floor, Standing, Walking
  • Open Manipulation: Floor, Static Position, Pedestrian Movement
  • Open manipultaion, no hands
• Bait and Manipulate
• Interference: full active mover, yeilding manipulator
• Surrender/Manipulate: full active manipulator, mover 0%-50% muscle
• Alpha/Beta Manipulation
• Task Attempt & Manipulate
• Blending
• Lateral Intangibility
• Kneas (and Hips and Ankles)
• Stabilization
• Martial Dance
• organizing the leave
• continuous off-balance
• Noodle legs and Baby monkey
• Little lifts

Poetics Work

• Curiousities
  • Space
  • Light Touch (under 1kg)
  • Pressure Exploration
  • Support/Being Supported/Finding Support
  • Slide/Roll
  • Area: How much area is in contact?
  • Space Between: While Touching, playing with the space between other parts
  • Manipulate/Surrender/Resist/Assist
  • Stillness & Pause
  • Speeds: Not just slow vs fast, but differentiating many different varieties of speed
  • Texture of Touch
  • Eyes: looking, peripheral active, peripheral passive, eye contact, eyes-closed, seeing/being seen
  • Body System Focii — Skin, Muscle, Bone
  • States
  • Time — feeling the passing whole of a piece of time, rather than just “now”
  • 1st impulse vs waiting for the next impulse
  • Doing vs Experiencing vs Shaping Future Memory
  • Moving for my experience vs my partner’s experience
  • The experience of someone watching
  • Desire — Satisfaction vs Tension
  • Physics & Kinesthetics vs Emotional Content
  • Body Part Focii — Skull, Tail, Spine, Limbs
• Deepening
  • pure physics/anatomy
  • subvoices
  • archetype interaction
• Dodge/Magnetic Cloud (as training exercise for Deepening and as interesting dance in itself)
• Themes: Finding them and holding them
  • mechanical, conceptual, experiential, state, character
  • Theme & Variation
  • ABA, ABCA, etc… formal study and open play
• Physical Poems — creating short physical poems for/with another, poem does not exist in space, but in the mind of the other
• Psyche Games/Find the Problem
• Mindel’s Dreambody work
  • maker/resistor
  • subvoice distillation and flow
• Camera: Visual and Proprioceptive
• Proximity Play
  • provoke sensation in self
  • provoke sensation in other