pouring : a contact skill to explore

Jonathan Sinatra

To lurch forward in desperation reaching for a dance and end up crashing onto the floor or onto a partner - pouringly - a contact skill to explore.

Definitions
- Pour \Pour\, v. 1. To cause to flow in a stream, as a liquid or anything flowing like a liquid, either out of a vessel or into it; as, to pour water from a pail
From Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary\

- pour // verb (t) 1. To send (a fluid, or anything in loose particles) flowing or falling, as from a container or into, over something.
From The Macquarie Concise Dictionary

- pour
1: the motion characteristic of fluids (liquids or gases)
2: the amount of fluid (weight) that flows in a given time - the rate of flow
3: the act of flowing or streaming; continuous, progression. - A continuous movement
4 something that resembles a flowing stream
5 Any gentle, gradual movement or procedure of thought, diction, music, or the like, (resembling the quiet, steady movement of a river); a stream - successive events or ideas; “stream of consciousness”; “the flow of thought”.
From WordNet

Helen Clark Lapin, contact practitioner in Sydney Australia delivers a good description about contact improvisation before the workshops and classes that she teaches. Helen mentions that contact is varied in it’s practise, with all the teachers and practitioners bringing to the form a different spin, practices and skills. This article is a collection of a few thoughts, explorations and skills about pouring to try and articulate what it is.

Pouring and related words to flow: flow, stream, drain, discharge, emit, issue, gush, fill and drift.


Jonathan Sinatra pouring photo by Alejandro Rolandi

Lately I often hear Helen’s voice in my head, during duo, asking me about pouring. This pouring voice (concept) is something I recently discovered as a student of Helen. Helen teaches pouring both to beginners and experienced contactors as a basic in-road ‘technique’ for making and developing contact. Pouring deals with focussing into the flow of weight between partners by providing awareness to the direction of weight flow.

Often in contact improvisation, when two bodies moving in the same plane (linear) make contact, there is some sort of balance of mass and weight negotiated whether it be a counter leaning or a falling into each others bodies. However this is difficult to negotiate if bodies are meeting on two different planes. You often get a dumping thing happening.

Dumping and pouring.
For a long time I had a strong resentment to the unpleasantness of having weight dumped on me during contact improvisation. What to do with the heavy weight that is placed on oneself? Often the choice of action was to move away, disappearing into a self-protection if the weight was too much. This often left my partner with no support and no option except falling and crashing to the floor. The other choice was to sit under their weight and grin and bear it - until we both collapsed.

Both options have an immediate flow/action - however it may be short lived once the weight abruptly meets the floor. Pouring, used in many ways, is a manageable way that responsibility of the shifting and acceleration of weight can be shared in skilful exchange, between you and a partner or even in your own body.In contact improvisation pouring is the action to shift weight (or energy) through a contact point, from one alignment into another alignment structure. As an experience it is a continuously active process, which is quite different than placing your weight on alignment because you are in a ‘flow’ state of motion rather then a ‘suspended’ state of motion.

To sit and recall my memory of the experience of pouring - you move into your partner make contact and then your whole body curves into the point or away from the point, the important thing (I think) is that it’s a whole body curving effect.

There is a general rule of thumb in contact that each person is responsible for his or her own weight, and you don’t have to take part in anything that doesn’t feel right. Pouring - whether it is onto, up or over can provide awareness towards flow of weight.

In duets I can remember always feeling a sense of responsibility for the dance due to the position/role of support, when I was person being dumped on. It felt like the expression a ‘rock and a hard place.’ I thought that the person dumping was saying ‘here I am, now do something with me’.

A dump is always not intentional. A habit that formed as a result of the dump experiences was a dreadful wondering if I was dumping my weight. Another contactor told me that often I wasn’t giving my weight fully. That I hold back in the dance, leaving a sense of mistrust in the dance for the partner and me, and then ‘not intentionally’ I would dump because of holding and stiffening up, leaving no choice but to fall onto my partner. (Ugh what to do?)


Pouring
a small interview with Helen Clark Lapin.

Q: When did you first come across pouring, or the term?

Helen: I think it was Steve Paxton who first introduced me to the image/task of pouring my weight down through my partners body into a mutual and moving plumb line between us. I loved aiming for, sensing that tangible but invisible place - and still do! When you’re on it, you can balance and hover there with ease.

Q : What are some of the basic skills to contact or basic skills of pouring that you teach?

Helen: How to access a way of moving with the body released is primary, first solo then negotiating that with a partner - and there are myriad ways to teach that. I use a lot of imagery in order to bypass the use of excess effort. But I also teach specific exercises that lay down effortless patterns of moving, so the neuromuscular system then has that as an option in the dancing (like working with a released head to free up the spine and hips).

Q: How do you experience the pour?

Helen: As a very fluid state where the weight of the body can flow in any direction at any time at any speed/density.

Q: How do you describe the pour?

Helen: I use various imagery a lot, like “pour your weight over your partner like pancake batter, including the weight of your head!”

Q: What is the mechanics of the pour?

Helen: In posting work I will often find a way for the supportee to arc away from an initial point of contact and imagine pouring their weight sequentially on and over the terrain of the supporting body. Sloughing is another pouring technique that is invaluable in freeing up the possibilities of giving and taking weight - to feel safe in sliding down from a precarious place, and to slip down into a position to be a fulcrum of support

Q: If you can think of any more questions that dancers could ask themselves about pouring?

Helen: Well other teachers in Australia who have extended my ideas: I loved co-teaching with Martin Hughes in Melbourne because he taught the flipside of pouring - the idea of hooking and incrementally ‘laying out’ the weight you give your partner (as you would in rockclimbing). And I love Zjamal Xanitha’s exercise of ‘settling’ your body (with eyes closed) over a support.

If you have any further information or suggestions please respond..

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