2.10.12: IMPRINT, a practice of becoming more conscious of perception through a reciprocal experience of touch. Expanding the sense of touch one can sense, listen, and see through touch.

2/10/12

This week we were working with the task of facilitating a new group of people to pay attention to and move from the heightened awareness of the skin. We were experimented with expanded one sense of perception crisscrossing with another. For example, see a person and interpret the visual information into the sense of touch by feeling the image throughout your entire container of skin. We needed to check in with the concrete language involved, so we looked up proprioception:

Proprioception

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Proprioception ( /ˌproʊpri.ɵˈsɛpʃən/ pro-pree-o-sep-shən), from Latin proprius, meaning “one’s own” and perception, is the sense of the relative position of neighbouring parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement.^[1] It is distinguished from exteroception, by which we perceive the outside world, and interoception, by which we perceive pain, hunger, etc., and the movement of internal organs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception

1/27/12: IMPRINT, a practice of becoming more conscious of perception through a reciprocal experience of touch. Expanding the sense of touch one can sense, listen, and see through touch.

Last session we were studying the contours and texture of our skin as the container of our body.  We were sequencing from a full exploration of the never-ending enveloping structure of the skin that would progress one step as a time into the fascia layer, then muscle, and eventually bone. While focused on the elasticity of the skin as a casing, the scalp felt different than other areas. It felt more slippery and mobile. We equated the sliding motion to the thinness of the layer of skin layer before touching fascia, and revealed the lack of muscle in that area. There is only connective tissue and tendons attaching to the facial muscles, but no muscles on the actual scalp. We had to look up the fascia layers and anatomy of the scalp. We discovered a helpful map of the skin on the scalp and an acronym to remember the layers of tissue on the scalp:

The Scalp

The skin of the scalp continues from the front and lateral side of the face into the occipital region of the skull posteriorly. The makeup of the scalp is important clinically because trauma to the scalp is frequent and it is up to the clinician to determine by palpation and observation just how serious the trauma is.

The scalp is made of 5 layers and they spell scalp:

S — skin C — dense Connective tissue A — aponeurosis L — loose connective tissue P — periosteum The blood vessels travel through the dense connective. The connective tissue has a special relationship with the arteries in this area. When an artery is severed, the connective tissue fibers around the vessel contract and pull the artery open. This results is more hemorrhage than in other places. With scalp hemorrhage, compression must be used to stop the bleeding. Blood vessels and nerves come into the scalp from three different regions: 1) anterior (supraorbital), 2) lateral (superficial temporal), 3) posterior (occipital). There is free anastomoses from side to side. With all of this blood supply, lacerations of the scalp are usually profuse and because of the nerve supply, very sensitive. The loose connective layer of the scalp will allow bacteria or fluid to pass freely from the posterior aspect of the scalp into the eyelids in front. Trauma in the back of the head can result in blood showing up in the eyelids and should make you suspect something going on in the back of the head.

http://home.comcast.net/~wnor/lesson1.htm

IMPRINT, a practice of becoming more conscious of perception through a reciprocal experience of touch. Expanding the sense of touch one can sense, listen, and see through touch.

IMPRINT is a weekly practice that I share with Eva Perrotta. As a Certified Laban Movement Analyst with her friend and Artistic Director of NuDance Theater, Eva Perrotta, we facilitate partner work where specific types of touch are solicited through descriptive language and observation practices from a Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) and developmental movement approach. The goal of the practice is two fold. We are learning how to readily access and facilitate the specific world, meaning the quality and energy of movement and receptivity that is initiated from each particular body system. We consider the basic systems of the body as a group of organs that work together to perform a certain task.  We are teasing out what constitutes the skeletal world, the integumentary world, and have worked with the Cellular system and the nature of various fluids such as the interstitial fluid and the blood. Each biological system in the body possesses a poetic movement language, sensibility, state of mind, and quality to each.

Eva and Corinne observe, experiment and discover new connections with the body systems. With intentional touch we re-pattern muscle memory and stimulate neurological pathways to support new movement choices and ways of building relationships through movement. Sensory awareness is first initiated through the experience of the skin. Then we actively choose to work at different levels to access particular body systems. We train to execute, listen and communicate an energetic and emotional imprint on the body by practicing how to:

• Touch different body systems, such as the Integumentary System (skin, fascia and fatty tissues), the Skeletal system (bones, cartilage, ligaments, and tendons), the respiratory system (organs used for breathing), Digestive system, and the Cellular system
• Simultaneously perceive the act of touching and being touched
• Discover a unique mode of movement expression that is specific to the different types of touch or given body system
• Remember the movement quality, tone, texture and vocabulary that is particular to each of the body systems
• Apply imprint as a tool or initiation for improvisational movement and for dance composition

• Reflect through observation, writing, and discussion about different types of touch and body systems and how they expand your movement choices

The imprint from the experience of touch opens a space for an internal exploration of the different organic movements of the body, which influence our external interactions and choice making. Imprint opens an intimacy and a new consciousness of the being and moving.

Questions we pose are:

• How does touch affect our body and your movement choices?
• Which qualities and physical connections can we establish, recognize and intend to convey through dance as both choreographer and performer?

GOALS of IMPRINT

• Learn specific types of touch and how that alters your state of mind/body
• Discover new ways of building relationship with someone else, in the group, or with the room/environment in the various body states
• Increase consciousness while moving
• Learn how the intention of touch influences your experience of movement and dance and the people you interact with
• Explore and discover new ways of seeing and being seen
• Create new types of dialogue through touch and partnering
• Develop small duet / choreographic sequences with the awareness of the different touch qualities