Freiburg Teachers' Meeting, 7 August 2018, 3.30-4.30pm

Inquiry of the LAB: Tossing Weight/ Being a Tosser

Question: What is the quality, nature, and language of tossing weight in solo and duet?

Participants: Nuria Bowart, Marcus Hoft, Iwona Olszowska, Richard Sarco-Thomas, Malaika Sarco-Thomas (facilitator)

Documentation

Conversation first: what supports the feeling of tossing weight? Clothing, for example: silk, flowing fabric, hakama in aikido practice, the axis syllabus fashion of Kira Kirsch

Malaika led a warmup for pulsing, jogging, walking and running looking at tossing.

Small dance and looking at micro-tossing within that

Leading to solo: tossing of body parts. Explore both micro tossing and macro tossing.

(toss an arm, a sit bone, a tooth, your heart, an imagined organ within your inner ear, a lobe of the brain… etc)

With a partner, becoming aware of their exploration, as you continue yours. In duets in relationship.

Malaika invited reflections / associations from everyone about how they relate to this material in their teaching, in partnering in particular.

It was fun! people seemed super energised after the practice.

Questions that emerged:

What is micro-tracking?

How to toss a tooth?

What are other ways of tossing?

How does the toss finish?

Nuria said: I try to imagine, what if I had lights coming off my body, tracing the pathway of the momentum  through my mass? What would that look like?

Iwona mentioned how nice it is to sail — to catch air, and to teach this with arms she teaches to send out through the bones of the arm: send 1, 2, 5, and then air. it makes a difference to imagining the arm as one thing.

Marcus mentioned 3 kinds of tossing he discovered:

1 - swing. e.g. swing the leg forward and back

2 - turning around axis with the momentum of a leg

3 - toss/ throw the leg away and also it to take your centre into space

Richard proposes a 4th:

4 - to toss the mind, toss the attention 

PLAY = curiosity, and this is super important for creativity. Free focus 

Marcus suggested: we can use the legs to play with your partner’s awareness in the solo dance. There can be playfulness to bring your partner like, off centre

Clear and relaxed: tossing is about follow through. Follow through with the mind. 

When you focus too hard, you negate your awareness.

Ray Chung talks about:

Tension

Attention

Pretension 

Intention

Extension 

Iwona says that in BMC, there is directionality and intention THROUGH another person, which is elastic and fluid, like the work within martial arts when sending a punch through someone. 

Love this image of putting on an elastic glove that you use to reach into space and vvvvvvvooooommm!!!

This creates an extension into space and at the same time you are also feeling the 2-directionality —the container of the glove. It also feeds back, the pumping of the heart. (Lymph fluid also pumping to the heart)

Nuria says that in therapy, having a bi-directional awareness is super important.

Like Laura Hicks says, the push is the pull, in CI and in pilates training. 

Richard points out: the CI Quartet is always

1. floor
2. body
3. space
4. partner

—and this trains multi directionality

So how (else) can we train multidirectional awareness? 

This document is created based on the consent of all the participating teachers during the contactfestival freiburg Teachers Meeting 2018. 

If for some reason you (as one of the participants of this meeting) changed your mind and wish some or all parts of this document not to be published, please contact defne.erdur@idocde.net.