#weight sharing

Part 5! The final piece of my puzzle! Which, might I add, I am sorry for. Part 3 specifically, as I am positive there are so many spelling and grammatical issues that it it roughly incoherent and pretty much just psycho babble. I went back and edited it but didn't take out the crap part completely cause it's fucking hilarious. I love how I was totally writing it at a reasonable hour too.

Anyway, this is Combination. You will use the elements of Weight Above, Towards, Away, and Across in order to achieve it.

If you are doing these in a group (which is what I recommend) then make a circle and have one pair in the middle to start. You may find playing some music in the background a pleasant addition though it is not necessary. The pair in the middle will start to move. They can choose to start with any of the single elements (Above, Towards, or Away), though I suggest using Towards or Away just for the ease of beginning the movement. From one of those move into something else, if it was Away change your movement into Towards Weight and then maybe roll into Above. Flow through the movements, there is no rule against repeating something, having contact with the ground, losing contact, etc. but try to remain constantly in contact with your partner.

During this, if at any time anyone in the surrounding circle sees something they would like to be a part of they should simply jump up and join in allowing one of the initial pairing to take their place in the circle. The movement should be continuous with the pair in the centre always changing and the observers each taking a turn.

The movement between all of the versions of Weight Sharing is fluid and constantly changing, never will the same experience be had twice. It can be quite a work out or a nice little warm up and most importantly can take us through some very important skills that can add to our dancing.

The switch from Away, Towards, and Above is very much like the changing momentum of dance. We harbour the beat of the music in our bodies and use the momentum of ourselves and our partner to achieve stretch and release where needed. Go back to that swing out (though to be fair my first description was absolute crap) your moving through the space until you reach a point of tension and then release that in order to get back into closed. If you're doing an aerial you generally with start with Weight Away, move into Weight Towards and then use that momentum to achieve Weight Above and movement.

YEAH! Weight Across! Super super fun times!

Weight Across deals with something called table topping, in pairs one person will make a stable base on all fours while the other will use their body in order to move over them to the other side. Catch is, you have to get all of your weight off the ground while doing this and you can't do the same thing twice. Now when you're over your partner you then make a stable base and they do the same thing, this repeats until you are on the other side of the room. Then you can start from there and continue on as long as you like. You can even call them rounds so you can repeat ways to get over each other.

The trick to doing this is to trust your body, our minds tell us that we can't do something but really our bodies can do so much more than we think they can. Try going over your partner feet first, or on your back. Grab their upper arms and their legs to help get you over their body, that's the reason their are in 'table top' formation, so that you have handles to hold onto if you think you're going to fall. You want to ease your weight onto them and then ease it off and onto the floor so that this all rolls across the room smoothly and for the most part quietly.

My funny story about table topping is from when I was in Drama 200. It was my first year of uni and we were doing these exercises, we had a three hour class so it was three hours of this stuff. Our instructor told us to pair up in groups of three (and one group of two) and we had to get one person across the room without them touching the ground.

Now, you'd think that my partners would simply have lifted me up and carried me across the room but that didn't seem to be the logical thought that entered their mind, no no no no no, they decided the best way to do this would be to table top me across the room where I climbed onto one of them and then the other would run around so that they were an empty stable base and then I would crawl onto them and the process would repeat. It took us a good twenty minutes to get across the room. I was clinging for dear life to my partners so that I wouldn't touch the ground and then I had to slither and scramble to get onto the other persons back and suddenly I had no shirt. We were half way across the room and my shirt was somewhere around my waist but we DID NOT GIVE UP! We made it to the other side eventually when I just lay across both of them and they slowly shuffled their limbs until we were at the other wall. The class got a lovely view of me and I was a little bit colder than when I'd started out but we stuck with it and that was the important thing.

In this exercise I have used someone like a bench and sort of flipped around their midsection, I ended on the floor on my back. I have started feet first, I have grabbed someones boob (so sorry!) and I have done some pretty awesome things that I was positive I wasn't flexible enough to do. It's a work out but it's worth it, it helps you get creative and teaches you to move your body through space efficiently. It's also amusing.

Really this is one exercise that I find super helpful when I'm doing aerials, I know from this that I can do anything as long as I commit to it and I can also get out of some sticky situations (like that time I was caught upside-down and there was no graceful way out of it but I didn't kill myself so yay!). I know I can support someone else if that's what is required.