In yesterday’s movement class Ondrej wanted us to come back to the lead/follow exercise, one that we tried in our very first class with him. This time, however, he wanted us to aim the opposite of what I previously thought we had to do – instead of simply losing control and moving as the other person lead us to, he told us to move as we felt and instead trust the other person to guide us through the room. The exercise aims for relaxation in the form of trust: the following person is still their own entity, but they put trust in the leading person to protect them and lead in the right direction. I’m a person who really likes putting things into metaphors, so immediately I linked this activity to the whole concept of contemporary choreography – the dancers will always have their own personalities, ideas and their own understanding of how to convey them, but the choreographer is in charge curating these expressions and leading the dancers in the right direction. However, we did discuss in class that the amount of freedom contemporary choreographers give their dancers varies, so I don’t want to turn this into an overly generalized idea.

Coming back to yesterday’s class, I felt that the fifth time I repeated the exercise I experienced somewhat of a breakthrough. To quickly describe the situation, Ondrej intended us to do the exercise four times, however, at some point I volunteered to take on his partner so that he could focus on other people, so I ended up being the “follower” for three times in a row. This activity is really physically intense, so by the end of the class I felt completely exhausted; however, together with this exhaustion came a sense of freedom that could hardly have achieved otherwise. The third time I was “following”, I felt too tired to even think about my movements, which made me lose sense of my usual critical self-evaluation. At some point I realized that my movements became more based on impulses coming from within me than my thoughts, and Ondrej’s leading.