I would say I've gotten pretty good about consistently blogging lately, wouldn't you? Nod and say yes. Well done. Well, I'm sipping my iced coffee with a few minutes before I have to run off to our all day tech rehearsal for R&G so why don't I take a moment to blog a bit, yes? Yes.
This was my last blog post. You didn't read it, because I didn't post it to Facebook. What we ended up doing in Yo-el's class was some more of the Laban work, and the observation stuff I talked about didn't end up coming in to play. However, the Laban work has been helpful, although I feel like I'm only scratching the surface of it. I did have one meaningful "moment" in that particular class. Towards the end of the "Breakfast Warm Up" cycle that Yo-el has been teaching us, we do what he calls a "Pinnochio" where you basically skip across the room on a diagonal in small groups. He encouraged us to open up to this exercise, as I interpreted it to let go of our cynicism and adult doubts and be more child like and joyful. So I did that. I really did. I dropped my tension, my self awareness, and just went with the movement. And then when Yo-el noticed this and encouraged me to continue, my self awareness came back and I was a little less in it. Oh well! It's funny how even simple praise can create self awareness, isn't it? Because then you're stuck in this feedback loop of trying to recreate that moment of praise instead of making a new one for yourself. More on that later.
Friday we didn't have movement, which I didn't find out until I arrived at the BCA due to a communication error. But they were very accommodating, and instead I was able to sit in on a Linklater voice class with a local actress named Melissa Baroni who Jennie Israel had previously recommended as someone to study with. Linklater is a particular school of thought about breath and voice work that's taught at Shakespeare and Company where Jennie studied as did a bunch of ASP associated people and various Boston actors. This class was actually also made available to me as part of the Commonwealth thing I'm doing, but due to my schedule it didn't seem like it would work out and I feel like movement is more of a priority to my work right now. However it was very informative and enlightening, and I discovered a sense of my breath that I hadn't felt before... a sense of connection, of being in my breath within my body (as opposed to being in my head, which I've been trying to get out of by doing all this work) that was sort of an epiphany.
Saturday was movement again! And the beginning of our work with Jerzy Gratowski techniques, who was this cool Polish theater director and you should Google him. Previously, I'd done exercises inspired by Gratowski with Tommy Derrah (who unsurprisingly knows Yo-el) and found them kind of incredible in their power and energy with a large group. What we did on Saturday was called the River and was much more of an intimate exercise with a group of four, where one at a time we take up the energy of the "river" which in this case begins in one of part of the body and emanates throughout, inspiring movement in different body parts which the observers then followed. When I went up the first time for what was to be a minute with the river, it started in my knee and I followed it as it pulled up around in the space. I've found in my movement work, my poor sense of balance and coordination limits me from moving in the ways that my imagination would dictate, especially in the way that I want to escape what I find to be the more pedestrian levels of our everyday standing posture. So I'm always trying to get down low or high or at a diagonal and immediately I'm off balance. With this exercise I was able to accept that, and ultimately I was brought to the floor where I find myself less restricted by gravity and was able to embrace the inner chaos I was feeling in that moment, to the point of nearing what seemed like could have been self injury had I continued when Yo-el ended the exercise after what felt like 20 or 30 seconds, instead of a minute.
Afterwards, Yo-el commented that it was the most "out of my head" that he had seen me move, and inside of course I blushed a little, and he encouraged me to continue exploring in that direction. But how!? Now that I was aware that I'd been out of my head, I would be in my head trying to get back to that place. I was aware of that conundrum when we started the exercise a second time for two minutes. Instead of feeling violent and chaotic in my movements, I found a sensuality, exploring the feeling of my own body, the floor and of my breath. Instead of feeling like 30 seconds, it felt longer than two minutes, like three or four. We didn't talk about it aftewards, but we made eye contact and I felt Yo-el gave me a thumbs up. And I give myself a thumbs up too, because I don't think I fell into that trap of trying to recreate my own energy.
I'd hoped to tackle the challenges and joys of this tech week, but now I need to get to tech rehearsal! Until then bloggers!
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