Week 2

Warm-Up

This classes warm-up started as last week did by walking in the space and being aware of others in the space changing rhythm, levels and dynamics which the rest of the class had to follow.

We then followed up the first part of the warm-up with a new exercise, we had to be certain distances from each member of the class. It started as one metre and then the room was in a constant state of measuring and judging and adjustment. The distance was constantly being changed and then the quality of negotiating the manoeuvres was very different. The shorter the distance the more frantic the moving to adjust to everyone else in the group. The connection amongst the group was more physically obvious and people were so close to each that people the group energy was more hysterical as people didn’t have a lot of space to make their adjustments people were getting in each other’s way and changing the distances in relation to others. At a longer distance, I could see people measuring in their head how far they were from people and the movements of adjustments slower and more analytical like a lion hunting its prey.

The Opposite Actions

We then worked in partners (I was with Kaja) moving around the space doing the opposite action of our partner, for instance, if our partners start going down towards the floor we would have to stretch and towards the ceiling. I found this exercise quite hard when following my partner as defining what the opposite of an action is quite difficult and how many elements to focus on what difficult to gauge. We spent time experimenting trying to catch each other out which was wasn’t a good idea too forming clear actions. I think it’s also important to isolate and focus on to the opposite of one element of an action so if Kaja was walking forwards and upright with her hands in the air I think the dominate action to oppose is the hands in the air so I should walk with my hands towards the floor rather than trying to be completely opposite walking backwards down low with a bent back and my hand towards the ground. It was much easier to follow clear, defined movements and worked better as the actions for us to use for a sequence that we can repeat and remember and be clear to an audience that we are connected. We decided to break down the actions into separate actions that isolate specific features of movements and we came up with five defined actions to use in our sequence with one opposite voiced action.

The voice action “Cat and Dog” is that we would make a meow noise and I would make a dog noise after it. Depending on the volume of the meow being loud or quiet I would do the opposite with the woof. This can be used whilst doing any of the other actions obviously.

The “In and Out” action is that one person would walk upright with their arms and the other and would have their arms out to the side bent with their hands on their breasts.

The “Star and Ball” action is that one person would have their arms extended and legs extended diagonally making themselves as wide as possible whilst walking. The other person is walking curled up into a ball trying to be as small as possible whilst walking.

The “Up and Down” action is that one person would crouch down whilst walking a bit like the ball but not trying to make themselves as small as possible still have a straight back just getting low with the legs bent still walking and the other walking with their chest to the ceiling upright trying to be as tall as possible whilst still walking upon the toes of their feet.

The “Forwards and Backwards” action was that one person would jog forward and the other would walk backwards.

The “Jump and Anti-Jumping” action is that one person would jump and the other would anti-jump (crouch as if landing from a jump downwards)

Group Improvisation

From the opposite actions, we took a quick break and documented the actions that we wanted to keep and use from our exploration. We went onto a group improvisation using the opposite actions with our partners. We had to notice how we interacted whilst taking the short drinks break and act like that at the start of the improvisation; chatting, drinking, on the phone etc. We then from that starting point enter the space to be eventually joined by our partners or joining our partners that have already made their way to the space, then would perform the same actions of imitating the break within the space.

We then went onto improvising with the opposite actions with the other partner’s actions as well as our own. There started with an equal amount of numbers on each side of the space we then would walk into the space and perform a series of the opposite action then leave the space. Our partners would then enter the space and do the opposite of the actions that their partner had done. There was a maximum of 4 people in the space at one time and partners could be in the space at the same time each other. The exercise started a bit tentatively and we didn’t fully commit to the exploration of distance, interaction with other people and owning the space but as the exercise went on we became more loose and explorative to the possibilities of the exercise. I remember walking into the space, being low as in the “up and down” action and walk besides Brandon who was sitting in the chair and I loudly barked as the dog from the “cat and dog” action, it was a nice moment of interaction and a good dynamic within the space creating an unspoken, impromptu connection whilst having separate actions and relation to each other.

Documentation

After the group improvisation, I redid my body parts sequence “Wandering Hand” Jack wrote done my actions in detail after watching it twice paying close attention to the specifics of my movements.

The Doer and the teller

Jack then started to build a narrative to go with my Wandering hand sequence. He started to describe an invisible man that was dragging me across the room that I kept shrugging off. This gave me a new perspective on my piece as initially I had the vague idea that my hand was being controlled from within like my hand was going rogue rather than an external force taking hold off my hand and pulling it. This exercise gave me a question that I can answer about the sequence. The question being my reaction to being dragged across the room is it something internal or external that I am fighting against and how I can effectively show that through my facial expression, the quality of my movements and the transition between each body part being controlled.

After Jack narrated my action it was my turn to narrate for him, but since he didn’t have an action prepared, I was to create a sequence from scratch from my narration of an improvised story. The story started with him waiting at the bus stop and getting impatient, checking his watch and then deciding to walk across the street where he is met by a big dog that he is scared off which makes him fall to the ground and then get back up and run back to the bus stop. Jack reacted to the story and performed at the same time. It was quite difficult to give a story that resulted in big actions that Jack could work with so I found that I was trying to just focus on the actions that I could provide for him despite how weird and unsensual the story was. The actions weren’t great and neither was the story, if we were to do the exercise again I think I would focus on a better more realistic story focussing on emotion and plot rather than trying to give actions for Jack to interpret in his movements and I would advise him to let go of realism not to take the story literally and work off an impulse to create the movements based off whatever triggers him to move, the emotions, the situation, the characters etc.