WORKSHOP REPORT – Sunday, October 5 2014
4.30 – 7pm
Asheville Contemporary Dance Theatre
20 Commerce Street, Asheville NC
Participating in the workshop were: ACDT Founding Directors
Susan & Giles Collard, company members – Jaime McDowell, Sara Keller, Sharon
Cooper, Mary LaBianca, Caroline Althof, Megan Jackson, Raj Bowers Racine, plus
former company member – Coco Palmer Dolce.
Physical exercises:
Vibrations
I used an abbreviated form of the vibrate / shake / throw
exercise as a warm-up to release tension and energize the body.
Voice
1. Deep
breathing, exhaling on a variety of sounds engaging the lips & tongue.
2. Hanging
forward and humming into the nasal resonators.
3. Opening
to an “Aaah” with shaking to release a big relaxed sound.
4. Facial
expression with sounds.
5. Patting
on the chest rhythmically while “conversing” with open vowel sounds.
Floor Massage
Releasing the weight of the body into the floor while
rolling and “melting” to give the body a massage – also adding stretch (in a
cat-like manner).
(No discussion or feedback for the above physical exercises
was given at this workshop session – but will be a focus of discussion in a
future session.)
Transfer of Weight
Journaling, discussion and feedback about Transfer of Weight
exercise
Creative Response exercise:
Finding The Essence
Video documentation of Transfer of Weight plus discussion
& feedback.
Also of brief movement response from Finding The Essence
exercise.
Assignments:
Reports of experiences from last week’s assignment.
For next week: Find movements, sounds, words, colors,
textures, objects, shapes, images, smells, tastes, items of clothing and
anything that gives a sensory impression of the essence of the place you went
to.
Detailed report on documented section of workshop.
Transfer of Weight
The goals of this exercise are: to develop a heightened
sense of awareness of the
incremental shifts of weight when transferring weight from one part of the body
to another, to allow and take note of resulting responses throughout the whole
body, to establish a deep connection with “surface” – beginning with the idea
of “earth connection” and to establish balance & stability while
maintaining a sense of plasticity.
A full description of this exercise is given on my PHYSICAL
EXERCISES page.
For this workshop, I lead the participants through all the
exploratory stages of the exercise, and then set a group dance improvisation
that would allow them some freedom to play and creatively elaborate on the
given concepts.
Discussion and Feedback
Coco – Recovering from an ankle and foot injury and is going
through a rediscovery of the body that has included going back to basics. This
exercise was good for going into the basic, fundamental action of transferring
weight smoothly.
Raj – Natural individual way of moving is always frenetic
and explosive, so being forced to slow down and mindfully consider weight and
balance is a valuable exercise. Fascinated by the feeling of increased weight
in the body when trying to incrementally propel without momentum and the amount
of effort needed to balance when walking slowly.
Mary – “notice, sustain, draw out, subtle, observe, tactile,
cold floor, balance”. Needed more clarity of direction, felt my instructions
sometimes seemed ambiguous. Need to introduce new ideas into the exercise more
comprehensively.
Megan – “balance, release, control, pushing, catching,
pressing, rocking” “felt smooth, soft, hard, muscular, contracting, centered,
free, natural”.
Would like to try transferring weight exercise using floor
patterns to give direction in space. Felt tuned-in to weight sinking to each
bone of the foot and being able to study her own gait.
Giles – “gravity will enforce the landing” – feeling as
though constantly in a state of falling. “loss of balance – infinity – new
stability”. “teetering on the edge of the white cliffs of dover”. “the drunken
master is the master”.
Sara – Aware of inconsistencies in the joints. Aware of
muscles and their weight and the energy needed to move each one. Movement felt
organic. Aware of textures. “heartbeat, waves, swings, hills, pendulum”. Wanted
to build more on gaining range and speed.
Jamie – Feet are the easiest transfer of weight, once
shifting to other body parts in becomes more difficult. Tempo becomes
important, as there are some shifts of weight that become impossible without
momentum. Gravity and falling force a weight transfer. Felt very wobbly with
closed eyes for the beginning of the exercise.
Caroline – Enjoyed the arc of the whole exercise (& how
I use this in most exercises) – in that, in the end, it returned, retrograding
back to how it started. Loved the open improvisation at the end – how would one
encourage non-dancers to freely move this way? She suggested a format where
participants can enter and leave the improv throughout its duration. Music
facilitates the exercise well – what happens when there’s a juxtaposition of
music and movement qualities?
Sharon – Aware of body – especially ankles rolling. Would
like to have done faster shifting. Improvisation would be nice with smaller groups
and being able to watch each other. The exercise inspired new ideas for
locomotion through space.
Finding The Essence
This is a creative exercise based on a theatrical character
development exercise for actors. It evolved through the techniques of Vladimir
Nemirovich-Danchenko with Constantin Stanislavski and was absorbed into
Stanislavski’s method of acting.
In order to better understand a particular character, one
poses the question “If this character were a ____ , what kind of ____ would
they be?”
For example “If Carmen Miranda were a flavor of ice-cream,
what flavor would it be?”
Most people would probably agree that it would be a wild,
tropical fruit mix. (This is an obvious one, for clear demonstration!)
In this workshop, we began with asking this kind of question
about each other.
1. Q - If Giles were a cocktail, what kind of cocktail would
he be?
A - A cocktail with a variety of exotic ingredients, quite
fruity and with accessories – like curly straws and garnishes.
2. Q - If Sharon were a perfume, what kind of perfume would
she be?
A – Something earthy and musky, maybe with a note of spice –
like nutmeg and even a hint of tobacco.
3. Q – If Raj were a package deal destination vacation, what
would it be?
A – (A variety of answers with the same kind of essence) –
New Year at Times Square, Rio at Carnival, some Icelandic festival etc.
…. From this, I asked for individual creative responses that
were brief and spontaneous.
For the Giles Cocktail, I asked each person for a
hand-&-face dance (shown in documentation video)
For the Raj vacation, I asked for a vocal sound.
Summary
In the Transfer of Weight exercise, it was clear from the
participants feedback that I need to guide in a way that has more stages to it,
rather than leaving such big gaps for them to bridge by themselves. I need to
introduce everything with the assumption that each idea is totally new to the
student.
I have noticed with some of the feedback, that they seem to
need my “permission” to explore an aspect of the exercise further – such as
variations in tempo or directly associating it with a previous exercise.
They really enjoyed the Finding the Essence exercise – with
this group it felt rather like a party game, so it was a lot of fun!
