WORKSHOP 2 ACDT

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.

 Video Link: http://youtu.be/p4_lzM6s2gA

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!