Physical Theatre - Amy Tayor

Physical theatre- Amy Taylor

Starting physical theatre I had no know idea what is was or about and why we had to do it, Amy quickly told us that it was not dance it was a form of expression through movement.

We started off by jogging around the room and listening to Amy's instructions which were (1 right hand down 2 left hand down and so on) this got the blood pumping and everyone was warmed up. We started learning some choreography that Amy herself had made. The choreography was linked to practitioners such as Martha graham,” Graham’s early teaching was based on breathing and the bodily changes that occur as a dancer inhales and exhales.” Janson, M. (). Martha Graham. Available: http://www.dance-teacher.com/content/martha-graham. Last accessed 09/11/2012.

On a personal note I found this the easiest part of the session because of my experience with street dance.

We then moved on to some walking and corner exercises which I found a little more difficult because it was more about straight legs and arms which I had never been asked to do before now. The one I found most difficult was triplets I found this an odd and confusing movement which I struggled to get my brain around!

We also then did some partnered work which our objective was to get to the other end of the room but still touching our partner but without using hands, this I found difficult and slightly uncomfortable because I didn't know if my partner would like me touching them and we have only known each other for 6 weeks which isn't very long!! Then we did the same thing with another partner which for me felt much better because I felt at ease with the partner and so the movement flowed because I wasn't thinking about the personals feelings instead I was thinking about the music.

After this we moved on to doing it as a group shown in the video link below, I found this much easier than with a partner because there were more people to keep in contact and the movements seemed to flow. My evaluation at the end of this was that it was much easier to judge what others were going to do if you had eye contact.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6skXIdCvmF0

When we re-joined with Amy we had a lecture about many things such as how performances are made:

                                              

                                  IDEA->EXPLORE->SELECT->REFUSE->REHEARSE

Also the 4 basic movement components such as action, space, time and dynamics/planes, we went over these in detail. The one that was completely new to me was dimensions/planes, movement can be explained in three dimensions (height,width,depth) planes are a combination of two dimensions:

Horizontal plane = width, depth

Vertical plane = height, width

Saggetal plane = height, depth

The choreograph that we have done so far involves mostly the vertical plane as we move side to side and collapse/rise a lot as well.

We also went into much detail about Laban Efforts, we did this by watching everyone's walk in the class and to categories them as a Laban Effort, my walk was wring which meant it was indirect slow and strong. We then went into extremes of all the Laban efforts Amy started at 10 ( the extreme) of a Laban effort and counted down and we had to scale it down and by the time she reached 1 it should be a natural walk but containing a Laban effort

The Laban Effort are:

Punch= direct, fast, strong

Dab= direct, fast, light

Press= direct, slow, strong

Glide= direct, slow, light

Slash= indirect, fast, strong

Flick= indirect, fast, light

Wring= indirect, slow, strong

Float = indirect, slow, light

This was really interesting and will defiantly help in developing a character and opened my eyes to see how much detail goes into making a character believable.

My target is to be able to be able to complete triplets by the end of the week!