Arthaus: The journey takes you

 Arthaus Day 4


Intimacy is different from privacy

Intimacy has openness, space and distance. Among other things. If someone with a tattoo of WWII gets up to tell a war story, it's like being slapped in the face with brutal facts. There is no space for the audience to dream, or appreciate. If the performer has space from his work, then the audience is able to appreciate and believe it too. Lecoq doesn't work with emotions, because he will say the movements give rise to emotions.

Today we will work with text. How we eat the words, how they feel in our body.

'Draw a looooooong, last, deep breath of exhaustion, and stop. Breathing. Then?'

'Sataaaaaaaaay with ke-tu-pah'

We shared out favorite foods and how they felt in the body. Two lines of our favorite poems, and how that felt in our body. Then we huddled in threes and organically created a piece based on the soundscape and movementscape. We also did a minor exercise in creative writing. Nothing too difficult since I started with IMPROV. I am reminded of the need to have relationships with everything.

I breezed through the morning. I don't feel much like preaching about improv, because my work with improv lives in the moment, not before or after. I saw an image that perfectly captures this:

While walking for lunch, I saw a feather suspended in the sun. Breathlessly. I looked at it for a good 5 seconds, and nothing moved. Unwillingly, I walked on. When I looked back, it was gone.

Embody a journey and transpose

By now I am really comfortable with my movements, having repeated them in the normal way, the amplified way and the essentialized way many times, and flowing between them. Funny enough, Ariel didn't say anything or give me instructions when I got up and took the floor. He had been whispering instructions to the previous performers, and I figured that he wanted us to perform a piece because he kept mentioning to push the perspective to the front. And when text came to the performers, it seemed like something that mattered to them. So after Lucy's spectacular performance of 'The Seagull and the Cat who taught the Seagull to fly' - 'Il est ne! Il est ne!' - I was inspired with a memory of Michel's wedding. I embodied the journey, and transposed the memory over the embodiment.

I looked up in wonder. 'You're getting married.' 'Yes, you!' 'One of us is!' And then Ariel came over and dragged me backwards by the waist. When I struggled and was about to win the pull, he let go and I broke through something. 'I WANT IT'. 'I WANT HER'. I laughed. And then the words flowed with the actions. Roses on the hedges, live at the top, dead at the bottom - 'I want someone to live with, to die with'. Use the space. How much do you want it? 'This much' 'THIS MUCH'. My voice filled the room. I ran circles around the space. Remembering how I broke through, I sped up til I slipped and fell. What's next? 'Three cheers for the bride and groom' 'Yaaaaaaaam seng!' I scratched my mask. 'Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam seng!' More frenzy. 'Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam seng!' I crashed into the mirror. Stay with the mirror. I threw the curtains open and stared at myself. I don't recognize this person anymore. There is so much space. I hugged the curtains close. 'Here's a rose for you, little one'.

The journey takes you somewhere. Be open enough to follow it. Be okay with the mess. Relish in the mess.

Published on
7/19/19 12:58 AM

It's a bit too messy rn tho 

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