Lecoq: La Guerre

 As concisely put by Majd: 'In all my years of study, today is the day I wake up wanting to come back to school.'

Trimester 2

The 12th week of lecoq began slowly, with everyone streaming in and congratulating each other on spending a well-earned break resting. The autocour this week would be La guerre - the battle between two materials, and we have the possibility of changing 3 times. That said, 3 times per side or 3 times in all, who knows? Our group brainstormed really well today, and started already creating the first image, so far so good!

In movement with Frederick, we revisited our bodies with isolation in all the parts. After we did an exercise that I shall hereafter name combat ensemble. One person stands in front of everyone and swings a sword (or an axe, or a lightsaber), and everyone has to duck or jump to avoid being dismembered or quartered. This is pretty reminiscent of the bateau exercise. I guess they're building up the combat moves.

Improv with Eric had us revisiting the voyage of the Neutral Mask. Except that this time, we essentialize it into 10-15 movements. Already with the first exercise, Eric tells me that my mind and my body are out of sync, and that I should let the space / my body decide. Calm down on the first day, dude. I was glad for the note - I'm picking up right where I left off last semester. To engage my body harder, and perhaps less of my mind. Anna had a delightful surprise when she jumped over the stones and landed on the riverbank; she turned around and was already at the sunset. The transition was one of surprise and of rhythm.

On the same note, we essentialized the 4 seasons, thinking about the movements of spring, summer, autumn and winter. The winds, leaves, flowers, animals, plants, sun and the sky were useful abstractions for us to embody as we tried to move the seasons. Barbara had a delightful beginning to spring by holding the space, and then flicking her eyes. Spring does have a pop to it, and a rhythm that is lively. Summer seems to breathe and expand, while Autumn contracts and dies. La mort arrive. Winter is desolate, and has both expansion and contraction, albeit minute. There is also a curious disaster that lurks. Florian completed his circle from spring, which was surprisingly poetic. Springtime in Asia was doux (soft), but I had no outside view; I was in Asia. I rediscovered switching the embodiments, which seems to be a method that works well for me. Since we had a cultural Spring, we explored the Nordic winter, which was jarring as we had Majd and Pierre whose only Nordic links were the Santa they fed over Christmas. It was cool to watch Majd windmill his way into the summer and the winter winds. There was a certain brutality that was abstracted that was enjoyable. Who knows what winter is like in Tunisia? We'll never know if the third world war happens.

In LEM, we moved the colours of the rainbow. ROYGBIV. Rip Off Your Girlfriend's Bra In Venice. Good times. We were looking for the red of reds, the blue of blues, just like how we were looking for the walk of walks, and the mask of masks. Red had certain qualities to it that included quickness, suddenness, and a compactness. Orange was round, circular, and seemed to move swimmingly. Yellow was light, happy and vertical. Green was sharp, angular and relatively quick. Blue was slower, and had an undeniable openness. Indigo was dark, slow and hidden. Violet was slow, circular, and dare we say it - almost sexy! We found these after trial and error, and democracy seemed to dictate, and there was a consensus. The Korean alumni had eyes that were really colourful, super cool. The colours I completely disagreed on with everyone were black and white. Black for me was hidden, but bigger, and dangerous. The dark sky blots out everything and the black hole threatens to envelop; most people had an intense gaze, but closed their bodies. White for me was wide and frontal; most people had wide arms but fell backwards. I need more data points.

Tuesday:

In movement class we re-warmed up our bodies and worked on explosive movements. This was all in preparation for throwing the javelin. I had trouble with it back when, and I still have trouble with it. Eric broke it down into 4 movements, which we then had to link.
Step 1: Run forwards with a fixed point on the javelin (start slow, build le gamme)
Step 2: Run sideways a couple of steps
Step 3: Land on a point fixed with a grand attitude before throwing. The javelin is stretched across the chest, and the free hand points upwards
Step 4: Twist, hips, throw, out of balance
I think we're supposed to connect with the space, play with disequilibrium, but I'm having too much fun re-living track and field days.

In improv Yasuyo continued our journey into abstraction by moving light. We moved our choice of light, and she told us to do it again, but something similar, and something different. She can be quite Japanese in that way. We were presented with sunlight, moonlight, sunrise, stars and thunder. Not your body, but the light. Depending on different cultures, we did see different qualities of light. Sunlight popping, or sunrise slowly spreading. Moonlight is a little lighter. When Xiao did the moonlight, I saw Chang'Er.

In autocour we worked on crude oil fighting wool, and wool becoming glass. As simple as it sounds, we have plenty of beats - the presentation, the oil spurting out of the ground, wool unrolling, the fight, the transformation, etc.

I'm a twat. It's only the second day and I'm already limping around the house.

Wednesday:

We start with autocour and while it was a slower day, we managed to delve further into the beats and the quality of movement it should have. I.e. how the oil descends as the glass forms, how the wave of oil floods the saturated wool. I'd say while we have a lot of ideas on movements, we're doing pretty well with trying different stuff and selecting the one that works.

Acrobatics turned out well today, even though we went two weeks without intense stretching. I did find myself more relaxed with the cartwheels and the forward rolls. I even fell over the wrong way while doing the handstand and lived to tell the tale without injuries. My progress with the handstand was minute, but I'm more relaxed in bigger movements.

In improv with Anne, we moved the words. Du blanc. (banc?) De la viande. Du plastique. De la soir. Du pain. Je casse. Je dor. Je claq. Du pain grillée. Du pain grillée avec le buerre. Du pain grillée avec le buerre et de la confiture. Does it pull, push, turn, open, close, descend, ascend, spiral? Blanc has a certain weight to it, perhaps more than pain. Soir opens and finishes slowly. Everybody does le buerre really well, although grillee has a bit of a stretch / movement that ends open and a little rapidly. And the confiture bounces a little before dragging a little. Je Prend. How do the languages move? The French guard the 'prend'. I take. The English and the Americans and the Australians all move differently. There is a momentum to the 'I' in English before taking, and the Americans have a dryer movement. Australians have a longer 'I' with more open vowels and a dragging out. Gimme I take. Singlish has a distinctive throwing to the 'take', and a closed 'I'. It's almost like I throw ink on the paper far away. Nan chap ta. In Korean it is quite staccato. (Chata is sleep) Wo na. In Chinese it is quite open. Wa tei. Even in Taiwanese it is also quite soft and open.

In LEM, we sat down face to face and painted each other's face. I don't think I have spent this much time studying another's face, save my first girlfriend. Perhaps I will dream of Jie tonight. It's also weird seeing her works, people claim they see me in her pictures, and yet I have no idea. I do not know how people see me.

Thursday:

In movement we learnt to throw the discus. There is surprisingly a lot of internal contrast and contraction to this movement; our body goes against the momentum of the discus twice, before aiding it as we swing it forward.

In improv, we moved the words with Paola. She has a couple of phrases from poems for us. Moving the words without understanding them is a great way to start, although I wonder how much of it is just the interpretation of the music that comes from the voice. My long-time question has been what is the difference between dance and movement? I think I'm starting to understand. Anna dances her words beautifully, and it seems contemporary and interpretive almost. When she moves the words though, I see more of her body. Paola would say that she is designing the words less. They are more like stains on the stage from Anna's body - I see a little bit of her coming through, but also something that's more connected to the voice and the words. Ivet says that she sees more of the outside movement in dance, and more of the inside movements in the second. It is more basic, something simple and just. There we go. C'est jus.

'Une foule enfiévrée par les sueurs de l'or
se bouscule et s'engouffre dans le longs corridors'

A crowd filled with sweaters of gold, jumps and gets into long corridors.

'Dans les déchirures du ciel
les locomotives en folie s'enfuient
et dans les trous
les roues vertigineuses les bouches les voies
Et les chiens du malheur qui aboient à nos trousses
Les démons sont déchaînés
Ferrailles
Tout est un faux accord
Le broun-roun-roun des roues
Chocs
Rebondissements
Nous sommes un orage sous le crâne d'un sourd'

In the tears in the sky
the mad locomotives flee
and in the holes 
the dizzying wheels the mouths the tracks
And the dogs of misfortune who bark after us
The demons are unleashed
Scraps
All is a false agreement
The broun-roun-roun of the wheels
Shocks
Twists and turns
We are a thunderstorm under the skull of the deaf

In autocour, we have 3 minutes of presentation! We are pretty chill this week. Everyone is sensing when we need to work on what. I particularly love the acidic ending. On va voir.

Friday:

In movement we learnt to canoe. After many iterations and attempts at 'searching' for the 'right' movement, Anne gave us the answer of canoeing on one side of the ship. One stroke of the oar, and then it comes back up to redirect the boat. A vertical stroke, then a horizontal stroke. Now the good part: We transpose this movement onto an emotion. Laughing, or being angry. And lastly, being uncertain, then certain. This is the difference between Lecoq and Grotowski. Grotowski wants to explore how much the body can be pushed and in that land where all our body and its defences are down, our instincts come up and does it for us. Lecoq wants to explore all the movements of the body, and how it can be essentialized and transposed on performing.

Autocour was grand, lots of different ideas where materials come together to fight. One particularly memorable scene was of two walls coming together on a balloon and it escaping. Another was of Joon being a ball, stuck on glass. We had a similar scene in ours, but his team had a better execution, perhaps since there was better focus.

On the long walk home, we spoke French the entire way, and at the end of it, Ivet, Morteza and I did an explosion before walking in three different ways.

Paintings next week!