Lecoq: World of abstraction

 When you move, all the people who've also moved that before - moves with you.

Monday:

Getting acquainted with color is an exquis-ity. Warming up with it, a rar-ity. Revisiting color today with Pascal felt like returning home - we've had at least 4 different classes on color by now, and this one was no different. Once again, we placed the batons on the ground to form a color tube ROYGBIV. Blue is the longest. Is green longer or orange? No, yellow doesn't take up so much space. Isn't it higher? Red is definitely shorter. Is violet or indigo longer? Patterings before we take up our positions at violet, and make our way towards the red. This time, we have 2 people guiding us through the tube, aiding us in moving the colors. Think materials, think transitions, does it push, pull, descend, monte? A quality of melodrama appears at the beginning, starting slow, and then gaining energy from green to red; almost as though starting from drama and ending in Nessun Dorma of an opera. After which, of course, we move the inverse from red to violet. Is it easier? An impulse to start the journey, and it was almost comedy humain. Perhaps the journey from being born to being old? The last part of the class was to transpose the dynamics of the color into characters - red when we're born, orange as we discover ourselves and out-selves, yellow as we find our first friends, first crushes, green the adolescence, blue as young adults, indigo as maturity, and purple as old. Even then, the massive length of blue had us questioning - can we split it up into the different shades of blue? Different age periods? Perhaps then Pierre won't have just a baby, but have paid his mortgage, worked 5 jobs, watch the baby become a man, and rekindle his love life with his partner.

Abstraction continues with Frederick in the grande salle, where we did a partner-contratime exercise. We faced off and alternated 'un.. deux.. trios', that way the 'un' would alternate. We then layered movements on each 'un', 'deux' and 'trios', and repeated them. As we get used to each movement, we begin to guard the dynamic of it, and begin to freestyle. Then we walked to the metronome, and inserted this exercise by ourselves. It was extremely joyous and surreal to watch 16 people each in their space moving, and yet all connected on time. For the grand finale, we got up in 3s, 5s, and 7s to improvise moving on beat, and surprising ourselves with the off-beat. How do we find our own movements, yet stay connected to the larger picture? In the end, we found something moving in countertime on the disequilibrium. Morteza would say later: 'We are going from equilibrium to disequilibrium, and back. It's the journey between that's interesting, pushing and pulling, surprising ourselves and the group. That's the work of the school during the first year. It's difficult.'

With Anne in poetry, we grouped up and moved four poems - English, Korean, Swedish and Portuguese. I really liked Bridget's poem in English, but since I understood it, I went for Joon's Korean one instead. We found suspension, some turns, some agitation, and not the ending I wanted (something more concrete, definite, I felt), and Anne told us there was a descending towards the end. It was more musical the poem. It's still very wishy-washy.

In LEM, we had a master class in form movement. We begin with moving a baton in space - a line, if you will. Then two batons in relation - a plane, if you will. Three batons on a tree, swinging oh swinging free - the three axes, condensed into a form that looks dynamic. We move in relation always. Upping the ante to 6, and adding the possibility of a change (in positions of baton), we were 3 groups in the space, pushing pulling turning rolling frustrated giggling, listening. Lastly, we took up squares, rectangles and triangles and moved them in the space, using fixed points, and figuring out how to move in such a way that we serve the object. We disappear, serving the greater movement, and we appear as our ego takes hold. When we try a movement that's too difficult for us, the actor shows. When we have unclear lines, the actor appears. When we break the magic of the form, the actor is open for all to see. So we play with this. Form, no form, form, no form, il faut joue.

Tuesday:

We opened with tirez-poussez in movement, recalling the movement of a sole boatsman. Tirez, glissez, poussez, glissez.

Improv with Yasuyo had us visiting the world once more, with half the class reading the news in their mother tongue in the space, and the other half travelling through. First up was Debarati with her dialect of the Indian language, and 3 other people to move it. First we moved as she talked, then she talked, and we moved, and talked and moved. Next we had to speak our version of her language, a sort of micmicking gibberish, with hilarious results. Then came Sasha and the French language, and Olga with Turkish.  We ended with the different English-es - Remi and the Queen's, Nicky and Gibralta's English, and Alex with the Australian's English. The queen's was a little punchier, Gibralta's had some height, and the Aussies was soft, flowy and pulls itself along. Open to, of course, interpretation.

Familie Floz tonight!

Wednesday:

In movement with Anne, we explored the ground with our bodies. Rolling over with the highest efficiency, and then sitting up in a way that requires the least effort. Of course, least effort for Jonas simply means pushing up with his hands, then swinging his legs from the back to the front. From there, the rule that was set was to have our hands and feet on the floor as we roll over, and as we sit up. Here we discover the small and big circles our limbs make as we roll over, sit up, continue turning, and stand up. Then, the inverse.

In improv, Eric started architecture off with the Eiffel Tower. Funny, wasn't that our autocour? What is the material of the tower (metal)? What is the dynamic? Perhaps a slow base to a the holes in the tower, then the tippy top. There are four bases, three stages. Also, how do we do the tower in an abstract manner? In 3 strokes of a brush? In 3 movements? There is an attempt by Morteza to find the top of the tower, and then open to the sky. Next we visited the Pompidou, which is exactly as you think it is; a rectangle planted on the ground. There were, however, delightful lines and contortions attempted by Agat, Romane and Xiao, and there was a split second of a tiptoe on the pipe on the side of the building. After, we explored 5 other places. Unnamed as I will be embarrassed to say I don't know them. More square lines. A verticality that arrives with solitude, creeping towards the audience. Flaps that open out quickly and slow down, but that take more space. And last but not least, the Sacre-Coeur, with all its undulations and materials that descend and monte. The French have difficult and proud architecture. A good representation of themselves. ;)

LEM had us finally moving our grand structures. We began the lesson with the batons again, moving them in relationship to the ground, in relationship to lines, and in relationship to each other. We are here to serve the forms, the structures, and to find how the actor disappears into the work. When that happens, we are then able to re-appear as the actors.

It's almost like you're dancing with the form. This sparked my inner dialogue with my tango background. I began to notice the lines that my structure was able to move in; which directions were easy, which were harder (the countermask), how it turns in the space - around an axis, or perhaps an articulation - the material that I would like to move it in. La terre, l'air. We are puppeteers with our marionettes, and then we put it on the face and it becomes a mask, or we make it bigger and we wear it as our costumes. Does the structure glide over the ground easily? Is it a slow one, or a fast one. How does it transition from one direction to the next? This was why I came to lecoq, to find forms and how they move, and serve them. And then not.


Thursday:

With Eric in movement we revisited launching the fillet into the space, and guarding it. We'll have to hold the space for everything we do. Next, rafting again, then diminishing it to the most petite. Even the oars were size of needles. Then of course aggrandir all the way to la folie, pushing until we lose our equilibrium, then finding it again. How do we lose our balance? How do we recover? That is the basis of our work. Finally, taking away the non-essential movements, we keep the grand lines, the grand attitudes and raft for what we were worth, on the spot, guarding the boat and guarding the form.

With Paola in improv, we worked on poetry. We essentialized 4 poems into 3 movements. Huh? Hmm. Sort of. We were getting closer. Then we worked on an italian poem. Again, essentializing it into 3 movements. What are the dynamics of the movement? Where is it quick and where is it slower? Lastly, we took a phrase from our memory and moved it. Then wrote a poem on it. This was not art therapy, so we handed in our poems.

Friday:

Fridays are the easiest to not write anything about, because they are generally short and sweet. A dabble of acrobatics, a streak of 9 people struggling to finish off their autocour, and blam, the autocour for real. It's the most intense, and it's what the week builds up to. We found 6 groups who'd lived a painting for two weeks, and the result was some pretty fantastic movements pieces and acrobatics in the space. This week's autocour is the dialogue between two pieces of paintings, and for our group, we stayed with Robert Delaunay's portrait of Phillipe Soupault, and contrasted it against Qi Baishi's Birds of Paradise. They lived around the same period of time, on different ends of the world, and we thought it might be cool to contrast their works. The calmness and the solitude of l'homme noir (man in black) against the crazyness and the resonance of the Eiffel tower in the background, in comparison to the calmness of the white and the branches against the dynamic of the turns and the splat of bright red on the canvas. After, we didn't get a 'pas mal', but Paola did say that the dialogue was a little bizarre, but beautiful. Gotta get my encouragements wherever I can ;)

Now, for the Lunar New Year of the Rat!