Educational megadose (circus, week 3)
Jul. 28th, 2018 10:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flexagonThis week was mostly about act creation, but not entirely.
Laban (efforts & quality of movement): we spent all of Tuesday morning on quality-of-movement stuff, but with a bit of a system to it. Here are some quality alternatives by a guy named Laban, which can be combined in 16 ways:
fast / slow
light / heavy
direct / indirect
bound / free
It was fairly easy to determine which of these qualities a person was trying to exhibit, if he/she deliberately chose four extremes and then walked in that manner from point A to point B. I tried moving both "fast" and "free" and got to point B exclaiming "I hate that!" -- it felt so out of control. So hey, learned a thing about myself. Kind of. :)
And here are five ways to move in relation to a partner, which are called pentamodes: inhibit, impulse, companion, solo, neutral. This got really pretty interesting, with all kinds of crossovers I can think of into other realms of human/human influence. I think writing about them won't be as interesting as playing with them was: we spent time giving each other impulses (with the mover's eyes closed, and trying to move toward the impulse sometimes), and inhibiting each other's motion, and being companionable.
Skillz: we spent Thursday afternoon on regular skill work, which for me meant tumbling, handstands, and fh2/h2h acro. Nothing super remarkable and I skipped some of the tumbling that looked high-impact, but I did do the first one-arm cartwheels I'd done in quite a few years. I've been intermittently working toward them by just putting my second hand down really late and lightly (2-3 fingertips) and got to the point of just not touching it down. My handstand jump-ups are never spine-curled enough for Bender's happiness, but I did straddle up to a 6- or 7-inch surface once in a way that felt pretty good to me, and I played with a smooth transition from pushing through legs (the jump) to pushing through arms, with some success. H2h on the new baby base I'm working with -- same one as mentioned here, we'll call him Calendar -- is also coming along very well. It's hilarious to watch him starting to be proud of it, as he goes from wide-eyed wonder to getting a swelled head over just a few weeks. Oh, baby base you are so CUTE and so YOUNG.
Act creation: I got put with the three duo acro pairs for an acro/duo trap act, and I think this was the right call because, skills aside, those are my people. Our act came together in the following way: Tuesday afternoon, created shit-ton of material, wrote it all down in a Google doc. Wednesday morning, cut a print-out of the Google doc into pieces and re-ordered them (at first in a gimmicky way coming from people's sentences about partnership, but rapidly becoming pragmatic). Created some new material in the process, and cut some from the version before. Discussed costuming. Friday: brought costumes, decided on something that would work, made some adjustments to our layout based on learning where we'd be in the show space. On Friday morning we ran the piece over and over until we were all going to the right places most of the time, and experimented with different music and picked something -- the coach did some rapid turnaround Garage Band editing that impressed me. And then Friday afternoon we added characterizations and discussed makeup, and this is when I died on the outside, because I'm a zombie now. We went over to the mirror and learned how to do "dead face" (massage jaw, then let it hang open) and "zombie smile" (from there, someone once told you that smiling means showing all your top teeth). It's kinda horrifying, but does mean I don't have to smile pretty for the audience, so there's that! We did run-throughs of the rapidly congealing act for the other students, and then for the coaches. I'm pleased; it's about 5:20 long, is skill-intensive, and apparently now very funny with the zombies and the one living necromancer/matriarch who animates us. I get to fly and base and show my abs. I'd be nervous about the one hand-to-hand, but it's a jump over into a five-person basket catch, so sticking it is not actually required, and it's been feeling consistent anyway.
The show is today, so I'll spend lots of hours sitting around being jittery but we'll also figure out where we walk in the space, how the setup goes, and get to do a full run-through there... plus, of course, the real thing in the evening. We're opening the second act, which I take as a compliment. I'll let you know how it goes!
Laban (efforts & quality of movement): we spent all of Tuesday morning on quality-of-movement stuff, but with a bit of a system to it. Here are some quality alternatives by a guy named Laban, which can be combined in 16 ways:
fast / slow
light / heavy
direct / indirect
bound / free
It was fairly easy to determine which of these qualities a person was trying to exhibit, if he/she deliberately chose four extremes and then walked in that manner from point A to point B. I tried moving both "fast" and "free" and got to point B exclaiming "I hate that!" -- it felt so out of control. So hey, learned a thing about myself. Kind of. :)
And here are five ways to move in relation to a partner, which are called pentamodes: inhibit, impulse, companion, solo, neutral. This got really pretty interesting, with all kinds of crossovers I can think of into other realms of human/human influence. I think writing about them won't be as interesting as playing with them was: we spent time giving each other impulses (with the mover's eyes closed, and trying to move toward the impulse sometimes), and inhibiting each other's motion, and being companionable.
Skillz: we spent Thursday afternoon on regular skill work, which for me meant tumbling, handstands, and fh2/h2h acro. Nothing super remarkable and I skipped some of the tumbling that looked high-impact, but I did do the first one-arm cartwheels I'd done in quite a few years. I've been intermittently working toward them by just putting my second hand down really late and lightly (2-3 fingertips) and got to the point of just not touching it down. My handstand jump-ups are never spine-curled enough for Bender's happiness, but I did straddle up to a 6- or 7-inch surface once in a way that felt pretty good to me, and I played with a smooth transition from pushing through legs (the jump) to pushing through arms, with some success. H2h on the new baby base I'm working with -- same one as mentioned here, we'll call him Calendar -- is also coming along very well. It's hilarious to watch him starting to be proud of it, as he goes from wide-eyed wonder to getting a swelled head over just a few weeks. Oh, baby base you are so CUTE and so YOUNG.
Act creation: I got put with the three duo acro pairs for an acro/duo trap act, and I think this was the right call because, skills aside, those are my people. Our act came together in the following way: Tuesday afternoon, created shit-ton of material, wrote it all down in a Google doc. Wednesday morning, cut a print-out of the Google doc into pieces and re-ordered them (at first in a gimmicky way coming from people's sentences about partnership, but rapidly becoming pragmatic). Created some new material in the process, and cut some from the version before. Discussed costuming. Friday: brought costumes, decided on something that would work, made some adjustments to our layout based on learning where we'd be in the show space. On Friday morning we ran the piece over and over until we were all going to the right places most of the time, and experimented with different music and picked something -- the coach did some rapid turnaround Garage Band editing that impressed me. And then Friday afternoon we added characterizations and discussed makeup, and this is when I died on the outside, because I'm a zombie now. We went over to the mirror and learned how to do "dead face" (massage jaw, then let it hang open) and "zombie smile" (from there, someone once told you that smiling means showing all your top teeth). It's kinda horrifying, but does mean I don't have to smile pretty for the audience, so there's that! We did run-throughs of the rapidly congealing act for the other students, and then for the coaches. I'm pleased; it's about 5:20 long, is skill-intensive, and apparently now very funny with the zombies and the one living necromancer/matriarch who animates us. I get to fly and base and show my abs. I'd be nervous about the one hand-to-hand, but it's a jump over into a five-person basket catch, so sticking it is not actually required, and it's been feeling consistent anyway.
The show is today, so I'll spend lots of hours sitting around being jittery but we'll also figure out where we walk in the space, how the setup goes, and get to do a full run-through there... plus, of course, the real thing in the evening. We're opening the second act, which I take as a compliment. I'll let you know how it goes!
no subject
Date: 2018-07-28 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-30 02:07 pm (UTC)Finally figured out they're by this guy Brandin Steffensen, so searching for his name brings up a little more. But I can't find a website that simply gives an intro to the five, or discusses exercises for each of them / all of them like the ones we did. I'm a little baffled now -- I assumed that anything we'd spend some time on would be as well known as Laban, but clearly that's not so.