Wednesday, April 27, 2011

04/27/11: Spring Solo Training Session #3

Running late! Only have a little over an hour in the studio, and I'm eager to get to the material development part. Feeling like a happy little kid and dancing to Lady Gaga as I put on my training clothes. No video camera but feeling okay about that today.




Contemplative Practice (0 minutes):
• Skipped contemplative practice today

Warm-up (25 minutes):
• Full warm-up sequence with playlist
(free movement, tree pose, jumping jacks, body scan, slow motion cross)
• Physical Point of Focus: Inguinal nodes at thigh/groin creases

Open Training (20 minutes):
• Body isolations: hips, chest, shoulders, combinations thereof
• Worked on this ice-skating movement, smooth, slippery, fluid limbs

Material Development (25 minutes):
• Working with notion of "Betrayal"
• Told stories about betrayal while moving, recorded them on garageband for later reference.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

04/26/11: Group Training - Contact Improv


Today I took a two hour Contact Improv class at CounterPULSE. We worked on:

• rolling points of contact
• weight-sharing
• ways of moving from upright to floor, both alone and with others
• dancing with a partner's negative space
• structural movement vs fluid movement

I worked with one of my favorite teachers of CI, Ali Woolwich. If you're reading this, you should check out WICCF, the summer CI festival she runs, info here.

(Photo Credit: Ali Woolwich & Mary Ann Brooks, Aug 09, image by Raphael Coffey)

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

4/20/11: Group Training - Hiking Mt Tam

Today I decided to skip my solo training practice in order to take a three-hour hike up Mt. Tamalpais with one of my best friends who is visiting from New Orleans. We hiked, talked, and admired the beauty of the world together. And also played in the trees like monkeys. That counts as training, right?

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

04/13/11: Spring Solo Training Session #2

New videocamera this time. I don't like it as much. Video-recording feels less important this quarter, but I'm not sure why. Happy to be in the studio and excited about my plans for the material development segment of training today. Is that goal-oriented part of this practice overwhelming the prior openness of it?



Contemplative Practice (10 minutes):
• Meditated in the dark in half-lotus

Warm-up (25 minutes):
• Full warm-up sequence with playlist
(free movement, tree pose, jumping jacks, body scan, slow motion cross)
• Physical Point of Focus: My lower back

Open Training (30 minutes):
• Sang "When the River Meets the Sea" focusing on communication of song to world
• Sang "When the River Meets the Sea" into the mirror, focusing on communication to self.
• Mobilized Lower Back area, spoke about that part of my body and its history
• Sang "Dona Nobis Pacem" while opening space in lower back.

Material Development (20 minutes):
• Recorded Ethel Rosenberg poem and letter to her sons
• Moved to those soundtracks

Thursday, April 7, 2011

04/07/11: Spring Solo Training Session #1


First training session of the new season. Working in a very small space. Excited, energized, ready to go. No camera today but full of new plans.









Contemplative Practice (15 minutes):
• Meditation, half-lotus, up against wall

Warm-Up (25 minutes):
• Full warm-up sequence with playlist
• Physical Point of Focus: My neck

Open Training (20 minutes):
• Sang “When the River meets the Sea,” and “Do you Realize” attempting to incorporate the adjustments Mario made to my singing this week.

Material Development (30 minutes):
• Began to learn “Strange Fruit” by Abel Meeropol, Billie Holiday’s version
• Developed movement sequences based on photographs of the Rosenbergs.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

04/06/11: Group Training - Grotowski Workcenter

Today there were about nine participants in the training, plus Mario and 11 people from the Open Program.

Again, the training consisted of about three hours of singing Afro-Caribbean and African-American songs plus a final question and answer period. On two occasions members of the Open Program spoke text from the writings of Allen Ginsberg, and at the end of the night, the group sang one of the songs from their piece “Electric Party Songs,” accompanied by two people playing guitars.

Overall the three days of training were challenging and rewarding and I look forward to integrating this embodied knowledge into my solo training practice.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

04/05/11: Group Training - Grotowski Workcenter

Today there were about 12 people in the group, plus Mario and six members of the Open Program.

Again, the training consisted of three hours of singing and about thirty minutes of question/answer. In addition to the Afro-Caribbean songs, we also sang several songs from the tradition of the African-American Spirituals of the Southern United States.

We were able to learn songs slightly faster today with the added voices of the members of the Open Program. The standards for accuracy were set even higher than yesterday and we moved quickly from one song to another.

Mario worked with me for a few minutes on a song that invoked the loa Yemaya. His instruction was quite insightful. I record here what I remember of the adjustments he gave me so that I don’t forget.

• Sing as though you are speaking. It’s a communication.
• Forget everything you’ve ever learned in voice lessons.
• The vibrations you’re creating in your voice are added on top rather than emerging from the action. You are trying to produce a result rather than undergoing a process.
• As you’re singing, see other people. And see them seeing you. Use that connection.
• Relax and soften your upper body and arms so that you can embrace the song as though it were a lover.

In the question/answer period, Mario answered a question about how he arrives at his adjustments by saying that it is important for a teacher or director to be able to differentiate between intuition about a performer and projections about what that person should be like. I asked him how he could tell the difference between the two. His answer had several parts, which I’ll try to recreate here:

• You can’t, ultimately, it’s always a risk.
• Practice.
• Know that you’ll be wrong sometimes.
• Trust the performer enough to handle your possibly-wrong advice.
• Remember that the other person is a different universe, like at the edge of old maps where it said: “hic sunt leones” or “here there be lions.”