Today's movement class was led by Darren Royston, a choreographer and dance teacher who works at RADA. He along with Darryl lead the Language of the Body portion of our course. This was a fun, silly, and awakening sort of class. We began by moving around the room, dancing and imagining we were young Laban exploring the ways in which our body can move. From here we extrapolated into following him through some Laban scales and various movement qualities. Put in small groups, we had to create a scene showing the extremes of movement, putting a story to it. It was fascinating to watch as each group went through their scenes with various degrees of extremism, and the characters and feelings that were evoked throughout. Finally we looked at the planes of movement; door, table and wheel. Interacting with one another in these planes was quite interesting.
Overall the class was fun and informative; we spent 3 hours seemingly goofing about, but by the end felt as though we had learned about how we physically interact with one another, and how this can be dramatized. This work, unlike some of the more theoretical Laban work, felt like it echoed the outside-in style of work I had done with Brenda and Theatre Incarnate. Simply allowing the body to go to a position, and then explore that position physically and intellectually, was quite lovely. I feel like we get caught up in how a character should move based on time period and status, that we lose a little of the authenticity in the movement....this kind of work can bring us back to it.
Overall the class was fun and informative; we spent 3 hours seemingly goofing about, but by the end felt as though we had learned about how we physically interact with one another, and how this can be dramatized. This work, unlike some of the more theoretical Laban work, felt like it echoed the outside-in style of work I had done with Brenda and Theatre Incarnate. Simply allowing the body to go to a position, and then explore that position physically and intellectually, was quite lovely. I feel like we get caught up in how a character should move based on time period and status, that we lose a little of the authenticity in the movement....this kind of work can bring us back to it.