Acting & Actor Training
Movement & Body Work
Category
Movement training or the aestheticised enactment of movements in performance requires discipline and rehearsal practice, and more heightened attention than we give our body in everyday life.
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Drawing on a half century of documenting performance across multiple genres, from post-modern dance to physical theater to body work, as well as site-specific performance, with audiovisual examples from some 53 practitioners, including Eugenio Barba, Tim Etchells, Joan Skinner, Kristin Linklater, and Steve Paxton, Peter Hulton’s “A Digital Essay on Performance”considers performance as a body in operation with imagery and attempts to identify some of its foundational features.
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These sessions were initially organised by Laboratory Theatre members for fellow actors who were interested in the practice of overcoming difficulties with breathing, the voice, and lethargy.
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Active Breath Somatic Practice – the vital relationship of the breath in performance practice, Patricia Bardi, Lecture-Presentation at the Breath as a Tool in Performance Conference– National Centre for the Performing Arts.
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This workshop was an early attempt to develop a form of movement training work for performers that has its underpinning in the principles of the Alexander Technique and the work of Monika Pagneux.
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This film covers basic acrobatics.
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This film covers basic acrobatics using furniture and objects.
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This film covers an interview with Andrei Droznin.
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This film covers locomotion techniques.
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This film covers partner work.
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This film covers preparation and stretches for physical activity.
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Part 1 of the 80th Year Retrospective. Includes the ‘Undressing and Dressing’ and ‘Paper Dance’ from the ground-breaking interdisciplinary performance Parades and Changes.
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Are You For Real? addresses how the
heavy American workload and multitasking fact pace
of life can impact the sense of
self.
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Documentary of the 2009 Bagamoyo Festival.
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Filmed in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo), Body Without a Brain is a
high-risk, physically demanding dance for camera. Rianto seems to be in a trance as
he creates an unpremeditated encounter with the elements. He describes the work as
like a tree without roots. The piece embodies anxiety as the natural world becomes
ever more threatened.
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Chair Trap is based on several gags from Mack Sennet’s slapstick comedies, and on Adam Darius’s pantomime The Chair.
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Solo performance vocalizing a US State Department questionnaire, a woman’s response to being mugged, and a existential soliloquy.
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Concertissimo is based on a sketch by the clown Oleg Popov, and on Miklosh Kölö’s pantomime Concertissimo.
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CoNCrEte (2009)
screendance reveals
how the environment affects our emotions and ever-changing lived
experience.
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This video is documentation taken from a weekly contact jam session with the
actors in the MFA Actor-Training program at UC Irvine. Contact Improvisation is
a large part of the movement arc in the first year of actor training, and jam
sessions are held weekly, integrating all three years of MFA actors.
Someone happened to video this session, and I give a brief description of
our use of contact as a tool for actor training in the
voice-over.
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This video is documentation of an exercise with 3rd year graduate actors at
the UC Irvine Actor-Training program, speaking a monologue while contacting with
a silent partner. At a moment of heightened activity, the silent
partner is removed, and the resulting delivery of the monologue is focused and
intensely communicated.
The athleticism and sensitivity of the contact created a culture of
expressivity. Tenderness as well as rage and challenge emerged in the contact
session and remained present in the solo monologue. So, the complexities of
emotion that were embodied metaphorically and rhythmically in the extreme lifts
and rolls and balances of the partnering could be seen as an emotional
“rehearsal” for the solo performance. But once the partner was removed, the
speaker had to reach out to us, and address each deeply felt idea to the
audience in the room.
No longer in a contact with the literal “other,” we, the audience, now become
the necessary focus.
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This piece is an excerpt from a half-hour documentary shot in Grahamstown,
South Africa, during the annual National Arts Festival (https://www.nationalartsfestival.co.za/2016-festival/).
Interviews were conducted with a wide range of choreographers. This
selection focuses on up-and-coming artists Julia Wilson, Lorin Sookool,
Athena Mazarakis, and Kamogelo Molobye. The works are inspired
by challenges facing women, gays, and lesbians in contemporary South
Africa.
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Patricia Bardi and Arthur Brooks (music: trumpet) create an improvised performance exploring a nuanced and textured expressive language investigating the relationships among embodied sound texture, music movement, dance, voice, and text.
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Patricia Bardi and Arthur Brooks create an improvised performance in 1998 exploring a nuanced and textured expressive language investigating the relationships among embodied sound texture, music movement, dance, voice, and text.
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A documentation of a five-day workshop, with Zygmunt Molik leading a group of participants at the historical site of the Brzezinka farm, where most of Grotowski’s paratheatrical work took place.
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Patricia Bardi discusses some of the guiding principles of her work and how it improves the expression of voice through the entire body.
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This excerpt from an evening-long performance, Figment has improvisersusing compositionas a formal element.
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Fishing is based on Jean-Louis Barrault’s style exercise Fishing, and Evgeniy Lebedev’s sketch Fishing.
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Walking Gusto Productions
explores the marginalised and disempowered female voices of South Africa by
using the body as a “site of resistance”
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From Starting to Cut the Wood translates the sounds of manual labor into
dance.
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Horse is inspired by the novels of William Faulkner, and by Jean-Louis Barrault’s interpretation of a horse.
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Shot at a workshop held at La Bartra, a retreat centre in the Prades mountains. Most of those present had worked with Suryodarmo for many years, and they came from across Europe to share his practice.
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In between researches stillness and transition, focusing on the moments,
during which nothing seems to happen, but without which, nothing can
happen.
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In the Park is based on Leonid Engibarov’s interpretation of a classical sketch by the clown Bambino.
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Videotaped in Kerala, India in 1993 and 1995, this film explains Kathakali's basic make-up types, the context of performance, the process and techniques of training, and performance preliminaries.
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A duet performance between Patricia Bardi (vocal dance) and Alex Maguire (music).
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Kaash (Hindi word for ‘if’) was created in 2002 by Akram Khan when he was choreographer in residence of the Royal Festival Hall. He teamed up with celebrated talents Anish Kapoor and Nitin Sawhney.
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Zarrilli’s Psychophysical Acting methodology focuses on the relationship between the actor-as-doer and what the actor does. It (re)examines in practice and theory a psychophysical approach to acting.
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The full performance of Light Becomes Her is a dynamic collage of
voice, dance, movement, and character which looks at one woman and the multiple
aspects of the different women living inside her.
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The excerpt of Light Becomes Her is a dynamic collage of voice, dance, movement, and character which looks at one woman and the multiple aspects of the different women living inside her.
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A solo performance boldly exploring female empowerment and resilience in the context of male behaviour.
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In this demonstration-performance, Odin Teatret’s Iben Nagel Rasmussen shows and explains her working practice, from her training methods through to performance.
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This workshop has a strong focus on voice work. It takes place on Dartmoor, in an ancient stone circle, a village hall and a garden, and illustrates Suryodarmo’s individual movement practice.
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With its underpinning in the principles of the Alexander Technique, this workshop introduces a somatic framework for movement training for performance which develops Alexander’s directions.
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Siddi theatre performers and sisters, Geeta and Girija Siddi, performing in a
two-week festival, Telling Our Stories of Home: Exploring and Celebrating
Changing African & African Diaspora Communities.
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In Nocturnal Shimmerings is an improvised collaboration with Patricia Bardi and Michael Vatcher.
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A film made by Rekha Tandon’s company, Dance Routes, that begins with a description of Odissi’s background as a temple dance tradition, and an account of its basic form and ornamentation.
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Pantalone Tells is an etude in the Italian style of Commedia dell’Arte style in Italian, but understandable by every human being.
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Pantalone Tells (for TV) is an etude in the Italian style of Commedia dell’Arte style in Italian, but understandable by every human being.
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Documentation of the dance performance
of Payau # 2 Waterproof, staged in the Indonesia
Dance Festival 2012 in Jakarta, Indonesia.
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Patricia Bardi investigates the subconscious, life-sustaining systems including the organ, circulatory, hormonal and autonomic nervous systems as part of her program – Voice Movement Integration (VMI) Somatic Practice.
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Pin Drop Echoes Through shows Patricia Bardi and pianist Alex Maguire creating a performance that build bridges and dismantle boundaries between movement, dance, voice, text, and music.
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Sand tells the story of the history and
evolution of sand dance as it is passed down from
father to son.
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Sunflower is based on Milan Sladek’s pantomime The Sunflower, and Velyo Goranov’s interpretation of it.
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Surgeon is based on a 15th-century sketch by Andrew Borde, and Jean-Louis Barrault’s interpretation of it in his one man show, Body Language.
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A peformance of movement, dance, voice and music with Patricia Bardi and Alex Maguire.
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This film documents the work of Iben Nagel Rasmussen (Odin Teatret) with her
international group The Bridge of Winds during a two-week closed work session held
in December 2011.
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This video is a complete performance document of the approximately three and a half hour performance of a Kathakali play, The Killing of Kirmira.
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The Organs’ Presence in Voice, Movement and Expression Workshop, Patricia Bardi holds a workshop on combining somatic practice and improvisation in integrating voice and movement in a creative process.
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A documentary on the annual summer retreat for interdisciplinary performance arts.
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An interview with Patricia Bardi on the capacity of hands-on touch and Organ Rebalancing.
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Torture of a Shirt is an etude that demonstrates how an object can be imbued with a human soul.
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Touchdown Dance, which includes commentary and analysis by Paxton, observes the experience of a visually impaired woman, Kirin Saeed, as she moves through a five-day workshop with Paxton’s company.
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In this performance Patricia Bardi and Alex Maguire create fluid tides of mood and movement.
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Inthis lively performance, Patricia Bardi shares some of her discoveries and insights that have developed over many years of independent research and performance practice of Vocal Dance. Performed at the SDNO, School for New Dance Development, Amsterdam, 1995.
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Weight Lifter is based on several classical clown sketches and a part of Marcel Marceau’s pantomime Bip – King of Sports.
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Documenting a three-day work session introducing participants to key aspects of the training Rasmussen developed with her group, The Bridge of Winds, culminating in a Montage of Actions and Songs.
Commentary
by Peter Hulton
Drawing on a half century of documenting performance across multiple genres, from post-modern dance to physical theater to body work, as well as site-specific performance, with audiovisual examples from some 53 practitioners, including Eugenio Barba, Tim Etchells, Joan Skinner, Kristin Linklater, and Steve Paxton, Peter Hulton’s “A Digital Essay on Performance”considers performance as a body in operation with imagery and attempts to identify some of its foundational features.
Commentary
by Amie Dowling
The films Waterline and Ways to Disappear show the progress of the creative process creating changes in the lives of the incarcerated, their communities, and society.
Commentary
by Annie Loui
Contact improvisation is a form of dance improvisation based on energy and weight
exchange, incorporating elements of aikido, jitterbugging, child’s play, and
tumbling
Commentary
by McPherson, Katrina
Commentary
by Amie Dowling
The films Well Contested Sites Separate Sentences reflect on the plight of the incarcerated and exposure of their plight, both the condition and the societal issues, to society at large.
Practitioner
Niamh Dowling is Head of Performance at Rose Bruford. She has trained with Monika Pagneux and Anne Bogart, collaborated with Teatr Piesn Kozla, and worked internationally as a Movement Director.
Practitioner
Goat Island was a Chicago-based collaborative performance group that made nine intimate, low-tech and intensely physical performance works that toured internationally, between 1987 and 2009.
Practitioner
An expert in dance disciplines from around the world, Dr. Alexander Lubenov Iliev is one of the most celebrated mime artists on the planet, and Associate Professor at the National Academy in Sofia.
Practitioner
Inventor of an influential somatic and performance practice known as ‘Joged Amerta’, Suprapto Suryodarmo has taught and performed in Indonesia, Europe, Australia, the USA and India for over 25 years.
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Practitioner
Known principally as a teacher rather than as a performer or director, Jacques Lecoq’s work on comic and physical performance has been immensely influential, thanks to his collaborators and students.
Category
The term biomechanics indicates the suite of training exercises used by Vsevolod Meyerhold to train his actors in the new post-revolutionary theatre he pursued.