#dramatic movement

Our first task in this workshop was in partners. We had to stand as if we were both standing on either end of a beach towel facing each other. We had to find ways of looking past them and dodging them by manouvering their body but we weren't allowed to move our feet.

Then we had to do a similar thing but this time find 4 ways of mutual support instead of dodging. This time, we could move our feet slighlty and swap places but stay the same distance away. We then had to show other people the mutual supports and get criticism. We were told that they wanted our movements to be slightly more risky. We took this on board and made slight adjustments. For example, there was one where I was in bench position and my partner leaned over my back and supported herself with her hand on the floor. We changed this by removing the hand on the floor and just have her support herself on me instead.

We then had to add transitions between our supports and create a short sequence. This was then also shown and we were given constructive criticism. This time, they recognised that we had taken the previous criticism on board, but felt we could have gone further with it still.

Our next task was to come up with a short motif that portrayed traits of the character we had chosen as who we wanted to play. I had chosen Talthybius. I focused on the fact that Talthybius is a messenger but also a soldier.

Next we were put into pairs. We had to show our partner our motif and then teach it and then do the same with their motif. Then we had to find a way of linking them together.

After this, we were put together with another pair and we had to show and teach again. Then we had to turn this into a whole sequence.

I feel that this was successful for my group. Each of the sequences seemed to have natural ways to be put together so it worked really nicely and it was a smooth performance. Also because we were all different characters, you could see this come through in each section of the dance.