Week two flys by

Yes it does, but not without tears!


With my head fully into study and keep fit mode life is great. Well one part is missing, one BIG part but he's never far away. This time to reflect, interrogate and make connections in my practice is just what I need. There is nothing like a good old deadline to provoke answers and more questions about what makes you tick. I remember in an audition once I was asked what makes me tick, and I replied tall people! amazingly they still employed me.  So yes I am ticking over nicely, in the land of academia. My movement heritage presentation went with a bang, and I managed to talk for 24 mins which I was shocked at. Here are some snippets....

My name is Alice and I love to play....

i'm competitive to a degree but most of all with myself. Which is actually much harder as me and myself spend most of our time together. It is actually a great thing as it makes me my own motivator, which I why I run best alone which suits me fine. I have always had the ability to have confidence in what I do and the belief that whatever happens I will learn and also that nothing is ever that bad. I love to debate and investigate ideas, fighting for what I believe in at the time, often through action. By action I mean by being there and doing something I can stand up and be counted. To put my body where my mouth is, is very important to me. Hopefuly one day i'll work that statement into a little clown/burlesque number.

I used to find it hard to accept that sometimes I was wrong, but more and more I find the most fruitful discoveries are found when I make mistakes and live with them for a while. I find a new perspective.

I am a doer and I make myself available for things to happen and thats how I learn.

So thats me

GROUNDED EMOTIONAL PHYISCAL & DYSLEXIC

I can see it now on my grave stone!

DYSLEXIC - And I mention dyslexia because it is definitely linked to my movement heritage. As I think through movement, rather than follow those colourful wiggly lines that they call maps, I get lost and learn that way. Rather than learning dance steps I make them up and convince people I am doing it right because I have pleasure to do it my way.

I have dipped my toe into the following....

ELF-GYMNASTICS- YOGA- TAI CHI- CAPOERA- CONTACT IMPRO- ACROBATICS- CONTEMPOARY DANCE- THEATRE and CIRCUS at Greentop Circus in Sheffield my eyes were opened and have stayed that way ever since.  If I loose faith in what I do for a split second I think back to this stage in my life when it really became exciting.

I discovered the

CLOWN

Which brings me back to play. Playing children's games became my work.

(read john wright p80 theatre as game)

I started to perform outdoors doing walkabout and interactive characters at festivals which taught me so much about my audience. Taught me about sensitivity, risk taking, optimism, complicity, stamina, spontaneity, pleasure and so much more... all of these principles are still key to all of my work be it performance, teaching, directing as well as life and relationships.

So people ask me

Are you an actor? ….I say No

Are you a dancer?.....I say No

Em I'm a playful, physical, performer....yes that right I use my body to make people laugh and feel moved and invigorated and to let them dream.... and that usually shuts the taxi drivers up!

In 2009 I adapted my first solo show ALICE with Peta Lily (roots in mine, very experienced international performer) with arts council funding. I wanted to get the right director, someone who would be in line with all of interests in Clown, movement, would work with what I had to say...she was perfect and did all of that and more. The biggest thing I will take away from working with peta was her physical control and attention to detail, which came from the mime no doubt. I learned that being a physical performer isn't necessarily about throwing yourself around which I used to think, and yes don't get me wrong I love to do it and still get urges to fling myself at strangers in the street and climb on tall people and tussle and fight, but there is more. Just as there is more to play than comedy, it is everywhere and so it should be.

So with this is mind earlier this year I saw John Wright's 'The Summer House' which wasn't the big interactive spectacle of Slava, No Fit State and De la Guada, it was a small scale play and it really engaged me and excited me and showed me how game and play can exist in theatre without the style being overtly Clown, spectacle or interactive. I realised that the most successful productions are the ones where the style is hidden, it is not defined by a code that we recognise it just works and we love it and often don't know why. ALICE did this too, it was intimate and epic the same time. The story was about one girl and the themes were massive and it did what I a lot of those big shows did for me in a different form. This realisation affirmed my belief in what I do and my reason for being here at central. It doesn't matter where you trained or what you know, its what you do with it that counts.

CLOWN LAB my baby, set up by myself and my now boyfriend

Through Clown Lab I have trained, taught and performed learning so much from

working with Mick Barnfather, Gerry Flanagan, Peta Lily, Aitor Bassuir- Spymonkey, Jon Davison, John Wright, Philippe Gaulier, Jef Johnson, Debra Stych & Hereberto Montalban and Pablo Ibarluzea all haven given me so much!

3 things stick in head after all of this..

1. Celebrate your differences – don't try to be the same, do it your way with your body. (I knew I would never be a beautiful aerialist so my trapeze was comic and involved falling off alot)
   
   
   2. Revisit the same path – through repetition and covering 'old' ground which really doesn't exist because its new ground every time you visit it, you get the chance to go deeper into what you know and see the changes.
   'Only on the path that you walk everyday do you see the flowers blossom' Pablo Ibarluzea (Yin de Yan), 2011, Bilbao
   
   
   3. Enjoy the impossible – If something is impossible to achieve maybe just maybe you have the freedom to enjoy the journey, whilst secretly dreaming that you will be the one to make it to the end! Neutral mask and a lot of Le coqs work is about this experiencing something and always trying to improve and get closer to reaching it, but really that is the work there is no end. Students say 'can't you show us then we could do it?' and I would have said the same, now I know that they won't 'get it', they will get a watered down version of what I got in that moment of time, it means nothing and they won't own it as their own.

I am reminded of my movement heritage everytime I warm up and teach and perform, as the exercises I use come from all parts of my past. I notice the more I go on that things start to make sense and at the same time become re defined and I discover I know nothing. I embrace this 100 percent! So many wonderful people have really seen me and believed in what I do over the years and they are in in my movement past, present and future... thankyou.