One of my favorite times in the Conservatory, hands down, are the warms-up in the Acting classes with Beth.
It’s dancing time. We make a circle and take turns dancing in the middle. We make eye contact with someone else and invite him to the center, create a dance moment and leave. While we are in the “outside” of the circle we let ourselves go and be influenced by the movements of the person who is in the middle.
I can’t say how liberating this exercise is. No words, just pure movement, energy and contact.
I grew up dancing: in the kitchen, in the living room, at school, parties. It was such an important part of our culture, as family, as individuals. Usually, if I remember a happy time, there was dancing involved.
And here, particularly, I feel very relaxed when I am dancing.
When I talk I often feel self-conscious. I am worried how my words are sounding or about my pronunciation. Lately I have felt better and better about my English, but still, nothing beats the dancing time.
2 comments:
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music. –Angela Monet
Dance is emotion expressed by movement; one’s soul on display to the world. –Karen M. Cantley
“Live like you’ll die tomorrow, work like you don’t need the money, and dance like nobody’s watching.” –Bob Fosse
“Don’t dance for the audience, dance for yourself.” –Bob Fosse
“Dance expresses joy better than anything else.” –Bob Fosse
“The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music...Bodies never lie.”
–Agnes De Mille, in New York Times Magazine
“Dance is hidden language of the soul, of the body.”
–Martha Graham, quoted in New York Times
Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it made.”
–Ted Shawn, quoted in Time
“O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?”
–W.B. Yeats, Among School Children
Well, as someone who "can't dance" the dance warmup is for me always something of a "Nike moment" In other words, I have to "just do it." Just give over to the task of connecting, moving in response, finding a new way to move, sharing that move, becoming part of this wonderful community of actors. Stretching and growing a bit in the process.
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