Accompanied by a soundscore of terrential rain and cracks of thunder we kickstarted the project last night with an impressive cast of 22 people. Initiation came in the form of an epic name game around our giant circle - I feel sorry for the five people we have joining us next week because they have a lot of gestures to attach to faces!
Once we had weaved and handshaked our way through a warm up Beth taught a phrase of movement to switch on our thinking caps. A few worried faces and conscientious questions followed but several run throughs later and everyone was moving in the same direction, at the same time and beginning to put their stamp onto it. (we will put a video of Beth dancing the phrase on vimeo for the group to see and practice if they wish!)
Florence and the Machine helped us travel across the floor before creative mayhem commenced. Beth and I thought the best way to get a group of strangers better aquainted was to encourage them to get up close and personal so everyone was instructed to connect named body parts to body parts (e.g. ear to knee or elbow to hip). The result was on the lines of a giant game of twister!
Working with a partner to build up a set of four body part connections with linking movements in between led to the development of duets. Each pair then joined another duo and taught each other their movement phrases to create quartets. We then shared the results of these collaborations with each other. It was lovely to be in a supportive environment - lots of clapping and smiles (and some giggles!). It will be interesting to see how these duets and quartets develop the more we get to know each other.
We have asked everyone to have a think over the next week about what 'community' means to them. How do we as individuals fit into, contribute to, influence or be influenced by community? Are we part of just one community or several? What unifies a group of diverse individuals to form a community?
Beth will be exploring the idea of a landscape (urban, physical, people etc) and the concept of a patchwork of people over the coming weeks and feeding in the group's experiences, ideas and thoughts. Who knows where we will end up?!
Jonathon, our photographer, has kindly agreed to get involved, get to know us and blend into the background to catch the highlights. He set a precedent last night by throwing himself into the warm up too!
I hope everyone enjoyed the first session as much as we did. We feel very lucky to have such a lovely bunch to work with and are looking forward to seeing what next week brings.....
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