Body and Performance

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• Publisher: Triarchy Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781909470170
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performance Art

The first volume in this series, Nine Ways of Seeing a Body, explored different conceptions of the body in recent Western history (body as object, body as subject, somatic body, etc.).This new collection highlights 12 contemporary approaches to the body (lenses) that are currently being used by performers or in the context of performance training. The lenses draw on somatic practices like the Feldenkrais Method, the Alexander Technique and Body-Mind Centering, and approaches like Object Relations, Corporeal Feminism and Embodied Cognition. Other chapters illuminate the role of the body in music and devised performance, in experimental opera and in classical Sanskrit theatre. Instead of trying to 'improve' or 'enhance' the performer's body or vocal output, all 12 lenses emphasise the interdependence of body andplace, society, culture and other bodies. They also share the idea of the body as flux rather than fixed identity. Each approach is interlaced with a case study showing how it can be applied in practice. Students, dancers, performers, singers, musicians, directors and choreographers can find their own preferred approach(es) to the body-in-performance amongst the lenses described here and can explore alternatives that might enrich their current vocabulary.

THE LEARNT BODY

THE BODY AS A REFLECTION OF SOCIO-CULTURAL RESPONSES TO LANDSCAPE¹

Nicholas Hope

Abstract

Based on a participant-observation research project with theatre companies in Oslo, Norway and Sydney, Australia, the author suggests that the learnt body incorporates a physicality and sense of proximal space that is in part defined by the historic, socio-cultural responses of the prevailing community to the meta-geographic and lived urban landscape that the body inhabits.

The chapter draws on the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edward Casey, Jaana Parviainen and RUDOLF LABAN amongst others to help give shape to the relatively detailed and intensive notes and interviews undertaken during the placement, as well as referring to the author’s experience as an actor, performer and resident in both places. Laban’s terminology is used to describe movement and body-weight use during the observed rehearsals.²

The work and the resulting discussion lead the author to propose that one way to approach the training of the body is to first investigate and isolate the socio-culturally learnt aspects of its place-memory: to familiarise the self with what is based in learnt body memory in order to consciously transcend socially coded habits and movement patterns.

The body out-of-place

Winter, Oslo, 1996: As an Australian Sydney-sider walking outside at the peak of winter I was advised to keep the area of the mouth and nose warm and to be aware of the effects of breathing sub-zero air into moisture-lined mouth and nostrils. I had to re-learn how to walk to avoid slipping and falling; this included using heavier footwear, thereby changing the speed and angle of my pacing. I had to attempt to realign how I transferred weight from foot to foot, including how I placed my feet on the ground: weight needed to be transferred in a more vertical alignment than I was used to. I was taught this by a Norwegian co-actor on a film made in the countryside in winter: I needed to look like I was used to being there, not “like a tourist”, as the director said.³ My physical presence became more marked, overt: my body was foreign to this place, and became focally present to me in a way it was not in the already embodied physicality of my-body-in-the-geographic/climatic-familiarity of Sydney. These physical changes alone affected my sense of well-being and equilibrium, and underlined some of the basic formative differences existing between myself and those I worked with in terms of socio-culturally inherited, day-to-day bodily skills.
(Hope, 2010)

In 2007, after many years working as an actor around the world, I undertook a comparative analysis of two sets of theatre rehearsals in, respectively, Oslo and Sydney, and considered the results in terms of ‘self’ and ‘place’ as inter-animating concepts. The results confirmed my own experience, uncovering a set of ubiquitous differences between each cast that appeared to reflect a socio-cultural response to their lived environments. Whilst it was impossible to verify, I concluded that the learnt body incorporates a physicality and sense of proximal space that is in part defined by the established socio-cultural responses of the prevailing community to the meta-geographic and urban landscape that the body lives in. This naturally impacts on how performers work in rehearsal, the decisions they make, the ways they use their bodies, and the ways in which those bodies are read by audiences.

What were those differences, how did they relate to the socio-historic, cultural responses that each cast had grown up in, and what does that mean for how we consider the body in performance?

Physical Difference in Rehearsal

The rehearsals I attended were for Nationaltheatret’s 2007 production of Ludvig Holberg’s Erasmus Montanus, directed by Gábor Zsámbéki in Oslo, and Griffin Theatre Company’s premiere production of Katherine Thompson’s King Tide, directed by Patrick Nolan in Sydney. I identified four major areas of divergence:

1. Actor-to-actor communication

2. Personal space/proxemics

3. Need to do/need to move⁴

4. Labanian weight-in-the-body.

Of these, actor-to-actor communication and need to do/need to move were heavily influenced by such crucial elements as directorial style, rehearsal space, rehearsal period, economic security, and the structure of hierarchical power relationships within each company. Proxemic space and Labanian weight in the body were not as determined by these factors, and could be at least partially ascribed to the way each actor had embodied place; had ‘learnt’ place in their understanding and use of their bodies.

Case Study 1: Proxemic Space

The opposing tendencies actors had with regard to personal space – in terms of being close to each other in the performance area – became a directorial issue in both productions.

Throughout Erasmus Montanus, the actors continually made choices to move away from each other where possible. If instructed to enter the performance area together, all would choose to move apart once the opportunity arose. Within sequences where Gábor asked them to come together, many exhibited a ‘shuffling’ motion where a static, bodies-close-together stance would be punctuated by a small weight change forward, followed by two to three small steps backward.⁵ Gábor first commented on the issue of distance early in rehearsal when he spoke to actors Finn and Håkon: “You are diluting the power of your unity by moving apart. The scene requires you operate together” (Hope, 2007). He repeated the essence of this comment to the whole company in his notes following a run of the play, commenting that the tendency to move apart was reducing the dramatic effect of the blocking,⁶ and maintained a reference to being aware of on-stage distances as an ongoing note from hereon through to opening night.

All the Norwegian actors showed a marked preference for maintaining physical distance from each other when rehearsing.

Speaking with Gørild, a Norwegian actor working outside the Erasmus Montanus production, on-stage proxemic space was put in a national context. Whilst studying with Lecoq, Gørild had become aware that both her own and her Norwegian compatriot students’ perception of personal space was more expansive than that of students from other countries. Gørild suggested that my observations of extended proximal space on the rehearsal floor in Erasmus Montanus were indicative of a specifically Norwegian sense of personal space.⁷

In Sydney, Patrick Nolan had the opposite concern.

Kathryn, the youngest member of the cast, was repeatedly asked to be aware of not “closing off” from the audience. In the week following a concerted effort by Patrick to concentrate on spatial distance between characters, I heard Kathryn stopping herself closing in on co-actor Toni with the whispered words: “Too close, too close,” whilst actor Masa whispered a similar self-note: “Oh, I’m starting to go towards, remember away, away” (Hope, 2007a).

Whilst the King Tide actors played with proxemic space during the improvisation of scenes, their tendency as the rehearsals progressed was to move toward each other on the rehearsal floor. The inclination to congregate was common to all.

Patrick commented on the danger of making the use of the playing space too intimate, on “shutting out” the audience from sightlines and audibility (the actors were prone to lowering vocal levels when close to each other), and “of getting too close, too clustered” (Hope, 2007a).

Whilst the actors played with spatial formations, it was noticeable that physical closeness was a choice made for actions encompassing a range from confrontation to seduction, and that left to themselves (as they often were), actors would tend to end a sequence by closing the gap between each other, regardless of the nature of the emotional transaction occurring.

Within the rehearsal room, the King Tide actors would sit together in a tight cluster for notes and for tea-break, in contrast to the Erasmus Montanus company, who sat singly or in couples. Nevertheless, when the subject of personal space was brought up, the King Tide actors stated that Australians had a large personal space: that their physicality was “big” because of the “open” landscape. The notion of personal space seemed to relate to a personal notion of physicality within a spacious landscape, rather than the limits of comfort in closeness to another human being. Kathryn spoke of loving the open-air lifestyle, and missing the smaller, friendlier urbanity of Brisbane; others (Katherine [writer], Anita, Russell) talked about personal space in terms of wanting to live in the crowded areas of the city for the sense of human presence and activity. Their preferred mode of living appeared to be in highly populated areas, a mode of living one would assume to be in opposition to the concept of living in a “spacious landscape”.

In both productions, the operation of personal space between actors – the way in which they arranged themselves in terms of the amount of distance between themselves as physical beings – demonstrated itself similarly both on and off the performance area.

The observed contrast between initial and ongoing choices regarding bodily proximity in both sets of rehearsals was a constant variation. Several potential explanations for these differences immediately present themselves. The King Tide actors were continually in each other’s presence during rehearsal; the Erasmus Montanus cast were not. This would suggest a greater breakdown of physical primary tensions⁸ amongst the actors in the King Tide production. Yet the Erasmus Montanus actors were part of an ensemble that worked together consistently; the King Tide cast were freelancers. The Erasmus Montanus cast socialised together outside the rehearsals, whilst the King Tide cast were less personally familiar with each other. One would expect the Erasmus Montanus cast to be at least equally at ease with each other as the King Tide actors.

Performance Studies academic Gay McAuley and Nationaltheatret actor Henrik Rafaelson argued that the spatial choices the actors made could be explained by their performative desire to ‘fill’ the rehearsal/performance space, rather than by their unconscious allegiance to a national proxemic trait. If this were the case, one could expect an opposite result. Erasmus Montanus worked with a nearly completed set from day one, so that the space was in many ways constricted; whilst King Tide utilised an almost empty set, opening up the space and inviting it to be filled.

There were national, socio-cultural and physically embodied factors at play in the use of proximal space between actors; but before we look at these, we will consider the second major comparative difference.

Case Study 2: Weight in the Body

This consideration first became apparent when the Hungarian composer arrived to work with the Erasmus Montanus company.

László Sary was a slight man, stooped over, his arms held close to the sides but not locked in at the elbows. His gestures were short, his arms never quite stretched all the way out, and his fingers in constant motion:

Seeing him in pit & Anne Marit & Per on stage – physical presence so different – composer small, held, little space taken; AM & Per larger, physically more open, arms, legs, facial gestures take more space. (Hope, [08/08] 2007).

I watched László work with Anne Marit on a musical section:

13:48 – AM stands with hands on head and explains it is difficult, she is unsure – composer asks her to ‘try’ and waves his hands and fingers at her, his hands twirling in little circles – AM stands still, hands on head…

14:00 – AM talks with comp...

Table of contents

• COVER
• COPYRIGHT
• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• THE ONTOGENETIC BODY
• THE INTER-SUBJECTIVE BODY
• THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL BODY
• THE RESONANT BODY
• THE DWELLING BODY
• THE VOCAL BODY
• THE MUSICAL BODY
• THE RESILIENT BODY
• THE IMAGINAL BODY
• THE LEARNT BODY
• THE KINETIC BODY
• THE COGNITIVE BODY
• GLOSSARY