Jorge's Art Work
Dance Energy
Rupture
Spiraling to My Center
Halprin's long life, 99 years in July, does not take away from her ability to teach her students a complete lesson. The skeleton is next to her and also her assistant whose diligence is admirable. She demonstrates some of the exercises and repeats students comments and questions in Ana's ear when she does not hear well.
May 6, 2019
Class I
Movement
As I walked in she was addressing the movement of the spine through what most people would identify as the cat's stretch, a movement sequence that activates the spine.
Then, she extended that idea to bringing the sternum as close to the floor as possible coming from the down facing dog pose. She mentioned how the scapulas should meet each other in the process.
On down facing dog, the third exercise had to do with bringing the knee of one of the legs as far forward and up as possible, to then extend it backwards as high as possible.
The fourth exercise began on down facing dog, in order to jump to plank position, using toes to land, compressing abdomen against the pine, and uttering a [ha] sound that came from the guts.
The next movement is the swings and the connection they provide with gravity. Thus, the swings are done by flexing the the knees in a bouncing fashion down into gravity and off in coordination with one's breath. This is done repeatedly and gradually in all directions and position one can find relate to the swinging action.
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Halprin invites us to come closer and shows what she calls the two pointers in the skeleton. One is the coxis, pointing downward into the earth. The second one is the sternum, connecting us to the above. She dwells on the beauty of such metaphor. The students reminded of the internal diagonal between the two. The asistant uses a ribbon to connect the two pointers making that connection even more evident.
She also mentions her favorite quote, from musicologist Curt Sachs who said that "dance is the mother of all the arts." She remarks how she always liked that quote and how she was always intrigued by his wisdom to say such thing when he was not a dancer.
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Improvisation
The next exercise involves the round cushions that are piled up in the corner of the studio. She brings attention to the posture and how once one places the cushion on one's head one posture changes as one becomes more connected with the body and the body with the environment. Thus, the exercise begins there, on the mere act of keeping the cushion on the head as one moves.
Then, one can begin to use the cushion in anyway one's own creativity suggest. Thus, free associations can become the engine that propels new movement and in turn new vocabulary.
The music changes as one moves; the music has a clear influence on our choices. The music creates a mood and it also suggests what the cushion could become in our hands, but also as a prop. Thus, the choices begin to take shape, not only from a dance like point of view, but from an acting point as well,
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Drawing
The drawing part is key in Ana's methodology. They bring the sheets of paper and the crayons out and everyone gets involved in the art of drawing from their own inspiration. I am sure it comes from the movement explorations, but also from free associations. It is all related.
I began with a thick undulating blue line that went across the paper from left to right. Then, I drew a small clay brown circle in the center of the middle undulation. From there emanated the rest of my choices, as I bagan to draw con centric brown circles and semicircles using the original one as the center. Yellow was added to the spaces in between the circle. Green was added to the undulating blue. All along the traces of the crayon were smoothed with my fingers as the color looked more solidly adhered to the paper that way. The I got my sheet of paper, Caroline gently grabbed the block and a pice of the next sheet ripped and stayed dangling from the corner of mine. I thought that accident could be used, and so, I painted it in read and let it hang from the top part of the frame.
We had to create a phrase based on the drawing; mine was:
"I am an outlier emerging, burning, warming, cooling the world"
We shared our drawing with the group by showing it, saying where we came from and saying the phrase. Some of us explained further what it meant.
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We took a 10 minutes break.
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Dance
The outdoor studio is surrounded by sequoias, its monumentality frames the dances in a way that one feels part of nature in movement. It was a gorgeous day so, the invitation to move freely was an extension of the feeling of goodness that came from such beautiful day. I immediately chose the balcony as I remembered my previous participation in a similar class back in 2008.
The purpose was to move/dance one's drawing. If one focuses on one's drawing one can derive lots of movement from the colors, the textures, the lines and shapes, the meaning of it, and then even ore when one begins to focus on how one feels physically, emotionally, mentally about all those details.
The music was playing and the changes in music affected one's own sense of rhythm, speed, flow, etc. I used the whole of the wooded space, and sensed the irregularities of the floor as part of the stimulus. The sun was visible and I kept invoking it with my movement. The tree trunks were accessible and I touch it with both hands feeling its rootedness to the earth.
Halprin is not as alert as she used to.be when I first met her. She observes passively, sitting in a corner of the space. She hurt her back and then some lower part of her hips. In 2008, she would shout, hey!!! every time I used a tend or any other technical movement that was not authentic. But now, she is mild and calm. She is soft in her demeanor and gentile in her expressions.
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Closing
The closing is simple. We gather around Halprin. We have a moment to comment about the beauty of the day. She is a natural communicator. One can tell that things happen because she has done it for so long. Thus she asks, do they know about Tamalpa? The assistant says "yes," they all know. One of the students, who is from Brazil says "I finished level two." "I am takings Dari's workshop," I said. "Oh really, my daughters don't tell me anything," she remarks smiling. "Well Daria was born in this work and uses ideas I do not use," I paraphrase here. But, that was a valuable moment; the moment the maestro is real and human.
One of the participants suggests to close,. The assistant suggests a known end. So, we hold hands, bounce them three times and pronounce woo! and the end letting our hands and energy move upwards.
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May 13, 2019
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May 20, 2019
