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Improvisation Training
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to work with all disciplines. The observation skills necessary to create a good improvisation are basically the same skills required in any performance, presentation and relationship dynamic.
Simply put, you have to be aware of what you are doing before you can change or modify it. Without that awareness, you are building upon an unsound base. If you work alone, then you have to be aware of what is happening inside and outside of you. When you work in a group, that same awareness must expand to contain your partners. Once this groundwork awareness is in place, then the additional work can begin.
A dancer arrives in the studio upset because she cannot seem to create any more good movement. She feels stuck and lost. In our working together,
I discover that she has not closely examined her movement impulses. She only glances over the surface of her musculature and quickly heads towards the end of each phrase. Dance improvisation exercises connect her to her decision-making intuition and her movement evolves.
A convention salesman contacts me because he can't seem to get people interested in his product. We work together and it's obvious that he does not know what his body is doing while he is talking. The fidgets and squirms damage his words. We start to immediately develop profitable presentation skills.
A
group of actors tell me they cannot get into their roles deep enough.
In the studio, I find that they deliver their text from a rational, mental
state; more or less station their body in one place and, then, energetic
leave. They are waiting for each other to finish their lines. They barely
connect with each other in the space. With free vocal improvisation, I
have them to focus the mind on the body and the characters and the tableau
gets richer.
All of these people, and many others like them, are not conscious
of what their entire instrument is doing. They do not hold their entire
selves in their awareness. With a variety of exercises, I help them find
themselves - their bodies and minds - and fine-tune the instrument.
