Composition Day One

I had so much fun with these compositions! It was a good day.

I’ve always observed things closely – and so I had in fact noticed the distinct walks of Michael, Jackie, Elizabeth, and others in the group as well. However, before today I never really thought about imitating or becoming that person. I would never have tried to act out their character. It is completely different from observation. I had to engage my leg muscles in addition to the muscles that focus my eyes – and that changed the way I thought about the subject of observation. The way we move is deeply linked to our emotions, and our emotions are linked to our thoughts. Moving my feet in a certain way brought on a different set of emotions, a new take on that might allow me to better understand how this person thinks. The engagement of the body takes our research’s scope to a new level.

As for the compositions themselves, they were really different because our group has gotten to know each other. The atmosphere was much warmer than when we were strangers. A backdrop of support allows us to take greater risks.

Risks! Some things stood out, like including people for the fold-up seats on the train station, the use of props instead of miming, imitations of other people. The main risk was getting out there and trying something, putting all our effort into creating something and then showing it to other people. One of my personal problems with performance in the past has been an inability to let myself go completely. I’d always form some kind of a barrier (a wall, let’s go ahead and throw that word in here) between the audience and me. If I showed the audience all of my enthusiasm or whatever other emotion, I would feel exposed. I left all that behind before this class, but it is nevertheless a risk to perform. Thus, compositions become this great, risky adventure. What a thrill!

I look forward to the next composition day, especially because we will always fill an opportunity to create new things.