Students at Lehman College in “My Art is as Art as any Art can be”
Exploring and embodying a character doesn’t need to feel like you have been personally exposed to the rehearsal room every time you run a scene.
It doesn’t have to excavate your personal history in order to generate authenticity and emotional resonance.
It doesn’t need to be a frustrating game of translation between performer and director in order to find a common ground.
This 2 day workshop can transform the creative process by helping you to:
Use clear, neutral language.
Deepen characters by exploring their unique movement styles.
Expand your expressiveness as a performer.
Have a plan for developing characters without relying on personal experience or starting from scratch each time.
Engage your audience quickly with impactful and meaningful imagery.
Sat/Sun October 12-13 @ 10-4 pm
Links Hall, Chicago
ABout the Workshop:
This 2-day LIVE workshop will provide actors, dancers, directors, dramaturgs, and choreographers with an actionable toolkit for using Laban’s ideas of EFFORT into practice. The combinations of Weight, Space, Time, and Flow form 80 possible specific choices for expression, and functionality.
In dance, this provides an endless range of options for dynamics and helps us find deep functionality for challenging movement sequences. For theatre, every character in every play can be broken down to a set of qualities they tend to most, and each line of every play can be analyzed for its specific qualities. Using EFFORT in speaking and moving is a portal to specificity, and a way to break the habits of the performer, at the service of the show.
These ideas can also be used in larger, compositional choices, and to help design the flow and tone of a whole work. It is an extremely activated way to view and devise part of, or whole, performance.
We will use Effort to analyze, speak, and move inside the various possible choices for expression, and offer them a lifetime of new information that can be used to create a character, challenge their habits, and devise in a deeply specific, clear, and objective way.
FAQs
Q: What if I’m not a dancer?
A: You absolutely do not need to identify as a dancer to do this work. This is about YOUR body, in whatever state, with whatever limitations, training, and history it has. This is about YOU, not some ideal we are aspiring towards. While you can use this material in dance, you can also use it in facial expression, vocal dynamics, screenwriting, script analysis, and everyday conversations. You can use this to negotiate with your boss, to do homework with you kid, to clean your house more efficiently.
Q: If I learn this as a director, but my performers don’t know the system, how can it be useful?
A: The language is very simple. In the end, you can use the words, or make up new ones, to bring the actor towards quickness, or binding. The hard part is seeing it, and that is what this course will teach.
Q: I have a process I already use. I don’t want to give it up, but I am curious about this. Is it going to conflict with what I already do?
A: This will not conflict with any other system. All we are doing is organizing what already happens inside human function and expression so that you can make clearer and more conscious choices. It will only fold in and serve what you are doing, or become its own process for you. It may, however, make your current practices feel easier, less freighted, and more inclusive.
Q: I don’t know that I have brain space for learning a whole new system. Is this going to be overwhelming and feel like I can’t remember or implement it?
A: These are very actionable tools that you can use in a variety of situations and start applying quickly. Any piece of this that you implement will be effective on its own. Like cooking. I don’t have to go to French culinary school to start making meals. Just learning a couple of new skills (poach an egg) allows me to have more choices, more opportunities. This is a system that builds on itself, but at every juncture, the information is immediately available for use.
About Alexandra:
Alexandra has been Choreographer for “Sense and Sensibility” (Sheen Center, Judson Gym, Folger Shakespeare Library, American Repertory Theatre, Portland Center Stage), (Helen Hayes Award, Lortel Nomination, IRNE Best Choreography). She choreographed the Off Broadway musical, “The Mad Ones” (59E59), Bedlam’s “Peter Pan” (Duke Theatre), “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival), “As You Like It” (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Folger Shakespeare Library), “How to transcend a happy marriage” by Sarah Ruhl (Lincoln Center Theatre), “The Young Ladies of…” (Taylor Mac), “Chang(e)” (HERE), and others. Current projects include “Antonio’s Song” by Dael Orlandersmith/Antonio Suarez (CATF, Milwaukee Rep), “Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes)” (La MaMa and touring), and Directing and Choreographing “Make Thick My Blood,” a two-person adaptation of Macbeth opening Off-Broadway February 2022.
Her international performance career includes 7 years with the Bill. T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, projects with Martha Clarke, John Turturro, and others. Alexandra Beller/Dances formed in 2001 and she has created over 40 original Dance Theatre works, for her own and other companies. Her choreography has been presented at theatres throughout the US and in Korea, Hong Kong, Oslo, Cyprus, St. Petersburg, and Poland.
Alexandra holds a BFA/Dance, MFA/Dance and CMA (Certified Movement Analyst) in Laban Movement Analysis/Bartenieff Fundamentals. She is on faculty at Princeton University, Rutgers University, and The Laban/Bartenieff Institute for Movement Studies, and guest teaches nationally and internationally. She also has a private Somatic Therapy practice and provides multiple forms of private mentorship. She has consulted with numerous institutions about curriculum planning, syllabus development, and pedagogy including the 92nd St Y, LIMS, and Dancio.com.