Anyway, enough of me, car crashes, and general self indulgence

Legs are very heavy.  Well mine are.  They are like these great big solid lumps of wood.  They don't want to move half the time.  This won't do.  Physical performers don't have great big solid lumps of wood for legs, they have keen, alert coiled springs that leap, dance, skip, role and flip like fireworks.  I'm trying Kettlebells and skipping to try to wake my sleeping monsters and see if there exists a spring within.  Of course 45 is probably a bit late in life to waken coiled springs, I'll probably pull a ligament or something.  Still, we are anti-ageist and pro people working to their best potential.  Potential.. I always hated that word.

Anyway, enough of me.  Here is the tale of what we did tonight at the wonderful Konnektiv workshop.  I was quite unprepared due to the fact that my day was somewhat disorientated by a breakdown on the motorway (the car broke down not me incase you are wondering).  It was a particularly dangerous location - the meeting point of the M54 and the M6.  It involved a big band and cloud of smoke and me veering across the sliproad to the only bit of hard shoulder I could see before the car grumbled to it's final resting place.  The engine, the AA man told me, is dead.  Luckily I am still alive.  

Anyway, enough of me.  There seems to be a theme in todays blog.

Those konnektiv people are so fab, I do love them.  I wasn't that prepared for the session, and had to kind of make it up as I went along.  
More than usual that is.  We started with a game.  Because I have become aware of how insentient and log-like my legs are recently, I am getting the group to do activities that involve energetically moving their legs around.  "Doctor, Heal thyself!"  I hear in my minds ear.  (Shut up, I reply, No, you shut up etc etc).  Then finally I get round to describing the session.

Girls against boys.  We had 3 of each, so it was a convenient way to divide the group into two for what turned out to be a very fun game.  The boys had a blue bean bag (very small, the type you use for juggling, not sitting on)  and the girls had a red one.  The stood strategically positioned, feet rooted to the floor, but minds alert and ready.  Each team had one beanbag, held by a player in the centre of the room.  I was the ref.  "One, Two, Three... Beanbag!"  I called.  The word beanbag released the feet and the legs became like coiled springs.  They each had to throw their own beanbag to each other, and capture the beanbag of the other team.  Capturing the opponents beanbag gained a point.  First to 5 won.  On this occasion the girls won.  

We had a chat about the importance of doing excersise that speeds up your cardiovascular system.  I'm feeling a bit out of shape at the moment and very conscious of this.  This desire to cure ones own ills by applying the remediation to others is quite interesting.  

The game was great fun.  Then we had to do some work on complicite.  I hadn't swotted up on Diedre so had to come up with something quick.  I decided to try a different angle to the usual one.  In twos, everyone found out something that they didn't previously know about each other.  Then we all sat in the audience chairs and I instructed the group what to do next.  Each person had to introduce their partner to the audience, in a magnificent way, telling a story from the information they had found out, this was done in a grandiose melodromatic style.  

The job of the audience was to hang on to every word, fully engaged, fully responsive.  Crying at the sad bits, laughing at the funny bits, gasping with incredulousness and the incredible bits etc.  Now, as you might imagine, most of the stories were about such things as packed lunches, or pet dogs.  The point of this was that the group is learning to be emotionally responsive together, and dramatically tuned in to each other.  It is all very well to experience group complicite in that serene almost spiritual way that occurs when we do the slow, focussed stuff, but we want to be able to entertain people, which means racking up the emotive volume a bit, and still keeping the sense of togetherness.  
The result was a lively, loud yet focussed whole.  Our youngest member got quite self conscious and couldn't do this, so we negotiated and agreed that she could do her introduction sitting on the floor with a hoody on back to front, covering her face.  She introduced her partner by pointing at the curtain that he stood behind.  This brought riotous applause, following which was followed by our member shuffling off on her bottom, very slowly, her face still covered by the hood.  A classic example of the extroverted introvert.  Or the introverted extrovert.

Finally, and here the pics and video's come in, the group revisited their devised machines from last week.  First they reminded themselves of what their individual group creations, and then bringing them together into one machine.  I am amazed by how something very uncomplicated can be really effective and entertaining.  

Each person had a simple sequence of movements.  When combined into a group of people making similar and interconnected movements, this became seemingly quite complex.  Then, when the two groups, who had very different kinds of movements, each joined up, the final effect was very interesting.  Have a look at the vids and see what you think.  please feel free to comment.