Day 2: Solo improvisation workshop with Andrew Morrish
Performance Space, Carriageworks, Sydney: 11am-5pm, 19th – 22nd May.
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The shape of today’s workshop structure was a variation on yesterday’s:
working individually all at the same time; working in pairs; in 4’s or 3’s; half the group working with the other half watching; solos in front of the whole group.
Building up from walking and interacting with others in the room, working in pairs
Making transitions between a foreground and background focus, eg sounding and moving, image and abstraction.
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Al Wunder introduced movement improvisation into Australia in 1982. Australian dancer Lynden Nicholls had met him in San Fransisco and they returned together to her home town of Melbourne where he immediately established the first movement improvisation company and training workshop in Australia.
Andrew Morrish and Peter Trottman were some of his first students and performers.
Improvisation classes that I attended then, with Peter and Andrew and others, were conducted in a large pink industrial building in Carlton, where he and Lynden lived, worked and performed. Al accompanied our movement on a hum drum, a wooden percussion instrument he had designed and built. Or we would move in silence, or to the ambient sounds of the city. Or we would use our own voice. Or combination of all these would be used.
Al and Lynden’s place very quickly established itself as a kind of art salon that attracted people from a wide range of arts practices from the start: clowns, acrobats, trapeze artists, painters, strip show performaers, musicians, actors, film makers, puppeteers.
My interest was never to perform, but to explore new approaches to drawing, painting and film making.
Al introduced us to a way of art making that offered no prescriptions or judgments. His rules of play were: enjoy what you do; move in the moment of creation; do rather than think; be aware of, but not plan or assess a move; only give feedback to others about what we enjoyed in their work.
The studio atmosphere Al created was relaxed, positive, and encouraging. Anything was possible, and the focus was to keep ourselves and the audience interested, to find ways to take them with us on our journey, discovering each moment of composing with us, as it unfolded.
Amazing and unexpected things happened for ourselves and our audiences. Gestures we made or watched in others could unearth thoughts and feelings from the depths of consciousness.
Al introduced the notion of the score, or parameters within which to improvise. These scores were to be interpreted in any conceivable way – small rules made to be push to the limits, challenged or broken.
Al’s background in dance was with Alwin Nicholais, whose dance company was the most innovative in the 1960’s for integrating the arts in performance with new media technologies.
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In his own words:
http://www.theatreoftheordinary.com/al_wunder.htm
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For the past 30 years I have been developing a form of Improvised Movement Theatre that is unique in its teaching of performance as a means of communication between people. My philosophy is that performance is for everyone not just the highly skilled professionals. We all have our own stories, songs and dances to share with each other and it is this sharing that enriches us. A safe non-competitive environment is essential to allow our thoughts and feelings to manifest themselves in a theatrical setting. I try to instil in my workshops the confidence to open up and explore through movements, word or sounds, our own way of being in the performing space. This space becomes not something to fear, but a source of power that allows us to look at laugh at and enjoy ourselves and our relation with other people.
I began dancing in New York City at the age of 19 as a physical therapy in to strengthen a weak right leg. I became so excited by the improvisation taught by Alwin Nikolais as part of his dance theatre curriculum that I left University to pursue my life as a dancer/choreographer. More and more my interest turned to improvisation as a possible source for self expression. I started to entertain the idea that a performance could be totally improvised.
In 1970 I move to San Francisco and began to develop my own style of teaching dance technique through improvisation as well as improvisation as a performing art itself. Combining with Terry Sendgraff and Ruth Zaporah we formed the BERKELEY DANCE THEATRE & GYMNASIUM where our explorations found us adding the spoken word to our physically based improvisations.
In 1982 I moved again. This time to Melbourne, Australia after falling in love with Lynden Nicholls an Australian dancer who had come to San Francisco study trapeze dancing with my partner Terry. Lynden and I formed a living and working partnership. The working partnership is called “Theatre of the Ordinary”. The past 20 years has seen a tremendous growth in my teaching. Actors, dancer, musicians and most important of all ordinary people pass through my classes learning improvisation and performance. Many stay on for 3 or 4 years developing their skills in spontaneous movement and language. Each person when they do leave has evolved their own unique style of self presentation in the performing arts.