PHYSICAL TRAINING WORKSHOPS AND COURSES

The physical training workshops/courses are based on principals that have been developed through a history of professional physical theatre practice, harness-based movement and an neuro-anthropological perspective on how we learn through the body. Group courses tend to be more focused on physical and performance training methods with personal training sessions developed more specifically for the individual’s needs.

SOME TRAINING PRINCIPALS IN DEVELOPMENT BEHIND THE COURSES

- Teaching/training is about recognizing where potential lies and finding ingenious ways to develop it.
- The integration of Individual and group work provides a more complex level of development.
- A certain amount of discipline is fundamental to creative growth
- Understanding how psycho-physiological changes take place when the body is in motion.
- Using the breath is fundamental to sustaining high level focus and to transition between different physical states.
- With guidance quality repetition improves levels of skill and understanding.

SPECIFIC COURSES

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR NEW COURSES!!!!!

Pedestrian Choreography – Making The Ordinary Extraordinary

This workshop is about having participants recognize the art in their own everyday movements.
It encourages observations of the mundane. Making the ordinary extraordinary.

- using ‘everyday’ natural movements to create sequences of movements.
- creating a ‘conversation’ between two parties working with communicative actions to create a choreographed sequence
- working with how to create ‘accidental drama’ using this technique of stringing movements together.
- working with non-spoken dialogue – physical dialogue.

The main goals and inspiration for this workshop is about providing ideas and starting points for devising and invention.
To show how we can build choreographies quite easily from very simple beginnings that build to more complex narratives.
How we therefore reap satisfaction from this process and the narrative play it produces.

Training the Dragon – ornament and authenticity

This is an exploration of intensity and control – it is about learning how we can bring the body to different physical states that challenge the body and encourage a different mode of working.
- it will cover : exploring intention behind action ( physicality serving the basis of ‘emotion’ )
- telling a lie
- working with extremes – producing: minimal states – exaggerated states
- turning the flame from orange to blue ( focus )
- devising material that reflects this exploration

This is a challenging workshop which encourages participants to explore the ways in which their own physicality expresses intensity.

Suspended and Kicking – Intro to Aerial Combat Choreography

This course runs for 6 weeks and is taught in collaboration with wildly talented fight director
Rachel Bown-Williams of RC-ANNIE Ltd. This course focuses mainly on getting the body to a state of physical fitness that makes the possibilities of harness-work open-ended and challenging. Covered are concepts such as meditative choreography, anti-gravity, wall-running, climbing-frame, impact and dis-equilibrium.This course provides a short introduction to aerial fight choreography and enough experience to put ‘Has good experience working in a harness’ on a performance CV!

Murga – A Dance Furious and Flailing

First run at BEINTHEWORKFEST in Berlin, this workshop breaks down the traditional Argentine dance ‘Murga’ seen in the wildly popular physical theatre show Fuerza Bruta. The various stages of this dance,‘Boracho’, ‘Mas Danza’ and ‘ ‘Patatas’ allows participants to experience an energetic and furious way of working the body, both collectively and individually. Participants are then led through exercises that work with extrapolating these movements into devised narratives.