Thought Exploration Task

Today we explored an idea inspired by Stanislavski who called tension the"occupational disease" of the actor. We asked our dancers to relax for 1 minute and to only focus on their breath. After this we asked them to "quite their thoughts" and write those down on paper, one after the other. This task was meant to relax and heighten our dancers focus and concentration for further exploration tasks that would follow. Exploring this task myself I found my mind wonder and getting louder and louder, it was almost impossible for me to write down every thought that came to my mind. I improved this by further relaxing and focusing not just on my breathing but also on my different muscles and feeling the tension leave my body. After this my thoughts were a lot more manageable, I was still however surprised with the volume of thought that came into my head. After this we asked our dancers to say their thoughts out loud, with this we aimed to break potential inner boundaries between the performer and the audience. When I explored this task myself I found myself filtering every thought and analysing the importance or necessity of it before I spoke it out loud. This process illuminated the extend of boundaries within a performance for me to a much broader level. Even though my choreographic Lab partner Michelle is a close friend of mine, I physically could not bring my mouth to say some of the things that happen to come into my head. These words were not at all offending Michelle but still my inner performer thought them not appropriate or important enough to be said out loud. I also found myself steering my thoughts away from the true thoughts that were coming up and felt more comfortable by making up pretend thoughts and telling these to my Lab partner. It was interesting that everybody else who explored this task felt similar feelings to myself.