Studio practice

  Performance piece practice

As a starting point for our new project brief of time we were working on performance pieces. As a group we were given a series of actions and activities to take part in to get our heads in a performance mindset and practice.

The rice walk  

For our first activity, we were split into two separate groups, one group each end of the room, facing one another. There was a bowl of rice in front of each group with a spoon in it. We had to take a bao, pick up a spoon full of rice, bao, then walked across to the other group whilst being synchronised with another person performing the same actions from the other group. These actions seemed kind of silly to begin with but as we repeated them we became more aware of our movements, timings and synchronicity with the other person.

 “I give you this lemon” 

For this activity we split off into pairs. Each pair was given a lemon, we had to pass the lemon from one another and say “I give you this lemon” with each pass whilst keeping consistent eye contact. For this activity I became aware of how my tone of voice and eye contact can create different atmospheres despite saying the same phrase, also it helped us to understand how deliberate silence and time can impact the onlooker when performing. 

The clean square  

This practice that I have called the clean square was a ritual like practice of appreciation. We each chose a table to work at and then we were each given 4 pieces of masking tape, a tooth brush a small cup of water and a paper towel. The room in a calm silence we had to section of a small square of the table with the masking tape. We were then instructed to clean our squares with the toothbrush and water, but we weren’t to just clean them, we were to humm as we cleaned, take care as we cleaned, feel the actions and take care of that small section of table. This practice really helped us feel the time.