To Be a Workshop Observer
Individual bodies in motion, collective unity of breath. The laws of anatomy, the freedom of carnality. Nonverbal communication! What is included in the performer´s sources of creation?
The Performer´s Sources of Creation workshop leaders, Andrej Kalinka and Milan Kozánek, build on the complementary art concept, developed by them for a long time with the Honey and Dust ensemble. The concept uses a special art language based on a symbiosis of different means of expression. Movement, music, spoken word and visual art are autonomous but mutually equal partners creating a specific language of every work of art by their interplay. The workshop itself focuses on the potential of creative resources which performers can use and link to each other when creating their art performance. The workshop is also open to “viewers” for one hour on each of the three festival days.
We are entering the rehearsal room of the Divadlo na Orlí theatre after the workshop has been running for a while. Exercise as a material for observation. Reverse structural analysis, step-by-step assembly instead of disassembly. The breath as the omnipresent unifying element – once it is synchronised, movement is easy to match, so that you can be individual within the group and yet organically connected with the others.
We engage in the workshop activity after a short break. A circle of chairs, traditional rhythmical exercises for separation of the two brain hemispheres. You must sit actively! Counterpoint! It is easy to understand the rhythm, but to transform it to movement is not so easy anymore. You have to trust your feet that they will keep the basic rhythm, and then your arms and your voice can do what they want. A rhythmical scale! One-two-three-four, Brno-Brno-Brno-Brno, Budapest-Budapest-Budapest-Budapest, Bratislava-Bratislava-Bratislava-Bratislava... forward and backward again, and yet keeping the clockwise direction all the time.
