Taking the Meaning Out – Putting it Back In.

How do you avoid the ‘acting it out’ syndrome? I.e: You are working with creating movement from text and feel limited by your first impulses that have you embodying the story. Movement becomes more interesting when it is about making a shape without any meaning attached to it. The meaning is more authentic and believable – and the shape more interesting if the shape comes first and the meaning evolves out of that.

In our work with ‘ambivalence’ this is exactly what we did using parameters. The final product perhaps resembling, or having nothing at all to do with the source.

In fact, most of the tools accomplish ‘taking the meaning out’ quite successfully.

Scripting:
Your phrase: ‘punched in the stomach’
Do the action. Script what you just did: i.e: Forcefull shove, two body parts collide, fall back.
Then create a new movement according to the script.

Parameters:
Your word: Ambivalence.
Create a movement.
Have someone else physically describe what you just did.
Find the opposites.
Choose three, do and improvisation using those as your sources.

Postcarding (this is my own term, I think Liz would call it Detailing)
Phrase: ‘A sink full of dirty dishes’
See the image (postcard)
Put the wall paper pattern in your arms.
Be the bubbles.
Be the soap dish.
Etc.
Or
Create a phrase by vascilating between the person standing at the sink washing dishes, and movements from details in the postcard image.

New tool: Acting it out?
Allow your self to act out the prompt, and then take the meaning out.
Ex: Prompt: She tried the shoe on in disgust.
Do: You are trying a shoe on in disgust.
Then , hold the shape but change your expression. Change where you’re looking. Then try the shape again, still feel like you’re ‘acting it out’? Change one more thing, a leg, an arm, a finger, whatever. If you need to, even take a detail from the room and place it in your spine.
Now you have a movement free from imposed meaning and ready to take on something else.