Shua Group Rehearsal

Hello everyone,

 

I attended the Saturday, October 11, 2008 Shua Group rehearsal for Public Moves. I posted some pictures for you to see what we did during the rehearsal. I think it went well. I didn’t know the hill was going to be that steep, but luckily no one fell down. When I caught a glimpse of the hill, it just looked so massive. I didn’t expect it to be that vast. Since other people were welcome to rehearse, I asked my sister if she wanted to come with me. (She did.) We arrived a little bit late because it was my first trip to the Visionary Art Museum and we took a wrong turn at one point. But we were there long enough to hear Josh instruct everyone one what the “performance space” was and how we would be using it. After other brief instructions, we all walked uphill to enter the performance space. 

Soon afterwards, we were introduced to a movement called “intersecting,” where we walk along the performance space and walk around, in front of, beside, or behind people. We  could cross the other person’s path or walk in front of them briefly in order to intersect with another person. This continued for about two minutes. Then we regrouped to learn of our next movement, which was called “meeting.” We moved around each other by holding each others hands briefly, like a quick hand shake. What I noticed about that simple movement was that it not only helped us have this kind of fluid movement but it also helped us connect with one another. That was interesting. It was like we were no longer just a group of strangers but artists using movement to transport ourselves from one space to the next. When you are part of a group of people, we all treat each other like strangers because we are. But when everyone is doing the same thing in this group there is a sense of unity and maybe even understanding among one another. The rest of the movements had a lot to do with timing. We walked down the hill slowly and waited for our cue to begin “circling,” which was walking in circles or walking in a straight line and turning around to and repeating. We could also begin “tangents,” where one would run up a portion of the hill and run back down to the bottom and meet with the rest of the people who were circling.

After rehearsing that for a few minutes, we waited for the group leaders to say, “Disappear,” in order for us to literally disappear and turn the corner on either side of the hill. If we were too far away to hear them, people rehearsing were asked to pass it on and say it to others who were passing by or in front of them. Afterwards the people on the right side crawled back onto the hill and sat down and the others on the left crawled over and slowly joined the group on the right. This was already near the end of the rehearsal. We were then told to lie down on the hill. Then, the leaders said, “Go,” which indicated for us to “pose” for the camera man that was at the bottom of the hill. A few seconds later they said, “Relax,” which meant exactly what it sounds like, to relax, and we simply sat on the hill, motionless. What concluded the rehearsal was the entire group of people walking into the performance space and emerging at the top of the hill little by little every time the word “Go” was shouted. Once everyone was at the top of the hill, we all held are hands up in the air and joined hands simultaneously. Our hands stayed up for about 30 seconds then we all took a bow. We then walked backwards slowly until we reached the flag pole and stopped. I wanted to take pictures to allow others to get a good view from the top as well as the entire hill in order to somewhat see the depth of the hill area and how vast the hill is. It was a fun experience and I’m looking forward to the actual event coming up. In the mean time, check out the pictures!

Samya

 

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~ by samyasamya on September 23, 2008.