The Wonder of Gravity II

(Previous blog about gravity: link to Wonder of Gravity I)

Gravity has a huge effect on our body. It impacts on our blood pressure, our bone density and our muscular system. The two areas that are of interest to me are the bones and the muscles. Bone density is what helps our structure and muscles (for the sake of this musing I’m including ligaments and tendons here) gives us stability. 

Because gravity is acting on us all the time these two areas are getting a mild workout continuously. The ongoing force of gravity is by default ensuring you maintain some form of structure and stability to remain standing. Essentially our joints are either collapsing under the force of gravity (pronation) or it is using resistance against it (supination). A delicate balance of both pronation and supination are required for a fluid balanced motion.

This delicate use of pronation and supination combined with our base (what our feet are doing) help to determine the best placement of our centre of gravity (CG) for any given physical task. If our CG moves past the line of our base, we will fall (see what I did there) victim to the forces of gravity.

What does this investigation into gravity have to do with mastering learning to fall as an actor? For me there are two forms of falls we can do as actors. 1. Where my feet remain on the ground during the fall and 2, when they don’t! One of these falls obviously has a higher degree of risk. My focus here is on the first where my feet are on the ground.

Something causes the body to fall, the effect is; it falls over.  Simple enough. Simulating a human falling means to embody the force of gravity. We are essentially feigning that our CG has moved past the line of our base. The conundrum is that if we replicate that we endanger many parts of our body; coccyx, wrists, skull and kneecaps to name but a few!

Therefore, the art of falling lies in our ability to disguise the safe harbouring of our CG within the base line so as to not actually topple over and yet give the impression we have done so. A wonderous physical alchemy of the supination and pronation of ankle and knee joints combined with an acute use of and harmony of gravity.

The Four Seasons

"There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens." (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

What are the four seasons? What do they mean? How can I draw on this natural occurrence to inform my life and my flow through it? Spring, Summer, Autumn & Winter. Simple enough. A Christian view could be to crawl, walk, sit & stand. A Daoism view could be interpreted as: no form, form, life & death. Something to keep in mind is that I have no control over the seasons. With this reminder comes acceptance, a signal of the inescapable or the unavoidable of my experience in life. When I come to be at one with that then I create less resistance or grind to trying to be in control of the outcome. Like a sculpture working with the grain in the wood rather than against it.

The seasons remind us there are opposites that work in tandem and complement each other. With life there is death. To totally understand beauty of something it is good to see the entire picture, which may include acknowledging the opposite. In this way it is a healthy prompt that over coming adversity is sometimes best done through yielding and I don’t mean submission but exercising control through using the power of the overwhelming situation against itself as found in the martial arts.

We are (in southern hemisphere for my northern friends) about to enter Spring in a few weeks. This is an opportunity for renewal. A chance to reinvent. An opening to see yourself afresh. I have sought to find a new venue for my classes. To shake up my own terrain and the awareness that this is happening as Spring is about to blossom is not lost on me.

With Spring comes a time for reassessing. An opportunity for growth… to crawl. To revisit the discipline of your movement skill base. Seeing this skill through the lens as the craftsperson that you are: an actor. With discipline comes rigour, with rigour comes consistency of skill. With this solid consistence skill can come informed choices in movement sequences or combat choreography.

Ambidextrous?

Couple things to get out of the way up front in this musing. The definition and the etymology of the word. The reason being there are some fascinating things to unpack here in terms of how sword work is taught to actors and whether or not one is really ambidextrous of just slightly comfortable in their non-dominate hand.

Definition: Ability to use left and right hand equally.

Etymology: Latin dexter originally meant "related to or situated on the right side," but since most people do things better with the right hand, "dexter" developed the sense of "skilful" (as demonstrated by our word dexterous). In 1646, English physician and author Sir Thomas Browne combined "dexter" with the Latin prefix ambi- (meaning "both") in the first documented use of "ambidextrous": "Some are . . . ambidextrous or right-handed on both sides." The word can now describe the kind of physical or mental agility demonstrated by one with multiple diverse talents. (care of merriam-webster online dictionary)

What is interesting about being ambidextrous is that there is apparently a connection to synesthesia. What this could suggest is that to be truly dexterous one may be operating at a frequency differently to just one hand dominate persons. If the dexterous person is experiencing more than one sensation at once there is a full body experience going on. A richness if you will.

The main key to being ambidextrous lies in the concept – to be interchangeable without hesitation. By this I mean a task can move between hands with ease. The key word here is with ease. My reason for this rabbit hole in today’s musing is that I am fascinated when I ask actors sometimes if they are left or right handed. Some actors feel the need to say: “oh, I’m ambidextrous!” I would honestly get that answer four or five times out of ten. The reality is that ambidextrous people only make up about 1% of the population. So, when asked if you’re right or left handed might be better to really be honest with that answer.

That said to seek being ambidextrous as an actor is admirable. Some key ideas to consider when starting to train yourself to be ambidextrous.  You will need to focus on fine and gross motor skills. Break your learning tasks into those groups. In order to start to develop an over all experience of ease and in order to lead to a synesthesia experience you’ll need to do some deep re-wiring. Some examples of retraining tasks might be:

Fine motor skills. Brushing teeth, flossing, handwriting, turning the page in a book and move the computer mouse to the other side!

Gross motor skills. Balance, catching a ball, hitting a ball and hand eye exercises.

To conclude I just wanted to also make the observation about the old notion that you have to teach all actors to sword fight right handed. In my opinion this serves no purpose at all. To allow left handed people to start on their dominant side will always pay dividends and will lead to a stronger sense of synesthesia when they switch the right. Interesting to note most ambidextrous people started left handed. By forcing adult learners on to the non-dominate side all you are doing is slowing down their learning process and clouding the motor skill development.

I know that there was a time when some teachers would maybe suggest: “oh it’s a new skills so start on your right” – but the reality is it’s not a new skill really – the building blocks of fine and gross motor skills is already there. All the student must do now is; build on those skills. I suspect it may have been more about convenience for the teacher having everyone use the sword in the same way, and or to have everyone to do a stage combat exam fight with the same fight choreography on the right side. I say” Pffft to that.

To be continued…

Fibonacci Sequence!

For those who are not aware of the Fibonacci Sequence. The Sequence is the succession of numbers: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, ... The following number is discovered by adding up the two numbers before it. The sequence is also expressed in many forms. This image below is the most common – but it won’t take you too much to do some ‘googling’ to find more images and manifestations of the Fibonacci Sequences in nature.

 

I thought I’d have a look at my own work and see if I could find it. So, I screen shot a couple of flips and discover some. Have a look.

Then I took a still of a friend of mine doing a sword cut – here is Casey Kaleba doing a cut. See if you can see any? I can see a great one in the water. It maybe just projection but hey it’s fun to try!

 

Now start to have a look at some of the old manuals and see if you can start to see it!!

What we also gain from this maths is the golden ratio (symbol is the Greek letter "phi" shown below) which is a special number approximately equal to 1.618. Google this ratio and you will have a field day! It appears many times across, art, geometry architecture and many other areas.

1.618 x 1 = Golden Rectangle

Here is something interesting to close on. Thought I’d keep looking at some of the old manuals as I was was curious if  the  'golden rectangle' ratio would pop up. Here is one place I found it! WHich does't surprise me.

Worth noting we all know the triangle is a strong structure – right! If you draw a line from our friends’ foot on the right to where he hits the mark; it makes a triangle obviously. No doubt the power at that point of impact must have been intense! It’s it great when science and art comes together!!

To be continued no doubt!

mental rotation

Firstly, what is ‘mental rotation’? The most helpful definition I could find was at Wikipedia.

Mental rotation is the ability to rotate mental representations of two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects as it is related to the visual representation of such rotation within the human mind. (Thank you, Wikipedia!)

Great! Now we have got that out of the way – what does this have to do with movement training? On a simplistic level one’s ability to see things in space is one thing. But if we dig a little deeper there is a relationship between knowing your left from your right and mental rotation. 

Having a high level of mental rotation ability has a direct correlation with being good at sport. So, it would help the actor to develop this skill especially when learning choreography or movement sequences. Why? 

Let’s look at an example to help provide a context for why. Often, we are choreographed to do something on the right side of our own body. Further to that you could then be directed to cut your sword (or a punch) to your fellow actors left low side while you may have to move to the right. Complicating that you may also be asked to move to the left of stage or camera left. It may even be your left-handed and your fellow actor is right-handed. All these directions and orientation can sometimes overwhelm some actors and ‘freeze’ their brain. Yet for others they can digest the different directions and orientations in the blink of a thought and just do it. 

Regardless of your ability in mental rotation or left and right differences, it would a be skill to develop. Thankfully research suggest that this ‘muscle’ can be developed. So, if you feel you do suffer from these learning difficulties luckily there are ways to develop it. Tetris comes to mind even doing jig saw puzzles can help. Of course, my old favourite has proven to help as well – juggling! These are just a few ideas. Do yourself a favour and do some more research into further training ideas and I guaranteed you’ll enjoy the challenge!

to be continued...

drawing...

Now when I say drawing, I am of course referring to drawing the attack. By way of generating an opening for an opponent to attack. Not so obviously of course that you are giving away the opening but subtle enough to lure someone in let’s say.  What does drawing have to do with the art of stage combat I hear you ask!


Before I answer that let’s take it back a bit. There is an aspect of staging attacks in staged violence that always makes me cringe. The moment when an actor ‘cues’ for an attack and the fellow actor is choreographed to avoid. There is inevitably that ‘eggy moment’ where the attacking actor at the apex of the cue is either thinking – “why aren’t you moving? I’m trying to attack” or the receiving actor is thinking – “why aren’t you attacking I’m waiting here to move”.


My experience is that the receiver is waiting for something to ‘feel real’ (an attack that makes them feel like they should move), and the attacker is trying hard to honour the system i.e. I’ve cued so you need to move, therefore I am not going to continue the attack until you move. But for some reason the illusion of attack and avoid always falls down in the early stages. There usually appears to be this stop start thing going on. 


To me this is where drawing can really help us. Let’s look at a slash with a sword and a jump back to avoid as an example. As an actor my line of thinking has always been put the focus of my work on the ‘other’ so if we combine that thinking with drawing and I am the receiver I will already be prepping my body to jump back as the attacking actor moves into cue. This means as they hit the apex, I will already be jumping back thus drawing them into the slash because I have created space for them to unleash and create a powerful slash. Indirectly I am giving them permission and time. 


To be continue…

Rough & Tumble?

I was doing a class with the late great Robert Macdougall in the early 90’s and he was explaining a great way to work through the inevitable bumps and knocks we get or give during rehearsing or creating choreography. Put simply: Stop – ask: “is it uncomfortable or do you need to stop?” To which the answer will determine how the work proceeds. 

Ever since that class there are two things, I have been curious about.

1. The creative workflow when making choreography or rehearsing verses;

2. How to work out each other’s ability endure something that is physically uncomfortable rather than an injury or potential for injury. 

What I have grown to conclude is that a healthy version of stage combat conditioning needs to be developed within the training process of the art form. This will develop an actor you can recognise if the creativity needs to stop because of injury (or potential) or can continue through something that is uncomfortable. Because the nature of making art is that the answer to unlocking something new may be so close and if we stop that creative workflow, we may never know what we were about to discover.

Let me be clear I am not talking about being dangerous or reckless or working through pain. I am talking about developing a training ethos that recognises that bumps and knocks are a part of the work – sure we are extremely safe that’s not what I am talking about. I’m talking about a well developed approach to reducing a ‘flinch’ / ‘knee jerk’ response when in the process of practice and rehearsal. That way actors don’t immediately pull away from the creative process but rather, they remain present. Remain present and do a sophisticated diagnostic around what has actually happed. This is of course also being considerate of consent. 

To be continued…