Making Connections! Part 2.

Continuing on from last week's article Making Connections! Part 1. where we explored how exercises of the senses can enable creativity and expression, and which gave workshop ideas for workshops on 'touch' to help overcome inhibitions.

We develop these workshops further this week by making use of all of the Movement workshops covered over the last three weeks, and, take what we've learned and use it to stimulate good ideas for artistic expression within our drama groups.

As an art, Movement and Dance can tell a story, set a mood, and/or express emotion, by providing the most personal and effective means of communication. Such a natural form of improvisation requires and nurtures a relaxed and open state of mind, and it is precisely because of that naturalness, everyone can participate according to their own abilities.

Of course, people have always danced in one for or another, sometimes for a reason, to bring the rain, perhaps, to worship, or for courtship, and sometimes for no other reason than joy and fun! But, other living things dance too, and in nature we can find many good ideas for the creation of our workshops.

So, for the purpose of this article, I'm going to take one observation from nature that clearly uses movement as a form of expression - courtship.

The actions of animals, birds, insects and undersea creatures give good examples of the uses of rhythm and movement of the body for expression.

The courtship displays of many bird species consist of movements of the head, wings and other body parts. Cranes and herons perform elaborate movements, and often the female response closely resembles the males so that they appear to be dancing together. This example can easily be adapted to create workshops for the members of your drama group working in pairs.

The Birds of Paradise gather in trees and on the ground to display themselves by strutting and danceing, and spreading their plumes.

Female fireflies flash their light in certain rhythmic patterns.

Male lizards bob their heads rhythmatically when a female approached.

All of the above can stimulate ideas for creating good movement workshops for pairs or small groups within your group, and can be expanded and developed artistically by including masks, costume such as feathers etc.

Even for the workshops you need to create for and with your whole group, you can look to nature. For example:-

Bees do several different dances. When scouts return to the hive, they use a special dance to indicate distance and location for the site of a new hive, and the use another dance to tell where food is in relation to the Sun. The faster the bee dances, the further away it is. If the food is located towards the Sun, the bee makes a series of rapid runs in a figure of eight pattern up the honecomb, if the food is 30 degrees to the right of the Sun, the bee dances 30 degrees to the right of an imaginery vertical line on the honeycomb.

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