Curiouser and curiouser

"It's your first day of class, so we're gonna take it easy today," said the adorable movement teacher at 9 am.  I should have known by the thin whacking-stick she held in her hand that it was lies.  All lies.  Around 10 (and here, I'm just guessing, because along with makeup and colorful clothes, we are also banned from wearing any jewelry or watches) I was kneeling -sitting on my feet- with my toes tucked under, stretching my feet into ungodly, wretchedly painful submission, while she chirped, "if you need to release, just lean up into a kneel and then go back!" (more lies - there is no releasing the pain).

I will not cry.  I will not cry.  I will not cry.

I have a tendency to break down into embarrassing, hot, splashy tears in dance classes and movement classes.  And this one was spurred by a vast disparity between my internal vision of myself as a fit, flexible woman - who is athletic enough to keep up with my 20-ish classmates and the reality of my quivering muscles and the voice in my head saying, "What HAPPENED? When did you get OLD?!"  And to quiet that voice, I pushed myself harder.  Yep.  I was the jerk who pulled a hamstring on the first day.  Figures.  That'll prove that I'm young and vital.  At least the whacking stick was reserved for keeping time, and not for beating unsuspecting students.

What is her point?  Well, classical text was written in a time when the body had a lot more physical strength in the legs and the core.  Equestrian activities, lots of walking - the daily lives required a stamina and a grounded strength that is vital to being able to perform the texts they wrote.  In order to be able to support the breath, the voice, the text and the emotional depth - this core and lower body strength needs to be fully accessible.  Well, either that, or she is a sadist - which, let's be honest, I think most anyone who enjoys pushing people to their physical limits has at least a touch of....

Voice class was next - whew! - a breather.  Well.  Not quite.  We are still connecting the voice to (you guessed it) the body.  My body at this point is smelly and sweaty and can barely take one more spinal roll.  Especially with my hamstring yelling at me.  But all along the way, I'm starting to take notice of my own habits.  My favorite being the Caroline-is-a-tight-ass habit.  We consciously work to release tension from the right shoulder....I notice that I am now holding that tension in my left glute.  We do exercises to release tension from the muscles surrounding the ribcage....and the tension runs gleefully round the side and down to my butt cheek.  It is as if my ass is the last refuge for stress.

At the end of the class, one of my classmates asked a quite interesting question.  "Is our goal here to identify and be able to let go of our habits specifically for the purposes of a role, or are we intending to drop our habits and physical and vocal idiosyncrasies from all of our life?"  To which our voice teacher responded, (and I hope I get this quote roughly correct, as I had no pen and paper handy) "Judy Dench once said, 'You are only as good on stage as you are off'....we are not looking to take away your habits so that you become LESS yourself...it is so that you can become more fully yourself."  Which got me thinking.  How many of my habits and physicality quirks are left over from being a 13 year old girl who grew too tall in a single year, towered over the boys and was wildly unpopular?  That is not the woman that I have grown into....do I really need to hold onto that slouch, that sink-into-the-hip?

After lunch (which for me was a quick trip home for some spinach dal, an apple with cheddar cheese,  and a handful of ibuprofen) - we came back for a four hour class on the neutral mask (in preparation for the Greek Tragedy we are about to start tackling).  Ally says, "We will be exploring masks...but for the first three hours, I want to work on movement and body control."

oh, goody.

Much to my surprise, between the ibuprofen and the continued movement, my hamstring is actually getting happier.  We work on the kinds of group interaction and movements that are about a collective agreement.  We work on the Eight Levels of Tension....#1 being the loosest, least muscular control - think of an entire class flopping around on the floor - and #8 being absolutely the most tension you can hold in your body.  We do exercises of moving through the space with specific goals to accomplish in each of the states of tension.  And get this: they have genius names associated with each one.
#1:  The Jellyfish
#2:  Just Woken Up
#3:  The Californian (as in: hey dude! it's all good!)
#4:  NEUTRAL
#5:  The Stage Manager (this one makes me laugh the most)
#6:  James Bond (fear with resolution)
#7:  Fear with NO Resolution
#8:  Catatonic
You can imagine the growing state of tension in the physical body that would take you through each of these levels.  And through physically identifying each of these levels, we began to explore with what it is like to live in neutral....what it is like to interact with your environment, be fully IN and aware of it, without expectation or full detachment.

Now, at the end of my first day, I am reflecting on the one word I heard over and over all day:  curious.  "Be curious about your body.  What movement is it capable of?  What movement do you tend to circle back to and use over and over?"  "Be curious about the learning process.  Don't jump into it with whole abandon with a teach me give me I am your sponge attitude, nor with a sit back on my heels and see if you can prove this to me attitude....but with a curiosity about how things work."  Pick it up, play with it. Roll it around in your mind.  Try it out.  Try it on.  See how it fits.  Explore it.  Get to know it.  Be curious about the world, about other people, about yourself.

Curiouser and curiouser...down into the rabbit hole I go.