HEALTHY ANIMAL- from notes to a student April 2010

-follow the path of the blood system... from one pulse you can feel to another

-capillaries feel very different than veins/arteries... so hands and blood feel very different from say- belly and blood...

-and remember ... juggling awareness... more manageable and realistic than real full simultaneous awareness that tends to feel more like... getting high or being intensely alive (if you are familiar with runners high- feels like that)

-Some of the folks in Italy (Pontedaro Grotowski center) say that it is impossible and yet i disagree- it is just really hard and takes many years of practice... and it doesn't last that long. I mention this because it is important to know that it is this hard- because if it is coming easy... likely you are missing pieces (I mean consistently easy and by conscious choice- we all have great performances where grace/awareness visits us!)

-the way i get there is by building specific pieces, one at a time INTO the scoring on my performance work, like picking up one ball, then another, then another... with the foundation specific and clear and the details all choreographed... both the external shape AND the things my mind is holding

-and I usually have one or two places where I am working this way for minutes at most- the rest is more normal acting stuff where I am scoring elements of the work into normal acting scoring

-and sometimes I have a blissful moment or two where i get more than I bargained for OUTSIDE those times where I am consciously trying to juggle way more than the normal joe...

-over the years I am getting better at holding this for longer and longer periods of time- but I am talking minutes versus seconds.. I would say that I can hold it consciously with an audience and memorized text etc... for maybe 3-5 minutes at best and it is REALLY HARD with text! really hard! and also hard with movement that is predominantly muscular (similiar challenge for actors with difficult text as for dancers with intense choreography)

-next show i am going for more! Cause when I am there (and I have done studies with other performers to prove this very thing) the audience feels it! and i want to see how far i can go with this stuff!! So build specifically and slowly with small and realistic objectives.