Craig Smith - Blog Assessment 2

In physical/dance theatre and in our homage to it’s genre in ‘Fractal,’ meaning and emotion is conveyed “through the body, rather than through the mind” or text alone (Callery, D., 2001, p.4.) Every movement originates from real life, only when we get the impressive lifts are we reaching into a totally expressive form of what strives “to say something that cannot be said” in everyday behaviour (Bausch in Fernandes, C. 2001, p.5.) This corporeal language through pedestrianisation is more relative to the viewer, as they can relate to the movements and their assigned meanings from real life. Thus they can understand the relationship and its depth between two performers by how they hold hands, how they share a gesture such as looking at a watch, or even how they eat a sandwich.

Pedestrianisation on stage brings the audience and its familiarities into the aesthetic space, its imitations of reality establish the blurred existence between the two forms of movement, the merge of which Susan Broadhurst comments on. This merge then allows the development to more surreal and expressive movement to happen. My character physicalises this progression at the pre-beginning of the piece, metaphorically taking the audience to the blurred existence and gradually guiding them through to physicalistion beyond pedestrianisation.

Through the process of ‘Fractal,’ the thought that smaller gestures say more than grand lifts became affirmed. “There is a greater emphasis on exploiting the power of suggestion.” (Callery, D., 2001, p.5) To say something, in most cases there is no need for explicit information, and so a suggestion is all that is required to make our intentions clear. Each action is stripped down to its smallest movement and providing the motive is kept, the meaning will be carried through. These ‘skeletons’ of actions can then be dressed and interpreted by the audience, giving them the freedom to determine what is being said. As Newson of DV8 says “It is not that I am necessarily against using an arabesque, but you must know why you do it.” This is an important philosophy through the process of physical/dance theatre and through our process to ‘Fractal.’

The holding out of a hand, for example is all that is required to tell the audience that my character wants to contact Frankie; that I am communicating a desire to reach out to her, that I am telling her my hand is there to hold and am offering guidance to her. This doesn’t need to be expressed through a highly physical duet between the two of us, and it was our decision to keep it simple which would carry a greater emotion for both us and the audience.

One of the greatest means of communication I have discovered in ‘Fractal’ is through the eyes. The eyes are the most common use of expression that, in everyday life tends to be taken for granted. Communication through the eyes is played upon throughout fractal between characters and implicitly towards the audience. This is easily communicated because we are “demonstrators of [our] own bodies, not the body of some passer-by” (Wright in Fernandes, 2001, p.10.) or artificial creation in a text-based play. Seeing this on stage opens up the subconscious awareness of how we use our eyes other than to see in reality, and so the audience is still aware of what is trying to be ‘said.’

-
Callery, D. (2001) Through the Body, Nick Hern Books Ltd.: London

DV8’s website, www.dv8.co.uk - accessed 13/11/07

Fernandes, C. (2001) Pina Bausch and the Wuppertal Dance Theater, Peter Lang Publishing Inc.: New York
-

Craig Smith