CIRCUS SCHOOL WEEK 8

Our primary teachers are still in China at a circus competition, so we had one day workshops in aerial dance, mime and then our regular acting class. As a result, this week was less painful than most, but was bizarre in that I became obsessed with increasing the dexterity of my left hand. It started to feel like a phantom limb or like it was alseep really deeply as I worked my duck-claw-daisy exercises. I thought often of how babies must feel when the learn to walk or like how Uma felt in Kill Bill when she was trying to wiggle her toes. Our mime teacher, Rob Mermin, taught us the Etienne Decroux method of corporeal mime (Decroux was an old French master who taught Marcel Marceau). Corporeal mime is really poetic- universal emotions and ideas made totally physical and tangible in microscopic moments. You just have to be really freaking dexterous with all of your limbs. The main things I gleaned were about leading with the elbow in arm gestures and on playing with fluidity and sharpness with hands. This stuff below you have to do fast and with many repetitions...kind of harder than it seems.
DUCK:

CLAW:

DAISY: