Conflicting Thoughts of Physical Theatre

"Wayne McGregor is a man in perpetual motion. When not incubating new approaches to choreography with his company, Random Dance, he creates works for ballet, theatre and opera companies worldwide--including the Royal Ballet in London, where he's choreographer in residence, and contemporary dance powerhouse Sadler's Wells. In ongoing collaborations with psychologists, neuroscientists and cognitive scientists, Random dancers are helping researchers measure and analyze how the brain works in the creative process. Whatʼs emerged so far is that we can, and do, think with our bodies.” - Stolen from TED Talks. 

At this moment in time, when I'm writing my blog, the TED talk that we have just witnessed seems a bit ambiguous to me. Perhaps it's because I'm in a state of nauseating sickness, but nothing seems to click inside my brain. He seems to delve into very metaphorical and perhaps profound (I'm not really sure yet) concepts that I cannot fully grasp. I feel as if this presentation needs to be watched again to fully understand the extremities of his ideas. BRB as the young people say.

...

So, I just watched it again. Parts of it at least... And thoughts are starting to come to me. But as these thoughts come, it's exacerbating the problem of confusion. What exactly is physical theatre because from what I've gained so far, there's no specific way of defining it. Butoh theatre, Masked dance and this all differ greatly in so many ways. I originally thought that physical theatre was just a means of portraying ideas and themes to stimulate the sleeping factory workers inside our minds to start working. But through further comprehension and thought processes, it digs deeper and wider than my previous claims.

Some of McGregor's work..

Indeed many factors of these forms of physical theatre share similarities, but they also contrast with each other well. Mark Hill taught us to localize our bodies and to forget expression; he told us how Butoh theatre was making movements that just encompassed a certain feeling (skin crawling up your spine or how your legs oozed like honey or how your hair was gently being swayed back and forth in a freeing river). He also told us how to make grandiose movements, to keep the energy level up high, to create abstract and literal shapes and to utilize the architecture when performing. The Masked Dance showed us how abstract, subtle movements with defining attributes could form an individual character whose moves could be seen as similar and yet they were so different. And McGregor finally believes in using physical thinking to formulate a dance. To be acquainted with one's body and thus be knowledgeable about how the seem when they move a certain way; to know how many inches your arm extends from your shoulders. This is what McGregor really surrounds in his work.

It's understandable why he works with scientists and neurologists to help them ameliorate their research about physical intelligence. It's a sense of our own bodies in our worlds. He also explores more westernized dance patterns such as ballet, a key difference than the styles of Mark Hill and talchum. He expresses, through his TED talk the beauty of our bodies and how we can sometimes neglect them unless we injure ourselves. His ideas are innovative and refreshing, and at the same time, discrete from what I stereotyped in the past as dance.

I think it would be really interesting to partake in the endeavor of learning to dance like McGregor to really be able to differentiate between Mark Hill's ideologies and his. They conflict at times and go hand in hand at other times. And thus, it would really be helpful for me to actually experience both types of dance. Visualize a T and dance around it.

Overall, I would like to say how much I love physical theatre. Every time I am faced with a performance or learning, I am touched and inspired and amazed. What it is and how it is expressed - this is a thought that hasn't been solidified yet, and maybe it shall remain like that for several more months... As time moves on, however, I think that the ideologies and classifications will clear up as I am exposed to more physical theatre throughout the days to come. In the past, I've seen in the past a film of Pina Bausch, recently seen the Power of K and a Butoh performance and will see Parsons Dance in November. But the possibility of further haziness could dominate as too much exposure to much physical theatre could blur every line of the endless possibilities of what physical theatre has to offer.