Notes on Animal Project

A few notes that I have been given from Matt in the past few classes that have really helped me improve:

• Go outside of your animal's "Greatest Hits." Without realizing it, I fell into the trap that Matt pointed out after one of our first animal improvs - I was only doing the Blue Heron's "greatest hits." My greatest hits, as I have identified them, are: eating food, lifting my foot in the air, preening my wings, attempting flight, eating more food, darting my head around, and eating more food. Obviously, you can see how this might get boring after about 10 minutes! So I am going to work on branching out by reacting to things around me, and that will hopefully give me more inspiration for new movement and physicality.

• UNDULATIONS. This concept, once I started practicing it, has really transformed my animal. The idea is that movement is not here and then there - it undulates like a wave, and the best way to think about any kind of movement for your animal is the undulation. That way, you're moving naturally and specifically instead of making generalized actions. An example is when I walk as the bird. I know I should lead with my foot - but it doesn't look natural when I simply stick my foot out and put it down. Rather, it works better when I lift with my thigh and undulate the movement all the way down to my foot, finally ending by sticking my foot out. The same can be used for my work with my head and shoulders. Instead of bobbing my head out and sideways, I instead start an undulation in my spine that moves through my neck and into my head, engaging my entire core in the movement. The effect works really well!

• A note that Matt gave me from the start that has helped me perform the heron is the way I hold my back. In my first improv with the bird, I hunched my shoulders and tried to raise my head at the same time, trying to mimic what the bird looked like exactly. As you might be able to guess, this was not sustainable for more than 4 minutes. I had to raise my back before it literally fell off, and my head was never static. My problem here was that I wasn't properly transposing the bird's posture onto my own body. A heron (see pic) may look like it is hunched forward, but it is actually standing up straight - it simply that the wings come out the back. The wings do not hunch the bird over - in fact, they help it to stand up straight. So instead of hunching my back over, I held it up straight, pretending that my entire spine was the bird's neck. Then, with the creation of wings, I will be able to jut my hands behind my back and get that sideways volume that makes it look like the heron is hunched over:

Also notice something very interesting about the heron that I had never noticed about bird before this project: their legs bend FORWARDS. Like their knees are backwards. This is quite a challenge for me to figure out, but I will keep playing with it in rehearsal. Once again, I will have to not try to make myself look exactly like the bird, but instead copy the key characteristics of the bird.