Your Body Knows

A Movement Guide for Actors

Meade Andrews, PhD, Jana Tift, MFA

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000768268
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Actuación y audiciones

Your Body Knows provides the foundation actors need to move with ease and power. It is a practical guide to movement starting at the very beginning: knowing your body and experiencing how it works.

Through the work of F.M. Alexander, Rudolf Laban, and Michael Chekhov, this book offers basic training in movement fundamentals. Its step-by-step process supports the actor's work in any acting or movement training program and as a working professional. The book focuses on three main areas of exploration:

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• Body facts – Know your body and its design for movement. Let go of misinformed ideas about your body. Move more freely, avoid injury, and develop a strong body-mind connection.

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• Movement facts – What is movement? Discover the movement fundamentals that can serve your art. Explore new ways of moving.

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• Creative Inspiration – Connect your body, mind, and imagination to liberate authentic and expressive character movement.

Your Body Knows: A Movement Guide for Actors is an excellent resource for acting students and their teachers, promoting a strong onstage presence and awakening unlimited potential for creative expression.

PART I

Know Your Instrument (So You Can Really Play)

PART I KNOW YOUR INSTRUMENT

Section I The Starting Place

Section II You Are Designed For Movement

Section III What You Think Is What You Get

Section IV Claiming Your Inner and Outer Space

Section V Pathway to Presence: Putting It All Together

SECTION I

The Starting Place

We are always moving. Right now, though you may be sitting “still” as you read these words, hundreds of muscles are working in your body. Tiny muscles are moving your eyes left to right. As you breathe, your diaphragm is constantly moving downward, then rising upward, causing the muscles in your ribs and torso to expand and contract – all the way down to your pelvis. Perhaps you are drumming your fingers on the table or tapping your foot. We are dynamic beings, always changing in relationship to ourselves, others, and the world. We move!

On the stage, your movement assumes a heightened state. The audience absorbs not only the words you say, but the way you move your body, your gestures, and the way you occupy space. If you drum your fingers on the table or tap your foot, you are conveying important details about the character. Through your movement choices, you communicate a wealth of information to the audience.

YBK provides a practical and artistic foundation for enlivening your onstage presence. It offers a learning process designed to build your self-awareness, body knowledge, and ultimately, the ability of your body and mind to respond to the action of the play. Each time you encounter a new concept or principle, you are invited to practice it in a simple exercise. In this way, you can begin to expand your “movement vocabulary,” both mentally and physically.

A beautiful two-way street joins the mental and the physical: You know your body and you embody your knowledge. When you practice Body-Mind Communication (KW), information is constantly flowing from your body to your mind and back again. This seamless relationship serves your imagination and supports your performance as you create compelling characters and a powerful presence on stage.

In this first section, The Starting Place, you can explore fundamentals that support all movement: kinesthetic sense, 3-dimensional body, and breath. No matter what the physical demands of the role may be, these elements provide the underpinning for every movement choice you make as an actor and as a human being.

Key Word: Body-Mind Communication

CHAPTER 1

Your Motion Detector

Your Body Knows! Your body has a natural balance that supports ease of movement, yet most of us are unaware of it. We lack awareness and knowledge to recognize and access this balance. Though we have a choice about the way we move, many of us are not making use of the wealth of movement potential available to us.

This section introduces you to movement awareness, the conscious ability to sense ourselves as we move. With movement awareness as a foundation for your physical presence, you are free to create! You can learn to shed excess tension that interferes with fully expressive movement. You can also learn to completely embody a character, as well as respond easily to the play, the other actors, and the audience.

As you approach the explorations below, allow yourself to enjoy moving – let go of preconceived ideas, and welcome new possibilities!

Practice 1.1 Let’s Get Moving

This Practice is all about “giving permission.” Let go and let yourself move!

I investigate: What is it like to move for fun without judging myself?

• Stand. Close your eyes. Sense your body. Notice where your attention is drawn: you may sense a twinge in your shoulder, the pressure of your feet against the floor, the weight of your arms. Let go of any need to “get it right.” Quietly observe your body and your sensations as they are right now. Pause.
• Just for fun, put on some music you like that might inspire you to move or dance. (We like Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel” or Ottmar Liebert’s “Barcelona Nights.”) Just let your body move. You can work with your eyes open or closed.
• Let go of thinking about how to move, how you look, or “what am I supposed to get out of this?” Let the music inspire you. Follow your impulses. Play!
• When the music ends, pause. Stand. Close your eyes. Sense your body. Notice where your attention is drawn. Quietly observe yourself.
• Spy back. What did you experience? What was it like to move just for fun? How did you feel – physically, emotionally? What was your experience of standing and observing before the exercise? And after? Were the sensations different?

In this Practice, you allowed your body to begin to move freely from inner impulse in response to a stimulus, the music. This is an essential ingredient in moving freely onstage. You’ve also practiced pausing and observing your movement sensations using your kinesthetic sense.

Your Motion Detector: The Kinesthetic Sense

Each of us has a built-in movement monitor: the Kinesthetic Sense (KW). Through this amazing motion detector, we can get to know our bodies, our movement, and the space around us from the inside out. Your kinesthetic sense invites you to experience life in a deeper way – not just intellectually, but viscerally, with your muscles, bones, organs, and nerves. It opens you to an endless array of movement options.

What is the kinesthetic sense? What does it do?

The kinesthetic sense is “the sensation of movement in the muscles; muscle memory; the awareness of the relationship of the body to itself.”¹

The kinesthetic sense is our “spatial and muscular sense.” Like the other senses – taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing – it is at work 24/7, and like the other senses it can function unconsciously or consciously. When we bring the kinesthetic sense into our awareness, we can make informed movement choices.

The kinesthetic sense:

• Informs us about relationships within the body, i.e., how the various body parts relate to one another.
• Tells us how much pressure or strength is needed, the amount of effort required, to lift a heavy object, or execute a pirouette.
• Informs us when and how the body needs to move, such as standing and stretching after sitting at the computer for a long period of time or initiating a movement in a gentle way for stroking a puppy, or a firm way for massaging a sore muscle.
• Perceives the sensation of movement in the muscles, tendons, and joints, including excess tension.
• Tells us the speed of a movement, the difference between fast and slow.
• Is a factor in remembering movement so that it can be repeated: muscle memory.
• Recognizes our relationship with the space around us and influences the way our body interacts with it.^*

* Physicians may employ other names for this important sensory information, such as proprioception and exteroception. In teaching movement for the stage, we choose to combine these somatic terms under one sensory umbrella: The Kinesthetic Sense.

The kinesthetic sense is always working, yet most of us are unaware of its existence. In fact, for many of us, it is shut down. Sometimes, modern life requires that we ignore the kinesthetic sense. For instance, a growing six-year-old isn’t meant to sit in a desk for hours at a time, but most of us did it in first grade. We had to ignore our kinesthetic sense and its message: time to move!

As actors, we must reawaken our kinesthetic sense, because it is the foundation on which all movement relies. We can’t make informed movement choices without awareness of what we are doing as we are doing it. Most importantly, the kinesthetic sense takes us out of our head and into our body. Then we are free to follow the impulse to move, as you did in Practice 1.1 above.

In the Practices below, you can become more familiar with kinesthetic sensing, while expl...