Exercises for Rebel Artists

Radical Performance Pedagogy

Guillermo Gómez Peña, Roberto Sifuentes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136822223
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

In Exercises for Rebel Artists, Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Roberto Sifuentes use their extensive teaching and performance experience with La Pocha Nostra to help students and practitioners to create 'border art'.

Designed to take readers right into the heart of radical performance, the authors use a series of crucial practical exercises, honed in workshops worldwide, to help create challenging theatre which transcends the boundaries of nation, gender, and racial identity.

The book features:

• Detailed exercises for using Pocha Nostra methods in workshops

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• Inspirational approaches for anyone creating, producing or teaching radical performance

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• A step-by-step guide for large-scale group performance

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• New, unpublished photos of the Pocha Nostra method in practice

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Exercises for Rebel Artists advocates teaching as an important form of activism and as an extension of the performance aesthetic. It is an essential text for anyone who wants to learn how use performance to both challenge and change.

If anyone objects to aesthetic irreverence, politically and sexually charged work, or physical proximity with colleagues from other races or gender persuasions ... you are probably in the wrong workshop.

Performance exercises, rituals, and games to cross borders

This section, the very heart of the book, is divided into four parts:

1. Part 1 contains “hands-on” exercises (physical and/or perceptual) to help you:

• reconnect with your bodies;

• operate in “performance mode”;

• explore various strategies for collaboration;

• sharpen your performance senses;

• control and direct your gaze while in “performance mode”;

• develop a collective performance vocabulary.

To be clear, by “performance mode” we mean a heightened awareness of present time paired with a sense of total body performativity. These exercises should be undertaken with the same intensity as an actual performance. When we talk about exercises/explorations/interactions being performative we wish to show that pedestrian movements played out in “performance mode” (see above description and add consciousness of audience presence!) take on another level of complexity for both performer and audience.

Even in the few cases where you may be standing still for long periods or moving very minimally, it is important that you learn to gather and control the degree of energy needed to communicate with an audience while essentially “doing nothing.” During the course of the workshop it will become clear when appropriate “active rest” periods can be taken during exercises. You will see as you progress through the methodology that these exercises are, in fact, performances.

2. Part 2 includes conceptual and poetic exercises to help you hone your analytical and rhetorical skills, and map out new territories of inquiry in a non-academic way. It also contains formats for non-confrontational discussion that we have found useful in dealing with cultural divides and tensions that emerge out of racial, gender, social, or generational difference.

3. Part 3 includes “creative exercises” that help participants develop original performance material and strategies for collaboration.

4. Part 4 describes the “infamous Pocha Jam sessions” that will become the bulk of the creative sessions and put all the previous exercises into practice.

5. Part 5 includes various methods for bringing the practice to the public in open performance salons and larger scale presentations.

These Pocha exercises are useful not only for performance artists but also for theater artists, dancers, spoken-word poets, installation artists, photographers, filmmakers, activists, and educators. Anyone interested in incorporating the human body as an integral part of their artwork can benefit from this practice.

Workshops can last anywhere from a one-day master class or a three-day intensive, to several weeks or an entire semester. A typical Pocha “summer workshop” lasts approximately fifteen days. We normally divide the day into two work sessions, each lasting approximately four hours. The first session includes a combination of the physical, perceptual, poetic, and conceptual exercises (from parts 1 and 2). Then we have a one-hour break for people to have lunch, freshen up, and make journal entries. The second session normally involves creative exercises to develop material (part 3).

Although the “creative exercises” and the “jam sessions” are often the most fun and most useful when developing new material, we suggest that you concentrate on the more foundational and intermediate exercises outlined in parts 1 and 2, for at least a few days. Through these fundamental exercises the group develops a collective performance vocabulary, a high level of trust, and an understanding of each other’s skills. This base is crucial for an effective creative session and essential for keeping the exercises flowing.

In this book the five sections appear separate. However, during an actual workshop they are intertwined in an organic manner. The exercises follow a natural line of progression from one to the other. Some are repeated daily with variations; others occur only a few times during the entire workshop.

Fig. 11 Argentine ballerina Patricia Sabbat creates an impromptu image in an elevator of the Museo General San Martin, Tucuman, Argentina, 2002.

Photo: Ramon Teves

At the end of this section we have included a day-by-day guide suggesting ways of combining and sampling the exercises to obtain the best possible results. It’s a kind of Pocha syllabus!

As this workbook is intended for artists, students, performance collectives, and college professors we have tried to make the language as inclusive as possible. The exercises in part 1 are all explained from the point of view of the participant. In parts 2 to 5 instructions are given as if to a facilitator. This distinction is unavoidable, though we wish to blur the lines between instructor and participant as much as possible, the more complex exercises require an outside eye and therefore someone must take on the role of facilitator. This could be any member of the group as long as they have read the background information and understand the purpose of the exercise.

The facilitator/s of the exercises should feel free to adapt our descriptive pedagogical language to their own voice and teaching style. Use visual images to describe an exercise; explore language within your teaching. Remember that teaching is also performing.

part one

“HANDS-ON” PHYSICAL AND PERCEPTUAL EXERCISES

Physical warm-ups and stretching

Duration: 15-30 minutes

Level: Foundational

Comments: We recommend the use of high-energy electronic music.

Objectives

The point is to get participants’ blood and energy flowing, to make them sweat, and to stimulate endorphins in the body. Warming up and stretching also helps individuals reconnect with their bodies, forget about the outside world and “reterritorialize” themselves inside the space, focusing only on the here and now within the workshop or performance space.

This first session of each day involves basic warm-up and stretching exercises borrowed from dance, theater, yoga, and martial arts traditions, including Tae Bo, Pilates, tensegrity (Carlos Castaneda’s Magical Passes), and induced laughter. Anyone in the group with a strong background in a physical practice can lead this session. Common warm-up and stretching exercises will serve the purpose of “preparing” the body for the rigorous physical workshop.

The monkey-breathing dance

Integrating breathing and movement

Length of time: 10 minutes

Level: Foundational

Comments: We recommend the use of high-energy electronic music.

Objectives and history

At the end of the warm-up we usually include ten minutes of kinetic breathing exercises to high-energy music. This helps increase focus within the group and continues to build energy. Our favorite breathing exercise is “the monkey-breathing dance” taught to us by Mexican performance poet Araceli Romero. Versions of this breathing dance exercise can be found in practically every culture. It may be one of the oldest tribal dances on earth that goes back to the early times when prehominids would emulate the movement and behavior of other animals.

Instructions

Begin by forming a circle. Imagine you have hydraulics in your knee joints and pelvis. With this image in mind, slowly bounce up and down with the rhythm of the music

without moving your feet from the floor, as if mimicking a monkey. At the same time you should work with a breathing pattern harmonious with your own lung capacity, perhaps at the counts of 3 or 4. With short deliberate breaths – breathe in 2, 3, 4 then out 2, 3, 4 and repeat.

Once you’ve got your initial breathing pattern connected to your bouncing, you can begin disconnecting the movement of your arms and hands from the rest of your body, as if mimicking an excited chimp, so that each arm moves independently from your torso or legs. Increase your energy level and make the movements larger until your jumping and breathing pattern becomes more intense and you slowly cross over into free-form dance patterns; do this without losing the basic monkey motion or bounce. It’s definitely an energizing and fun way to jumpstart a session.

Variations

After doing this exercise a few times, we often introduce a variation. Once your group has reached the dancing stage, participants can break from the circle and dance around the space, moving on their own or in duets or larger groups. The person managing the sound system then stops and starts the music abruptly. When the music stops, everyone freezes in whatever position they are caught. When the music continues they go on dancing. These sudden interruptions should be as surprising and unexpected as possible.

Borrowed from the simple children’s game “musical statues,” this variation increases your need to engage with a split ...