What is rhythm?, Veenapani asks the half circle of participants that have gathered for a taster of her work and practice. After a few moments' thought and some stumbling lines, the answers trickle out of us: it’s a division of time, a predictable organisation of time, a pattern we come to have expectations about. And where can we find it? In walking, in the rain, sports, and heartbeats. Electricity, the sea, breathing – music, poetry and movement. Architecture, nature, art, dance. Rhythm is everywhere. As performers and directors, this is important to know, as rhythm always is present in performance, whether we perceive it or not.
Rhythm is, obviously, only one part of what is essential in performance-making, -doing and -seeing, but it is a fundamental building brick that cannot be ignored or forgotten. Veenapani explains how the actor has an inner rhythm, a landscape that is influenced by what happens externally. A shift in one means a shift in the other, though not necessarily the same. Rhythm can be used to create certain states not just in the performer, but in the emotional reactions of the audience. It is a tool for the performer, who uses it to play around within the structure of the performance itself, and equally a tool for the director when creating and putting together the piece.
To illustrate her words, Veenapani showed us a video with the work of an actress, performing in the Koodiyattam tradition. The actress was performing an old mythical story of a woman who sneaked her way into a village with poison on her nipples, breastfeeding and by that killing the babies of a certain generation. For an untrained Western eye, this was both challenging and enriching to watch. The form of the performance is highly codified, from the beat of the drum to the movements of the hands and eyeballs. They are like an alphabet that the actor uses to construct words, sentences, and paragraphs, which makes up a captivating and beautiful language. Though the precise meaning escapes the untrained Western eye, we were in awe of the level of skill, precision and complete physical engagement in the actions performed. The elaborate eye movements and hand gestures illustrated so much that we could grasp the meaning despite the grammar escaping us.
The most important point that came up in discussion afterwards, was how the sense of rhythm existed not just in the performer, but between her and the percussionists. Neither of them led the others, rather the rhythm existed and lived as part of a greater whole. The body internalises the rhythm through externalising it physically, which creates a reaction in the audience. We tested this by doing a very simple exercise of clapping rhythms on our thighs, and found that four beats had a completely different character from three. Four settles down, is a regular pattern that relaxes and lulls you into a sense of security, whilst three is urges you forwards, lacks the 'settling' nature of the former and keeps you on your toes. (You can try this yourself: clap or say 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, then swap to 1-2-3, 1-2-3,1-2-3, and observe what changes in your awareness and your body. You will probably find yourself more alert and forward in your seat on the latter).
The final part of the exploratory was spent testing rhythm-work practically. We divided into groups of three, and were asked to perform a simply everyday action. From moving chairs to folding clothes, the groups each found their separate, simple sequence, that was performed first without, and then with the beat of a metronome. The remarkable discovery, was that the beat and the rhythm connected the group, and gave them freedom to play around within the structure they had created. For the onlookers, moments of laughter occurred which had not been thought of or planned for, simply through the joy of freedom that was discovered in the play. We thus got closer to Veenapani's words on sensing a totality of the movement and rhythm, as well as the breath of the piece and of the other performers. We understood through experience how the rhythm feeds into all the other crucial elements of a performance. It underpins and lays the foundations on which one can work together as a collective, rather than as individual performers. Knowing how to weld this tool, and to cultivate the inner rhythm is crucial for theatre-work, and though this morning was just a quick peak, there was much to learn and take away for future work.
No comments:
Post a Comment