Alain Allan Allen's summary of the week

Minutes of our latest session, November 30: theme=words at last!
(a somehow prejudiced report, sorry! No, not sorry)


Welcome and warmup
After everybody (i.e. just 7 of us) had come in and a ten minutes sermon and debate about the late arrivals (strangely, those who do not come do not get criticized: does that mean we should go back home when we find out we’re gonna be late?), forward to the usual warmup, of which I have nothing to say, except that for me its (real) benefits are due only to the final Haka, that liberates our energies — like schoolboys rushing to the playground. Another must is the voice warmup, always welcome, even when it precedes a series of wordless (but not soundless) improvisations.

Improvisations
First, a work by groups (2 groups) with a short preparation. The performance is mute, but with sounds. It is then repeated, with a slight change of rule: the sounds are to be made only by the audience (i.e. the other group). Then, one person says a sentence (of her invention) with a certain intention. She is then imitated by all the participants, one by one. We saw that imitation never means perfect duplication, because of the different personalities. Two variants of the exercice followed: instead of imitating, each one said the same sentence with different intentions (in the first case, the choice was made by the performer, in the second case, by the guru). More difficult: several simultaneous dialogues within a short space. The trick is not to shout, murmuring can do as well.The important thing is concentration and this was just a training for the next improvisation. Last, but not least: the musical improvisation, under the direction of a well-known pianist, and based on a song (Fever) that we were supposed to listen to during the previous week. A small band was progressively built: first 2 persons finger-snapping for the rhythm, then two more to provide accompanying and repetitive sounds, then the singers (improvising the text). This gave us a (still vague) idea of what we are heading to for our June performance.

Back to the poems
The date for the Café des Poètes has been fixed to December 10. The effort was directed towards understandability (by taking time) and more freedom and expression in the interpretation (by moving and addressing the “discourse” to various people, or telling the text in one’s own words). The results of this work were very convincing.

Before parting
Not to finish on individual work, back again to a collective improvisation. We all quietly walk on the stage until someone creates an event, by uttering or doing something, to which everybody must react (physical reaction only, no speaking). And that was all!