4E. Accumulation, One Leader

• Form trios with two new partners. You are going to build compositions, or small scenes using the shift technique. One of you will be the provider. You will introduce all the material for the scene. The other two may only mirror what you do, exactly as you have done it, but not necessarily when you do it. You'll do this exercise three times so that each of you will have a turn being the provider.

• Begin by standing in a neutral posture, legs shoulder width apart, spine straight, eyes forward, arms hanging at your sides.

• Provider: Using movement, sound and movement, or language and movement, introduce three to five very different modes of behavior. By "mode," I mean a state of being expressed by an accompanying action. Not simply repeatable movements, but ways of behaving—constellations of physical, vocal and/or verbal behavior that have feeling and meaning.

• For example, you may move in a particular quality, bent over, hands grabbing at head, expressing confusion, or sound and move in a particular way expressing animal-like greed, or shout, "Where is the child?" while striding frantically across the room.

• Make them clear so that your partners have no trouble deciphering your intention; get meaning behind the act. Make sure that everybody in your group can see and hear the mode when you do it. You may have to repeat it a few times.

• Each of the modes you introduce should be very different from the others. Different in content and form, movement quality, timing, the space it uses, and the tension, or energy, it carries.

• After the provider introduces one mode, all three of you interact using only this first mode, until the provider introduces a second. Then, the three of you have two modes to interact with. Eventually, you may end up with as many as five modes.

• Remember you're interacting, not just copying. You are building a scene out of just a few elements. The provider is not the leader. Independently you decide when to do each mode. The three of you are collaborating in the development of a relationship; watching, listening and responding to each other, you use the modes provided as your language.Provider, stay connected to what is going on inside of you and focus on your partners. Each mode you introduce is a response to your inner and outer awareness-what you notice in yourself and what you notice about, what they're doing. You'll provide all of the actions, but the event develops as a collaboration.

• All of you: consider how you're using the space, pauses, and stillness. You can't all be active all the time, or you won't be able to watch each other, read cues and respond. Pause within your action, but don't ever return to neutral once the improvisation has begun.

• Continue until I say, "One minute," then find a place to stop.

Bulking

Even though participants copy the material laid down by the initiator, they need not feel invisible. By joining an action, and adding their body to it they're bulking the image. Bulking strengthens and draws focus to an action. Bulking makes replicas of actions and uses them to enhance the improvisation, bringing weight and importance.

If a person initiates a shift by standing still, talking about eagles with an airy, windy manner, and gesturing with their hands as they speak, then another person can bulk this image by doing exactly the same thing. They can stand behind them or in another corner, but they must not change the form.

Neutral

We make covenants in this training—terms and signals that we agree upon. "Neutral" is one of these. It refers to a posture that is as empty of meaning as possible: standing erect, arms relaxed at sides, weight bal­anced between both feet, eyes front, relaxed face. No posture can ever really be neutral. But, we've assigned that meaning to this one, a mean­ing of "Empty. Ready to begin."

Contrast

A frog sits on a leaf by the edge of a pond. Everything around her is still. Suddenly, she perceives movement, a black dot enters her field of vision. Snap! Lunch!

Frogs can only see contrast. They see edges, movement, and dimming or brightening. With just these few observations, they find food, shelter, water, mates and live their life.

Frogs, like people, gather information about their environment by perceiving contrast between elements in relationship. People notice one thing, only because they notice another: movement in relation to still­ness, sound in relation to silence, loud in relation to soft, fast to slow, heavy to light, black/white, tension/relaxation, and on and on.

Without contrast, there's no new information. For instance, if you want to go to sleep, you limit your information, you count sheep. The same sheep, over and over again, jumping the same fence. The weather doesn't change. Nobody comes along. A sheep doesn't trip on the fence. Monotony moves in. Good night.

If you want to put the people at your dinner table to sleep, or your audience, then don't change anything. Not the movements, pacing, or dynamics. No surprises. No jolts. Keep everything on an even keel. They'll be nodding off in no time.

To keep an improvisation alive, one of the necessary elements is con­trast. Things have to differ from one another. It's the edges, movements, and dimmings, or brightenings, that keep us interested. If we see con­trast in an improvisation, then we're more likely to be interested. If we don't, we usually end up looking for it anyway.

All the actions don't have to be different; contrast can be found in any of the elements that compose an action. A trio may be doing only one action for a long time and still keep us interested if the timing of that action has contrast, or their placement in the room, their move­ment, sound volume, rhythm, breath, eyes offers some contrast.

Accumulation

One Leader offers the student an opportunity to experiment with contrasting actions. Any feeling or state of mind can be expressed in an infinite number of ways. Look at anger, for example. To express anger, you could:

1. Clench fists, hold breath and curse under it, turn red in the face, pace back and forth. or

2. Bang fist on table, dart eyes quickly around the room, tighten lips, breathe fast. or

3. Throw objects against the wall, scream accusations at another person in the room, occasionally throw an object at other person. or

4. Sit in a relaxed posture at the table, breathe normally, rhythmically gouge a mark deeper and deeper into the table with a pencil. or

5. Smile all the time. or

6. Sway back and forth while tugging at your clothing, taking very deep inhalations and exhalations, softly moaning on every 4^th and 9th breath. or

7. Sporadically turn in a circle, while saying names of men and women in a loud voice. or

8. Wipe a window with a feather while flaring your nostrils. And on and on ...

All of these and just about anything else will work if the action carries the intention of anger. Meaning comes from a combination of what you do and how you do it.

We emphasize form in order to expand awareness and awaken a greater range of expression. To prevent students from over-focusing on form, losing touch and becoming mechanical, they're reminded to clar­ify their intention. Clear form requires clear intention. Stay with feeling.