11 A. Polarities

• Everyone, find a place for yourself on the floor and stand. Turn your attention to your breath. With each out-breath, let go of any tension that you don't need in order to stand.

• I'm going to call out pairs of words, and I would like you to explore movement that these words suggest.

In, out.

Up, down.

Slow, fast.

Hard, soft.

Curve, straight.

Heavy, light.

Push, pull.

Fixed location, travel.

Open, close.

Tense, relax.

• As I direct you through these opposites, I'm going to side-coach you; I'll be talking to you from the side-lines. You don't have to look at me, nor do you have to stop what you're doing. Just let my words in as you concentrate on what you're doing.

• Keep your timing irregular. As your body passes through different shapes, or forms, you may imagine, or notice, different states of minds connected to them. Let these states of mind surface. Allow them to affect what you're doing, the tension in your body, the expression on your face, the focus of your eyes. Let your energy be spontaneous, fickle, and erratic. If you feel confused, scared, in an unknown place, be conscious of your choice to either move further towards that feeling, or veer away from it. Enjoy yourself.

• In the next few moments, relate to someone near you. Continue moving through these qualities, randomly (at your choice) in relation to one another. Both of you may or may not be playing with the same quality. Sometimes, you may want to relate within similar energy and, sometimes, you may want to contrast with each other. Respond to your inner impulses while you also respond to the actions of your partner.

Movement is a treasure to be enjoyed. We may carry thoughts and feelings about our bodies, or bodies in general, that prevent us from experiencing movement pleasurably. So occasionally, we need to approach this pleasure through the back door. An exercise such as Polar­ities turns the student's interest toward investigation. Their attention will be on the concept of opposites, and they use their bodies as clues in an scavenger hunt, seeing what they can come up with. Hopefully, pleasure will sneak up on them while they're looking in another direction.

For a student unaccustomed to this kind of physical exploration, it is very tempting to focus on the intellectual concept of "up," for instance, verses "down." Finding movement only from inside the "How can I think about up?" procedure is tremendously limited. Thoughts can only come from what they already know—from old thoughts — and those old thoughts usually produce realistic, or imitative, action. On the other hand, sensing "up" movement kinetically, rather than thinking out a solu­tion, then playing within the parameters of sensation, will guide the stu­dent into undefined, untested and unchartered surprise.

We inhabit our bodies as idiosyncratically as who we are. Some of us think our way in. We consider way too much, freeze up, atrophy. We think we may break if we shake things up. So, we don't shake at all. We don't even sway. Others of us throw movement away as if it's trash and we don't want it. We're wild, raw and even appear free. We might even mistake our spinning maelstrom of energy and activity as freedom. Actu­ally, we're moving too fast to feel anything.

Consider this: your body is a chisel, the space around you is stone. Your movements carve into the stone. Each gesture, each bit of action and shape, scribes a mark into an undisturbed and dense surface. Not one iota.of movement can occur without leaving its signature. Even the blink of your eye makes an inscription on the stone of space. How would this change your relationship toward your physical actions? How would you pay attention?

Here comes a fast drill. Quick shifts. No time to think.