Introducing the project

This post offers a first glimpse to a wider practice-research project I started developing since the beginning of the pandemic in the UK in March 2020 and the Covid-19 implemented physical distancing guidelines. It is the first in an intended series of posts on the project, under the umbrella title ‘From haptic deprivation to haptic possibilities’. This research looks at how we can compensate for the current inability to experience haptic interrelations within and beyond actor-training environments, including the exploration of wearable haptics towards tactile ‘translations’.[1] Even though the specific investigations sprang out of the urgency of the current pandemic, it is already apparent that its findings and applications could have a clear impact post-pandemic as well.  

  

Within the context of actor training, the question I am exploring as a movement educator is: would it be possible to find new tactile possibilities and opportunities around alternative use of contact as we practise physical distancing in the studio? The ground of my practical inspiration comes from the study of touch through the awareness of the skin organ in somatic practices and more specifically the methods of BMC® (Body-Mind Centering) and IBMT (Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy). I bring this in dynamic dialogue with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of flesh that represents the ability of our bodies to be exemplar sensibles (1968, 135);[2] I sense and at the same time I am sensed, I touch and I am touched.[3]  

An introductory study of touch

Working in the studio with the current actors in training at East 15 Acting School in London, we get to an introductory study of touch after the steps of mapping our somatic states, grounding and centring our somata (plural for soma as diverse and dynamic bodymind) in the space. We also heighten our attention to our breathing by connecting to the countermovement and countersupport between lungs and diaphragm; how they complement each other, how we can allow this ‘breathing dance’ to travel to the full length of our spines (head to tail connection) and through our spines to our upper and lower limps; how we can start checking the integration between moving and sounding adding a subtle humming.

The structure I have chosen for this post focuses on the haptic study that comes right after the above steps. The practice was part of my second physically-distanced class (Autumn Term 2020-21) with the postgraduate actors on the integration between movement and senses.

The first part of the following narrative, in italics, is an experiential invitation for each one of you to explore. Following the way I communicate the practice in the studio, I shift between the ‘we’ of the shared experience, the idiosyncratic ‘you’ and the first-person ‘I’. In that way, I wish to acknowledge the group dynamics and each actor-mover’s unique perception, including my own experiential engagement as a trainer-witness.[4] The writing is then integrated with a short video on how the practice evolved in the classroom with one of the MA Acting groups.[5] My invitation to you is to approach the written and the video parts of the study as one narrative before moving on to reflections.  

The study

We start by finding a comfortable standing position with a supported base and a soft connection to our breath. Try to ground your attention to the dialogue between your feet and the floor as well as the simplicity of the opening and closing movement of your lungs. You may wish to take a couple of minutes to map how you are within your body in the here and now seizing any small or bigger movements that want to be expressed.

Now let’s activate the organ from which we get in touch, the skin, softly brushing with your hands the surface of your body. As you do so add to your attention that your skin is the biggest organ that envelops your body. It brings you in contact with the world, it gives you shape and contributes to the development of your unique identity. You may also wish to add the questions ‘what is my connection with physical contact?’ ‘how does that feel to me?’.

Begin the brushing from your head, including your face only if it is fully safe for you under the current circumstances. Then go to your neck, the full surface of your arms and hands, your front torso, the sides and the points of your back you can reach without over-stretching your arms. Responding to the flexibility of your skin organ, the change of temperature and the shapes your body takes, continue this ‘skin shower’ as you get to your pelvis, the front part of your legs, the upper part and the soles of your feet. As you follow the journey up through the back of your legs continue the brushing all the way to the crown of your head. Make sure that you awaken every little inch of your skin.

And now release your hands and arms. Do you feel a subtle buzziness through your skin? If so, follow that no matter how strange it might seem. Start moving from your skin as if it becomes a membrane. As if I want to bring all the structures that are inside my body closer to my skin. I become this organism that moves only from my skin ‘costume’ that hugs my body from the front, back and sides. Keep checking in the support of the flow of your breath and whether you hold back your breathing in and out cycle. Feel free to explore the qualities that come up, ‘how is it to move from my skin?’ ‘what can I get out of it?’.

As you keep going, start playing with clear points of contact between your hands and different parts of your body. I am suggesting the use of your whole palm observing how that may be different from other tactile qualities like stroking. I allow one point of contact to bring movement and the movement shows me the next point of contact. Check what possibilities come up for you, maybe lifting your limbs, balancing shapes, finding connections between your upper and lower body. Just try to offer yourself clear impulses through clear points of contact as you further develop your study. Do you connect with your ability to touch and simultaneously receive contact?

And then gradually you may notice that you can start playing with different parts of your body contacting each other. So it may not be my palm coming into contact with my thigh; it may be my elbow and my thigh responds. Keep seizing the movement and how it brings up new points of contact. Observe rhythms and images that might come up. Would you like to add some music?[6] Continue your study by clicking on the following video:

Reflections

Use your experience of the study as ground for a reflection. You may wish to follow what is present for you allowing some writing. How about opening your writing with ‘I sense …’ or ‘I touch …’ ? How about sharing some of your reflections in the ‘Leave a Reply’ section at the end of this post? For further guidance on how you could develop somatically-inspired writing you can have a look here.

Through my witnessing of the group, I am drawn to effortless expressions of focus and flow. I am also curious about the diverse tactile qualities the actor-movers engage with and I intentionally do not add further orientation as I wish to ‘hold’ the openness in this introductory step. For instance, working with another group, negotiating tactile pressure became instantly part of the shared study so I acknowledged it as a further part of the process.

Opening the space for experiential reflection, the majority of the learners echoed my witnessing mentioning elements such as easy engagement with movement and support towards focus. The study was also received with surprise for two main reasons. The first was a sense of profoundness and the second an opportunity to practise a form of relational contact improvisation in the context of a physically-distanced class. At the same time, I should include here some expressions of discomfort and a sense of loneliness which I entirely recognised as experiential nuances of the same process.

In the following classes I continue to modify the use of touch or physical contact as learning and creative tool within physically-distanced actor training. And as I further revisit the interrelational dynamics that have been the ground of my practice since its initial shaping, I observe that I could maintain some of the current studies as individual processes even post-pandemic. This thinking relates to my ongoing interest in supporting the significance of the diverse and different sense of self in embodied learning. Specifically when it comes to touch, I find resonance in the questions Evans et al. (2020) pose in their post on the special issue ‘Against the Canon’:

What does touch mean post #MeToo and the killing of George Floyd? Who owns space, how do we negotiate touch, what might touching signify, what can we learn from/through touch? Where are our embodied borders and what do they mean now for us and for others? How do assumptions around touch, weight and space play in to assumptions around gender, sexuality, disability and race/ethnicity?

I will return to some of these points in future posts. My aim is to shape a dynamic dialogue between how tactile interactions emerge in my physically-distanced teaching and how I have been navigating touch-based work pre-Covid. In both cases my premise is the awareness of actor training as diverse and relational environment of mutual sensitivity and vulnerability.

POSTSCRIPT

This Blog post has been discussed further in the author’s subsequent article for the Touch in Training Special Issue of the Theatre, Dance and Performance Training journal, ‘Tactile renegotiations in actor training: what the pandemic taught us about touch‘. (Please click the title to go straight to the article).

— The Blog Team

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to the current actors in training at East 15 Acting School (MA Acting), who gave me permission to use footage from our second physically-distanced class.

LIST OF WORKS

Evans, M. et al. (2020) Teaching with the special issue: ‘Against the Canon’. Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Blog. [Accessed 7 November 2020].

Kapadocha (2016) The development of Somatic Acting Process in UK-based actor training. Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, 9(2) 213–221.

————— (2019) Somaticity within and beyond arts praxis: Inviting your witnessing. Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Blog. [Accessed 7 November 2020].

————— (2021) Somatic logos in physiovocal actor training and beyond. In: Christina Kapadocha (ed.) Somatic Voices in Performance Research and Beyond. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 155-168.

McAllister-Viel, T. (2021) (Re)considering the role of touch in “re-educating” actors’ body/voice. In: Christina Kapadocha (ed.) Somatic Voices in Performance Research and Beyond. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 115-129.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968) The Visible and the Invisible. Translated from French by Alphonso Lingis and edited by Claude Lefort. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

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[1] The first step towards this direction was my collaboration with the computational artist and composer Christina Karpodini on her project Sonically Touchable (September 2020).

[2] I am using plural to add the element of embodied diversity that was not part of Merleau-Ponty’s discourse.

[3] You could find more on the way I have been integrating somatic and phenomenological praxis in my recent chapter ‘Somatic logos in physiovocal actor training and beyond’ as part of my edited collection Somatic Voices in Performance Research and Beyond (Kapadocha, 2021). Given that the use of touch is widely studied in somatic or somatically-inspired methodologies, you could also find relevant discussions in many other chapters in the collection, including Tara McAllister-Viel’s ‘(Re)considering the role of touch in “re-educating” actors’ body/voice’.

[4] ‘For  the  significance  of  the  potential  contribution  of  an  educator  who  wishes  to  “hold”  each  actor’s  creative  journey  allowing  space  for  the  development of individual strengths, critical awareness and expression I introduce the identity of the trainer-witness’  (Kapadocha, 2016, 218).

[5] The video includes captions.

[6] In the classroom I used the music piece Melodia Africana I by Ludovico Einaudi.