Riffing

We decided to scrap the idea of the script and make a piece that simply involved different emotional stages and things to do with moral transgression. We did an exercise, which we worked and developed for the whole lesson.

Riffing is where you stand at the sides and start a rhythm with your feet, where you step forward and then stomp your feet back. We did this while clapping your hands on the step forward and sending our energy through our clap and into the middle of the circle to the person who is exploring their movement, to encourage them to keep going.

It is very scary and off-putting allowing yourself to be completely vulnerable, but once you're out there and you feel everyone's claps encouraging you, you feel a lot better and you don't feel like you look stupid, because you're feeling every emotion and movement. It is simply whatever feels natural.

One person goes into the middle and starts to move, however they feel, inside them, that they should move. They are very free to move and express things however they feel it. When you are in the middle, you need to follow every movement you feel in order to feel the next one. You need to find yourself a moment, where you have a recognition that you have found "it" or "something" that you need to keep developing. When the people around the edge feel as though the person in the middle has found something, you find yourself walking to the middle and copying their movement and you stay together in the circle until you become emotionally connected with each other. Then, the first person leaves and the new person tries to make up their own pathway of movement.

You feel very surreal when doing this exercise, when you're around the edge, you're exhausted because you're putting all of your energy into your clap and you are completely mesmorized by the person in the middle. You then find yourself noticing when they have found an interesting movement and you find yourself in the middle starting to copy them. It is an out-of-body experience, you don't tell yourself you're going to go in or decide your movement, you just find yourself in there suddenly and your feeling your whole body.

It's both very relaxing and exhausting at the same time! When you finish, you feel very spaced out, but also completely exhausted because it took everything out of you.