Final Workshop - Thursday

Probably the best of the lot. Very simple. By now, everyone very relaxed, very focused, very open.

New faces again, but lots of the old ones too. A good mixture. A good mix of experience and new energy.

We do very little new but what we do we do well and we consolidate. Trust plays an important part in today's proceedings. I point out that this work is not easy to do. And it is even less easy to do well. There's the shyness. The embarrassment factor. We need all the help we can get from our friends; not only the ones we're doing the exercises with. But also the ones who are watching. Our friends need to say yes to the creative gifts we are offering, but so too do those who are watching...

So we do trust exercises and we take time to watch each other. To watch the giving of trust and the receiving of trust. One person leads the other, blindfolded or with their eyes shut round an obstacle course. The idea is that there must be no crashes. That both must work together. And we watch. And even comment about how far each
'team' does.

This, I'm glad to say is constructive, and one or two pairs make a second attempt at the exercise under our guidance.

We also do the blindfolded exercise where the partner gives verbal instructions guiding the partners towards a chair: left, right, two paces, stop, a pace to the right, a little to the left, stop, ok, shuffle a bit to the right, back a tiny bit.... sit down!

There are one or two wobbles but no one lands on the floor! Good work. All very focused. All nice and simple.

As Bertholt Brecht once wrote: The Simple Things are so Hard to Do...

We do more contact improvisation, this time in small groups and then in larger ones of half the group. We do non-contact improvisation, just using the air around our partners to move them through space.

And finally sound improvisation in two ways. One with a single partner. The other where the participants stand in a line and a 'conductor' moves up and down behind them moving them only with the sound of her voice...

All this works very well. People's movement is great. And best of all, people are having fun and smiling a lot...

We end up with a little of the work that I'd hoped to develop in more depth: 'bringing' people the participants know to the workshop. But at least we begin. Jamal has an 116 year old granny. Rami a sadder story.

But we've had a good set of workshops I think and I hope I'll have a chance to return.

Then, photographs, exchanges of email and we each go off into the night hoping we'll meet up again soon..