Playing another persona (Lens 2)

Reading through and annotating this chapter triggered me to reflect on my learning habits and this process coincides with a solo that I'm recently working on.

"The process of ‘learning from experience’ is a process of turning information into knowledge." - ACI3611 handbook, page 41

All our actions are based from experience until we come into contact with something brand new, where we would need to take a little more time to understand and decipher it. As mentioned going through this part of the handbook made me reflect on my recent rehearsals   for a particular piece. For some background, my colleague choreographed this solo based on the idea of an egoistic person, with the focus on being me, me and ME, and this solo is part of a production that we will be doing later in the season. This piece for me would be categorised an 'brand new' as it is a total different characterisation that I'm usually used to, and I think this role would require me to in a way create new experiences and understandings in order for me to perform this egoistic character well.

Before this, I personally thought performing a role that is “soft”, “sweet” and “gentle” like Princess Aurora from Sleeping Beauty would be difficult due to the fact that this role requires artistic as well as technical maturity. Without a doubt Princess Aurora would still be on the list of difficult characters to perform, however, I think this role that I would be performing would probably be even more difficult for me in terms of interpreting this character.

Generally, I think one of the most difficult things another than technique, is performing the characteristics of a character, and looking into the accents of the movements that suits the character. For example, when performing the characters Princess Aurora and Princess Florine, although the movement vocabulary of both characters includes arabesques and a la second extensions, the accents for both characters are different – for Princess Aurora it should have a softer approach and each movement should have the idea of creating ‘magic’ whereas for Princess Florine, though keeping the natural fluidity, the movements of Princess Florine should be sharper and more staccato as compared to Princess Aurora. As both have the roles of a Princess, Princess Florine is actually a bird hence there should be more “fluttery” effect as compared to the elegance and grandness of the 16-year-old Princess Aurora.

Despite knowing that it would be challenging, I am glad that I am faced with this challenge of having to explore the idea of portraying an egoistic lady as through this way I am able to develop myself artistically. I believe as a performer and dancer, one would have a level of self-confidence and love for ourselves, however, this greatly differs from the idea of being egoistic and thinking that they are the center of attention. Apart of the movements being more contemporary, I think the other challenge of this role would be developing her character and performing it to ‘perfection’. So far whenever, I am rehearsing this solo, I have a mental preparation by having thoughts such as being elf-centered, vain and having the idea of everyone "should" love me. And, I think what makes this character different from the rest that I've done is that none of it is that narcissistic. Being a confident dancer is one thing and being a narcissistic one is a whole other story.

This shall be my journey of discovering another set of emotions, accents in movements and also, another way of directing my eye-line. 

"We are saying that being out in the world, having experience plus reflecting are the means by which you can start to come across new ideas, the means by which you can learn something new. Learning something new has to start with the confusion of realising you don’t know something. Education is about learning how to remain calm during the period of not knowing and having the tools to reach a point where you can start to know. Reflection is one of those tools. " - ACI3611 handbook, page 42