Follow up of Skype Session

Hi all!

So I havn't blogged in a few days, but that's not to say BAPP has not been in my thoughts and in practice. I have been fathoming my way through reader 2 and ways of reflecting and using our experiences as teaching tools for ourselves in the future. I am really enjoying this as I am learning so much about myself, and the how I work in completely different ways, using different methods, depending on which area of my career I am working on. I will write a full blog on this, with snippets of journal added in..so watch this space.

  This week we had a skype meeting with Paula to discuss our intial thoughts on this section of the course, and how we found the reader 2. I always enjoy these sessions, as sometimes you can feel quite isolated as you are not doing a conventional uni course with set lectures with other students. You have to create your own network and community through the blogs and then interaction in those sessions. It's great to listen to others and bounce of their thoughts and points, furthering your understanding in ways you would not have developed alone.

We got onto talking about journal writing, and how to find the inspiration to write and get our creative juices flowing. One tool we all seemed to relate to was 'stream of conciousness'- an exercise where you simply write your thoughts continuously for a period of time (approx 5-10 minutes) without pausing, just allowing the thoughts to flow, before then going back and evaluating what you put and taking the best parts to use in your work. This is a tool I learnt at Drama school as a character ter development skill. I often use this if ever I feel I am having the dreaded 'writers block' or if my mind is overactive and I'm struggling to concentrate. It's a great excersise to use when journal writing and I highly recommend it to anyone.

  However I use this tool in a kinetic way, when trying to find inspiration for choreography. I put on the chosen piece of music for the dance and just improvise and let the music take over, allowing my body to move freely. I often film myself doing this,so I can go back and evaluate it afterwards, looking at movements that worked well and begin to create phrases of structured choreography from
them, until I have a if sighed piece. Because the stimulus was the music and I allowed my body to flow, in often means the choreography flows much better than I would have gone in 'cold' and not used this tool.

Human intuition is a very powerful thing and in a world full of schudules and multi tasking, it's great to just let us be... Allowing gut instinct and sub sonciousness unlock or creativity and true potential!