I'm writing this sat in front of a popping fire in the front room of my hosts beautifully eccentric home, a small library of books stares down over me and the cat Chat~mellow (marshmallow cat) is having his belly tickled by louise. The taste of vegetable soup, garlicky salad and home~cooked quiche lorraine still lingers in my mouth, all is good in my world.
Okay my arms still hurt a little from movement class but I feel like I made a little progress today our coach Claude (the name thing finally cleared up) was again swift to dart from one exercise to the next. The warm up today was more active than yesterday. Amongst other things there was a combination of scurrying around in a squat position, arm stretches, walking around like a gorilla with its arms and legs in braces, falling to the floor and moving slow motion and spinning round like 5 year olds (probably my favourite part).
Then the real work started, first in pairs we had to jump and catch one another, I'm always slightly wary of these types of exercises, I'm about 17 stone at the moment (no idea what that is in kilo's but I know it's a lot) and when we had to find a partner I ended up with Hannah who looks about half my size and weight.
Ladies first, she leaped up I caught her and the first thing I noticed was a slight constriction of the blood to my toes, f#%k me if she doesn't have strong thighs.
I put her down and there was a slight awkwardness as to whether I should go or not. She said she felt okay, I didn't. We called Claude over and he spotted her. Okay no use backing out and ......leap!
She caught me.
Fantastique!
Then again without Claude.
Next the silk work.
Claude wants us to get used to staying on the silk by wrapping it around our feet and locking our shoulders, so, exercises to practice the shoulder lock.
For me the shoulder lock was okay but............... Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow! My fingers and wrists aren't strong enough to hold my body yet.
Oh did I mention I managed to climb " feet off the ground. It's not everest but it is an improvement on yesterday.
Bring on tomorrow!
Le Jeu
What did I learn today?
Samuel says
Mr.Hit
Grandmas footsteps
The same but with a scene and trying not to get moving by Michiko when she turned round.
Monsieur Gaulier " You see nobody in zis groop is boreeng when they play zis. Nobody. Surprising!"
I was kicked off the game early, I move too much. It was great to see my classmates have pleasure to be in the space and I think that part of it came from them respecting the game.
Me I didn't feel much pleasure up there, but I guess a bonus is that I can recognize that fact.
When I sat down I was gutted to have gone out so early but then I realized that I was putting pressure on myself to be good rather than finding my pleasure in the space.
Don't try and be good go out to have fun with your friends, this is the lesson. But have I learned it?
Next exercise: the pleasure to imitate.
Philippe asked for a student, Danno from Texas gets up, he is a good looking guy, kind of like a cousin of the kings of leon before they went shit and started making stadium rock.
Philippe starts asking Danno questions and then asks for several of us to get up and imitate him. Here I had fun, it was a bit nasty, a bit playful still with a lot of pleasure to "be good" but there were a few laughs especially when i insinuate dthat Danno liked to get old ladies drunk so he could f%#k them, I hope he didn't take offence, it was all in fun.
After only 2 days there are snatches of pleasure starting to come now I need to find a way of turning the critic off and focussing on finding my fun more and more.
I asked Philippe about pleasure at the end of class I don't 100% remeber the question and I don't 100% remember his answer but this quote I do remember.
"For sure ze best clown and best actors are ze ones that 'ave ze most pleasure." Philippe Gaulier 11/10/11
Pleasure pleasure pleasure let the pleasure lead not the ideas.
Part 2 clown
Exercise for entrance.
1 by 1 we enter with the funny noses and glasses and we see what happens. My note to self from yesterday was that I should try and explore the feeling of the bad student yet I went out there too confident, without sensitivity and without complicity, I got centre stage and began tapping on an imaginary typewriter tick tick tick tick tick tick....
C'est terrible Monsieur flop is coming to get you!!!
To say it was boring would be an understatement, in fact I was upstaged by the door to the workshop closing fairly loudly.
Uh~oh upstaged by a door. Definitely time to go.
And I started to take myself off stage.
Ha Ha Ha from the audience.
Immediately Philippe pounces.
"You see, we like im better when 'e leaves."
He got me to do my crappy typewriter thing again (and as I write this referring to it as the "crappy typewriter thing" shows that there was no pleasure in it for me, that I didn't believe that it was ever going to work, that it was about as imaginative as a sock.) I did it in the corner of the room by the exit, a smile from a supportive classmate or 2 but not much more.
And fin
Philippe said something like I forgot the feeling of the bad student, he has said this before and I thought I understood but today it resonated a bit differently. Bad, sure bad means a lot of things but it doesn't mean that when the teacher tells them off they go crying to maman, no bad like the naughty kid, the cheeky one, the one that makes jokes, that has fun all the time and they can't be good because they are not intellectual, no they prefer fun, games to run around and play with water pistolsto get get dirty and have mud pie fights but when maman says inside now they go, not without putting up a fight to have 10 more minutes of fun.
No?
7 minutes?
No?
5? just 5more minutes of play and then I'll come in.
Oh Pleeeeeaaase?
The one who is not ashamed, who wanders in when no~one expects him, who wants to play, who will do anything for 5 more minutes under the spotlights and shows his true pleasure in doing so.
This is who I go looking for tomorrow.
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