No. Not the words of a toddler. But a chorus of young adult monkeys. That's right. When asked what we would like to do next we maturely bleated that we would like to keep 'making pictures'. Wish granted. God bless Natalie.
6pm Friday. Lots of cold little monkeys gathered in a room with an oddly hard floor (bruises will follow. I have a lovely one that looks just like Jesus) at E15, for a final movement class with Natalie. For those of us who are in The Bacchae this is certainly not the last we will be seeing of her, but as a company we definitely made the most of our last session together. Despite half the group bent double coughing and spluttering, the other half unable to speak due to sore throats, poor Thea nearly being sick in a corner, and Em-J randomly exclaiming "Harry Potter" with an intensity that would put Alan Rickman to shame, we managed to muster an admirable amount of energy for such a motley crew.
What did I learn? That I can't count. A sad revelation at the age of 22 but there it is. The instruction, 'Have three points of contact with floor at all times', is surely not that hard. So there I was, flamingo like, standing in the middle of the room on one leg. Perplexed doesn't even come close. I can assure you I was suitably ashamed and immediately rectified the situation by slamming into the floor with my face. A quick lowering of my hand and hey presto! Three points of contact! And possibly some serious facial damage. But that's okay.
Working on elements, we (much to my relief) spent a lot of time with our eyes closed, and staggered about (in my case - I'm sure other people were very elegant), occasionally colliding with the walls or each other, seeing how it felt to move as if in a capsule of air, water, hot chocolate, fizzy lemonade (we all got a bit bubbly at this point), oil, soil and countless others. This then progressed to actually becoming these states, finding out what it did to your body, the resistance/lack of it, how you (blindly) encounter other people; how you move with and around them. Apart from getting blown straight into a wall when I was being a particularly flimsy pice of paper, and definitely smashing myself in a similar scenario when I was being glass, I had a grand old time. Everybody else seemed to be in a similar frame of mind.
Then... the world's most terrifying sentence.. (apart from when your poorly next door neighbour tells you their children - who you have kindly offered to take to school - have... scooters!)
"Open your eyes".
(Almost as bad as "keep an eye on them, they don't really understand stopping yet.")
We all joined each other on the floor and with slight trepidation began flitting about as china, trying not break each other as we clambered around. The eyes open thing is beginning to bother me very little actually, Hooray! (Just need to get over small children pelting towards roads on wheels now.) We again moved through different elements and then chose our own to finish. I plumped for velvet and had a super time gliding about feeling expensive before we had a little break.
We then returned to something we did in the first session, balancing the space, both actually in the space and with physical presence. So, as I am feeling particularly stupid today, simply, a very tall person, someone being very close to ground and someone being somewhere in the middle, making a tableau ( or picture, as we seem to have adopted) plus trying to create some kind of obvious relationship between the three people. The space was divided into 9 (imaginary) squares, three sections vertically, and three sections horizontally. No one could be in the same section, nor in the same position in the space. This odd game of sudoku/ naughts and crosses was then made slightly more complicated by the introduction of a movable chair. I think it's safe to say that we are pretty inventive when it comes to playing with chairs. Claudia even gave birth to Mai! Hat's off to Max, a great midwife.
Natalie then gave us the choice of continuing with 'making pictures' or moving on to something else. Not to sound unambitious but we all wanted to carry on with what we were doing. It was fun, and collaborative and delightful both to do and watch. We began to create stage pictures with all of us involved. One person began in the space, and slowly more people would join them until the entire company had created a balanced tableau. Once again, in a moment of stupidity, alone on stage I decided it would be an idea to take my pose hurdling over the chair (2012 here I come). Needless to say after about 15 seconds I was in agony and making involuntary groans (much like bikram) as my hurdling leg began to fail (2012 dreams dashed).
I had a moment in bikram this afternoon when I thought I was going to choke because I was trying not to laugh during a 'backward bend'. The concept of Bikram yoga suddenly struck me as ridiculous (although I hasten to add, I know it's not!). But all of us lot, in a baking hot room, 'backward bending'; something which frankly, I don't care what they say, nearly kills me every time I do it, with a (lovely) bloke then telling you to 'lean back, fall back, way back,'. Hold on. Really? I don't think I'd like to fall over backwards with my arms pinned to my ears. Thanks though.
Fortunately I got over this moment of madness quite quickly and got on with it; I put my hands under my feet, my elbows behind my legs, squeezed my face onto my sweaty knees, and attempted to straighten my legs (to no avail) whist ignoring the shooting pain in my calves and the pins and needles in my face. No questions asked.
The overriding memory of Natalie's class was laughter too. Not in a naughty, moment of silliness way but in a particularly engaged happy kind of way. Plus, people were producing funny stuff, Em-J and Jack have a particular genius gift for turning a scenario on it's head.
On the tube home, Max, determined to win free bikram lessons, donned his sweaty bikram shorts and posed bikram stylee in our swinging carriage (empty except for fourth monkey chaps). And as we all cheered him on (and he fell over) had another go and succeeded in getting his photo (legend), I felt very cheery!
No matter that I then attempted to open my neighbours door instead of my own and their dog Simba nearly gave me a coronary.
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