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My diagram of the movements in the weight bearing exercise. 

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This workshop we were first introduced to the concept of weight bearing. Sandrine Monin took us through an exercise which I have a diagram of above. The basic concept was five people, one in the middle and the others around all four sides, facing this person. The person would then gently fall forward/backwards/sideways to one of the people and this person would then meet their weight and hold them up. In the next diagram there is more explanation into how this is done.

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My diagram of our bodies in the weight bearing exercise. 

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I drew this diagram to fully grasp how the weight was distributed. As you can see I wrote 'exchange of equal weight', which personally, I think is a vital piece of information to keep in mind to be able to successfully do this movement. Here I have depicted the person in the middle going forward, to meet the person's weight and to do this you have to keep your body straight and put your head on the other person's shoulder and vice versa. In the workshop, I found this particular movement of going forward very difficult as there is also an element of trust in doing this. As both bodies have to be straight whilst titled, you are relying fully on the other person not to drop you and to achieve this you need to give the same weight to each other, nonverbally agreeing on this. This exercise was done in our fourth workshop, so although I had encountered trust falls and other movements like it, I had never experienced this before, so found it quite unusual and also quite intrusive to personal space at the start. However, I think this was so useful to not only be introduced to the idea of weight bearing but also build up trust between us as a class, therefore making us more comfortable with creating relationships through movement.

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Depiction of exploring weight with two people. 

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After exploring weight bearing with the whole body and between a group, we started to experiment it with just two people and specific parts of the body. Here, is the starting point at which many of us felt most comfortable - one person's hand meeting the shoulder. The person who was touching the other had to instigate the point of contact, for the other person to meet it back with the same amount of weight. At the start I found it hard to equal the weight, wanting to push back, creating a power dynamic of weight, however, the exercise was about having equal power, simply meeting each other.

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Over the course of our next three workshops, we focused on many other types of movement e.g., our kinesonic body (which consisted of working on ourselves and the relationship between our body and space) and roll downs (helped us work on the relationship between our body weight).

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Image from a self-directed session, working on weight bearing. 

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In this self-directed session we started to work on different aspects of weight bearing and here is where I, personally, felt a shift from weight bearing being simply a movement to being able to add aspects of narrative and storytelling into it. Here, Lizzy and I are putting weight on Issy, who is reenacting an X-factor audition, where the auditionee is insisting that they are great and the judges are putting her down. Me, Lizzy, and some others take on the role of the judges by not only saying things to put Issy down but also physically pushing against her (to which she pushes back) and the others walk around her closely, putting pressure on her.

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Different aspects we wanted to further explore for our assessment. 

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We got given the brief for our assessment on the 21st of November, to which, we had more or less full creative control over. Here is a list of some things we wanted to develop more through the work of our assessment, which included us wanting to include 'narrative (text and body)' and to 'explore relationships with others'.

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Mind map of ideas for our final production. 

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In our self-directed session to help us explore ideas for our assessment we made a mind-map of everything we wanted to include. One of the main forefronts for this production was the idea of including narrative and for narrative to work, there needs to be relationships established. We decided relationships could be established in our piece through two things: sound and movement. For example, as our original thought was to have it based on shared memories, many of our own shared memories that we shared with each other, was focused on relationships with other people. If these particular memories had sound e.g., a video, we converted these into WAV files and transferred them into the echome technology.

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Over our next few rehearsals, we continued to work on the relationships we had with each other in the performance through dialogue and sound (through the echome) mostly. For example, in the opening action where I spoke about a memory of a train trip to London and everyone else came onto the train platform. Owen (playing my brother) then insisted that we went to a football game instead and this started a small bicker. The relationships were clearly shown: Owen and I being siblings and the others on the platform creating their own relationships on the platform (friends, family, strangers etc). In these rehearsals, our movement was mostly based on excitatory gestures and focused on the sound.

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Image from the recording of our final piece: mine and Lizzy's duet. 

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We came to an impasse when we started to develop the instrument vs echome duets. Me and Lizzy originally choreographed our duet with simple movements, mirroring each other. However, we found that it needed something to make it more exciting and decided to focus on what our relationship would be to each other. Why are we making different sounds? Are we scared of each other? Are we intrigued? Is there a power dynamic? After exploring a few different options we landed on there being a strong power dynamic. As I have the echome I can move more freely and Lizzy is mostly immobile especially with her hands and arms, whilst playing the saxophone. In this picture, I am using weight-bearing techniques of me instigating the push to create a power dynamic.

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Image from the recording of the final piece: mine and Lizzy's duet. 

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Here, I am forcibly pushing Lizzy down using weight bearing techniques to show that I have all the power. I move her down, shoulder by shoulder, by head until she is fully on the floor.

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Once we had fully developed our duet, I made a map from mine and Lizzy's duet, for memory and rehearsal reasons but also so I could easily visualise our spacing between each other and how this would affect how our relationship on stage is perceived. In the beginning, I am drawn in to Lizzy's saxophone and we stand far apart. As it goes on we are drawn closer and closer and the power dynamic shifts so we are very close and I have power over here.

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Image from the recording of our final piece: Lulu's lift. 

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Another main but different aspect of weight bearing in our final performance included Lulu's lift which was near the end of the piece. Lizzy and Amelia mimic the lift, using the cello, to mirror but also show how different weights of objects and people affect how we have to lift. For this particular lift, there are five people and a spot lifting one person. We lift her so she is parallel to the ground and move her around in a circle. Through this movement, we are showing that Lulu is the main focus, the protagonist in this action, and also her separation from the cello, reality vs abstract.

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Diagram of the weight given and received for Lulu's lift. 

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Here is a diagram I drew of how the weight is distributed in the lift shown previously. There is two people at Lulu's shoulder pushing against Lulu and Lulu has to also push back against them, so very similar to the weight bearing exercises we had learnt. There is then one person at Lulu's hips who has the very important job of making sure that her hips are lifted enough so she doesn't cave in, in the middle. Then, there is two people on her ankles, pushing her up first by walking her forward and then up. For this to work however, Lulu also has to give back some weight so there is an equal distribution.

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The date of our final performance came and I noticed that one of the most poignant aspects of our performance was the relationships we created through our movement: the duets, the lift, and our body language (being as simple as rocking back and forth to show that we were on a tube). The weight bearing throughout helped us depict the moments of power dynamics and also those of equality and is something that I would love to continue using and developing.