Week 7 at UCC

Monday was by far the most exhausting class I’ve ever endured in my time as an actor. Eadaoin who was not able to join us for the rest of the week felt that going for the physical exercises at a relentless rate was the best course of action for a Monday morning. After our routine massage we began with the infamous plank to regulate our core muscles. After lasting a minute I fell to the ground with great fatigue and flashbacks to secondary school P.E I egged on the remaining members of this cruel exercise.

We then followed with the cat cow which then led into acrobatics. A handstand (Which I’ve never accomplished) was attempted many a times with slow progression. If it were not for the solid wooden floor waiting for us (specifically me due to my abandon for safety when it came to the handstand) upon our “graceful” decent I would attempt a handstand with more enthusiasm. Cartwheels were the next challenge to attempt (You can imagine how that went). We moved into a more primate based movement which was interesting to explore and develop but I felt that there wasn’t enough time to allow a natural transition backwards on the evolutionary movement scale due to time constraints.

This left the performance of our animal research exercise under further time constraints. From the brief period we saw of the ensembles take of animals in everyday life (as people) was a curious and entertaining display. (I was a gorilla so I researched a video from Steve Backshall’s “Deadly 60” on Silverback gorillas. )

Tuesday saw a more relaxed class. After hearing of what we endured the day previous Jools based the class on relaxing and bettering our muscles. (It felt great to be cared for in such a way as this).  Due to a lack of essential members we weren’t able to work further on our “Lost” routine. We moved into a more visually sound ensemble piece with our step based movement by making a forest sequence. Moving into a mood of pure focus such as our would look absolutely brilliant from the perspective of the audience I would imagine.

Friday saw the basic elements of ensemble based pieces I’ve seen in the past while come to life as Jools tasked us with elevating our partners in an almost dance like sequence as our partners would move across the space and leap. It was up to the partners to correct the timing and glide our partners to their decent and vise versa. What really helped feel a connection with this exercise was being partnered with someone of a similar build which is something I struggle with given my scrawny and very light build which in most instances puts me and my partner at some sort of disadvantage.