Alexander Part 2

Primary Control: so primary control is essentially all about the spine, and how you align it and place your head on it. As a small child, Alexander expresses that you naturally align your body and your neck and your head properly because there's no conditioning to not do so, but of course we all end up slouching in the end for whatever reason. I slouch because my computer is way more comfortable on my lap than sitting on a table, for instance, and that conditions me to curve my back, and lower my head almost continuously. He also talks about the fact that proper posture is kind of a vague, military style concept for most people; so it's hard for a person to reflect on how to get your body to do a healthy posture without forcing it. This is where 'invitation' comes in, a term we use when we discuss meditating but that is also useful to provoke our bodies. Just as we invite our mind to focus back on the present, on the moment, we can invite our body to adjust, or head to adjust and it will do it for us in a way that's more comfortable that rigidly expecting it to move exactly how we want it to.

Unreliable Sensory Appreciation: This aspect of Alexander's technique has to do with being over confident or blind to where the flaws are in your posture and movement. Using a mirror is really important, because what we think our body is doing and what it's actually doing can be very different. It can be comparable to when a dancer is trained properly they always point their toes. When I dance, I may THINK I'm pointing my toes, but unless I can have an outside perspective or a mirror, or I consciously am trained to do it the way a dancer is, I have a misconception about what my body is doing. Alexander expresses that this is true about posture and movement and that he discovered in himself these misconceptions about his posture with a mirror.

Inhibition: Inhibition is a step after figuring out what primary control feels like, and working to keep it, to make it habitual instead of your other habits. By conditioning yourself to respond with a primary control posture (engaging both your body and mind in the effort) you better your well being; it just takes the self control not to maintain the habits that originally conditioned you have bad postures. Like.. I Should probably put my laptop on a desk honestly.

Direction: Direction correlates to me with invitation as far as Alexander explains it, that there's a gentle push for your body to do a specific thing, and you allow the impulse to occur rather than forcing it. There's an intent, and the body responds to the intention with an action, rather than demanding an action that's specific and may not be done correctly. It kind of calls for your body to be trusted, rather than forced; that instinctively you know what you're asking of yourself and you have to allow your body the freedom to do it with a gentle intent in mind.

Ends and Means: This is a great aspect that can be applied beyond Alexander's technique to life; that the process of performing something is more valuable than the end result, and while thinking about the process, you allow changes that may be more beneficial. Alexander's technique calls for this because by just focusing on a particular posture and the end result, there is a forcefulness that doesn't allow your body to react genuinely, but to simply approach a goal and complete a task. By thinking about the way your body gets to that goal, the way YOU get to your goals, you allow for your path to change for the better rather than simply completing a task and maybe forming some bad habits because of that hurry.


Reflection:

I think the Alexander Technique should have its own class, honestly. These are all great things to read about and understand, but we've said many times in class that this is something experienced rather spoken about. We have some great discussions about it, but I think a semester or even two of just working in this technique would be highly beneficial for all of the students in our department. Something I have noticed as a criticism towards American performers in film is that we're not trained, we make our break and we're not taking the classes and getting the education we need to be talented and versatile actors. I think that criticism has some merit when you look at how many British actors with college and conservatory educations are taking roles in American films. It makes me wonder, how many of our American film actors have even heard of this? This really useful technique that could really help them? Does Amy Adams or Brad Pitt or Will Smith know the Alexander Technique? Obviously we're in college for theatre, so we're a step ahead of the game in a way, we're learning about it, but I think these techniques are what's really going to make our skills refined and marketable in such a competitive industry. I think, from the conversations we've had about Alexander Technique this is a technique every actor should invest in, that this is fundamental training, the 101, and valuable both to performance and to life.

Viewpoints is Like, My Favorite Thing

So, furthering thoughts on Viewpoints is definitely something I can expound upon after having taken a semester of it. There's something really interesting and freeing about this form of movement to me, because it offers some unique challenges away from what one would expect when constructing a movement piece. There's questions that can be asked in each of the categories that allow you to explore in your own unique way, and better still each one is a tool to express something incredibly unique. I think that it's hard for our class to grasp it because like any beginning course, there's an attraction to the literal. When we were posed with the idea of, " You're in a war." There wasn't a whole lot of exploration to be had other than fighting and dying. Which is fine, it's great to play, but with viewpoints it allows you to expound on that idea and give a really unique movement perspective. What does it feel like, in your opinion to die? How would you personify the fear of going into battle? What is the first thing you do after you've taken someone's life? These are questions that an actor would certainly have to approach in a play about a war and killing people, and view points allows a really visceral, body oriented expression of that rather than a mental one.

Gesture is my favorite part of Viewpoints. I love the idea of finding a way to use your hands and face and body to imply something not so obvious on the body usually. Orderliness, Playfulness, Lonesomeness, these are things that can be read in body language, but this form of movement is more the way you can tell how serious a person is when they shake your hand, or how close a friend you are to someone by how comfortable they are with hugging you. Gestures allow an artist to show levels of emotion in an approachable, and sometimes easy to understand way.

Topography is also a great viewpoint, given that a lot of us normally, in the space, tend to just arbitrarily move. Our topography is more a kinesthetic response than actual topography, since in a lot of instances we are reading the room, how close are we allowed to be, how fast is everyone moving, what direction is everyone moving. Making conscious choices about that though can be very interesting and give a lot of purpose to the other uses of your viewpoints. There's also a lot of power in deciding how high or low your movement is, and whether or not you move at all. Stillness can say just as much as movement can.

I could literally go on and on about the uses of each viewpoint, but the point is it's definitely an interesting approach to emotions and expressions and interactions in a way that is purely visceral and reactionary. When we were in class last semester, there was a section focused on poetry, where poetry was read allowed and we were expected not to depict the poetry's story itself, but how it effected us, the words that stood out to us, and what the poem meant to us on deeper levels. It was very intense in a lot of ways, and very eye-opening to the need to see between the lines with text.


I'll leave this at that note!

Rio

Fredrick Hot Hot Hot, Hot Hot Alexander. That's his name. Don't get it Twisted.

Alrighty, so let's talk about the Alexander Technique and the great guy who made it!

Freddrick Mathias Alexander- well damn, that is a serious name. Put that on your business cards. This guy loved horses and theatre, which means he was probably really fit ( Freddrick Mathias Alexander, great name, great bod, great technique, what's not to love.) He grew up enjoying and practicing these two loves, until he couldn't live in the country any longer as a young adult, so he gave up his love for horses since horses probably were only used in buggies and such in the city, and continued to work on theatre. He taught himself violin, which is crazy hard, you don't understand- I wonder if he could read music or not, and eventually he moved to Melborne, to do guess what? Even more theatre, but this time with people teaching him. The best teachers, which I wonder, who were the best teachers of this time? Who taught him? Worth the research.

Anyway, he made money to live his luxurious life of theatre by doing odd jobs, including being a tea-taster, which makes me crazy jealous, I would love to get paid to taste tea, let me tell you. Also, there is a picture of him in here, and woah buddy, I was right what a knock out. He couldn't keep jobs very well though because like most artists ( See any almost any renaissance artist lol) he had a foul temper, along with his own personal ailments having to do with respiratory difficulties.

Those respiratory difficulties actually lead to him having trouble with his true love of life, acting, and when doctors told him that all he could do was rest his voice, it pretty much pissed him off so much that it brought him into being a doctor for himself. He understood that something he was doing was wrong, that it couldn't just be his illness hindering him, so he began to study how he postured himself when he recited. He began to research this, and his method became so effected as a taught form of improvement that his students came both for performance and medical needs, surprisingly more for the latter. After meeting Dr. McKay, who was prepared to tear his form a new one, the doctor found his methods very valid and encouraged him to get his ass to London where he could make some real headway with his technique. He ended up making it big, even through the world wars, and ended up training people to pass his technique on other teachers and writing a book to maintain the credibility of his technique. Basically? Super sexy, super successful, super dedicated to the craft.

Now, let's talk about use and functioning real quick. This was the fundamental point of Alexander's work and was so important because it was not a practice of leisure or a recommendation, it was designed to help with the actual functionality of the body both in performance and in life. This guy as the book says 'was not the sort to stay under a leaky roof'; he's a get shit done kind of man, so when his larynx wasn't doing what he wanted it to do, he chose to investigate the rest of his form, rather than simply resting his voice. Use is, according to Alexander the idea that "the choices we make about what we do with ourselves... determine the quality of our lives". It's basically the idea that we should make an effort to control what we can control when it comes to our body, to make those controls conscious and known, to observe our form.   So you use your body a certain way, it affects your functionality. Just like tuning an instrument so that it will function properly, Alexander sought to see what in his body was out of tune and causing difficulties with his voice, the tip of his head, the pinch of his shoulders, the shortening of his stature all causing 'out of tune notes' in his performing ability and functionality. In such, it's clear through Alexander's commentary about his work that you're responsible for the upkeep and tuning and quality of your body, and its functionality relies on you becoming conscious of the use of your body. This attention to the body branches out beyond the physical to the mental, since Alexander establishes that your body is one big, cohesive contraption and your feelings and thoughts are not separate from the experience of your body. That controlling and monitoring and modifying your thinking, feeling and physical postures, you can become a healthier, more successful, more functional human.

That idea, that every aspect of the human is what makes the human, not separated parts is what Alexander talks about when referring to the 'whole person'. His technique is unique in that it does not call for separated exercise of the intellect and the body, but for both to be stimulated, modified and conscious at the same time. This is what makes this technique so valuable to life beyond performance, and why medical practitioners probably found it to be the bee's knees. While Alexander's discoveries stemmed from a theatrical need, his work is a fantastic and logical criticism of modern medicine and the habit to separate the body into a series of specialized functions rather than encouraging the health of the whole body as a singular unit. By looking at the body without judgement or separation, by thinking of the brain as another organ instead of a separate vital to the body, one can assess a lot of seemingly physical or mental or emotional issues and eradicate them in completeness rather than section by section. So basically, for example, I carry my stress in my back a lot of the time. Is that where all of my stress happens? No, of course not, it happens in my mind and in my stomach and in the way I stand and in my back and shoulders and neck and sometimes even in my jaw. If I tried to adjust all of those things, care for all of those things separately under the pretense that it would get rid of my stress, I would never, ever get rid of my stress, I'd be stressed for forever, like I usually am! But working with the whole body through Alexander's technique allows for a change of the whole form and mind all together to the betterment of one's health, focus and personal comfort.