Current location:	Sin Park; Out in the Styx
Current mood:	apathetic
Current music:	Janie's Got A Gun - Aerosmith
Entry tags:	first year, movement, semester one, week one, week two

Movement, Weeks one and two, March 5 & 12
We've been there about the dates, yeah?

Our lecturer for the Movement half of Voice & Movement (8 o'clock in the morning on Wednesdays, could they be any more sadistic??) is a member of Frank Theatre and trained in the Suzuki Actor Training Method, which she's proceeding to attempt to pass on to us. In first week we did some basic yoga poses (downward dog and child), some core-strengthening exercises which I abstained from for fear of dislocating my shoulders (while I know how to deal with such a thing happening, it's not something I look for opportunities to practice), and went into an activity called "The Stomp". According to J. Nobbs in Frankly Acting (2006), one of the purposes of this activity is SELF-DEFINITION: a single stomp is the most powerful non-verbal way of saying: 'I am ... here'

I've worked with actors who've gone throuth Zen Zen Zo, so I've seen this done before. I fear it's an exercise that will always make me feel more inadequate than empowered however - my propioception and balance haven't improved in fifteen years of physio and occupational therapy, and I'm always going to pull back from fully committing to the actual stomp because of the ever-present spectre of doing myself still further damage.

Some of the other exercises she mentioned do sound interesting though. Having really only had dance as the main movement style through Musical Theatre, learning an acting-based movement style interests and excites me. I'm also keen to apply the intimate knowledge of (if not control over) my body having the EDS and learning to adapt and move around the various problems it's thrown at me over the years has given me. Silver lining an' all that.

(I also strongly suspect that I'm going to spend a lot of time in this journal banging on about my various physical ... things ... I'm going to try not to, but there's nothing to make you more aware of the differences and hurdles you face than to be stuck in a room full of people doing something that you can't, and it not being a matter of just knucling down and learning how.)

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On to week two. This week it was made abundantly clear that very few of us actually read most of what we're given, especially in first week. So expect more when I actually get around to reading more of the handouts and online resources and everything else they expect us to fit into our heads around 15 contact hours and 45 alleged study hours per week, while attending as many live theatre events as possible ... and trying to have a life. (Aye, right.)

Anyway, we were actually set homework this week and, as a special boon to livejournallers and other obsessive diarists out there, it's all about ME!

Unfortunately, this being a movement class, it's entitled:

My Physical Self
How aware am I of my body and self?

Yay. Ok. Here we go.

*Fitness
To be honest, I was pretty unfit before the hip incident in September.* But that's no real surprise. If we take the state I was in when I got back from Mackay at the end of '98 as my peak fitness point (I was sick but still fit) then I've been on a pretty steady decline for about five to seven years really. I kept it together and was studying or working through until towards the end of 2002 - but after my hands started failing on '01, followed by my feet deciding that they wanted in on the act, my level of physical activity fell pretty sharply. I still worked at the theatre (and in '02 I think I was doing up to five gigs at a time), so I wasn't completely inert, but there's a fair difference between working on my feet for eight to ten hours a day or walking from Chardon's Corner to my Paterfamilias' place in Fairfield and stage managing or lighting operation, no matter how many stairs there are at the Arts/Nash/Schonell. (And unfortunately for me, probably no matter how annoying some of the people I was working with were.)**

That being said, I don't really know how fit I am. My inability to do things often does not depend on a lack of stamina, but more to do with pain levels or injury. I know that I can walk up the hill from the bus stop on campus with my crutch, with my laptop in my backpack, without stopping, and have normal respiration and heartrate by the time I get to the counter at the cafe to order my morning chai ... so who knows.

*Flexibility
*hollow laugh* Pathological hypermobility. Is there anything more to say, really? I could turn into a gym junkie and spend hours a day on free weights and still never have the strength to match the bendy. Sad but true.

*Focus/concentration
Chronic pain and chronic fatigue go hand in hand. Both affect my ability to concentrate. Compounding this are the drugs I'm on - anti-epileptics combined with moderately hard-core analgesia ... not a recipe for a razor-like mind with a side-order of mousetrap. When I'm having a good day I'm great. I've still got a memory for useless facts and trivia that astounds people (and makes me a great asset at pub challenges). But actual concentration and focus comes and goes, and there's not always a lot I can do to affect it. There's only so many caffeinated drinks in the world, and only so many I can dare before they tip my blood sugar balance. Being stubborn and really wanting or needing to pay attention also only carries me so far - and tires me out even quicker (refer to article above, I suppose).

*Training
Primarily gymnastics. Years and years and years of gymnastics. (This is before we had the EDS diagnosis, and still thought the fact that I was that flexible was a good thing.) My specialties were the floor and vault. On top of that quite a bit of judo, and the usual school stuff with swimming and rowing squads (my crew won Head of the River, for whatever that's worth). After school, the Con, and up to six hours a day of dance - ballet, jazz, tap, contemporary. This is what I left at the end of '98, when I'm referring above to being at my peak fitness for those joining us late. Recently I've begun going to belly dancing classes and I still swim when I get the chance - I couldn't afford aqua aerobics lessons this summer, I was spending too much on physiotherapy to try to get my hips back to a point where I could stand up without screaming.

*Body type/shape
Without wishing to turn this into an angst-fest, I've always had an hourglass shape. Even when I weighed 47 kilos. So the fact that I now have some pretty sizeable hips doesn't overly freak me out, although it would be nice to be able to buy trousers that either don't need taking up by six inches or don't hang lower than my knicker-line. Since I was 16 I've gone from a DD cup to, I believe now, an H cup. In 2006 I was prescribed a drug that piled 30lbs on me in less than four months. This is after repeated bouts on prednisolone (steroids) that also weren't kind to the scales. So. In summary. I'm a big girl. I'm usually ok with it. I don't do weigh-ins or measuring though.

*Coordination/balance
Hmmmm. The entire reason I was started at judo was to teach me how to break-fall. The entire reason I was started at gymnastics was to teach me balance, as I seemed to completely lack it. This is possibly down to seemingly endless middle-ear infections when I was a child. When I was eight I was assessed by an occupational therapist, who recommended that I not participate in any team sports. Things have only marginally improved. I know how to land now, which helps when I trip over the floor. If I'm not using my crutch for an injury, I'm using it for balance. My proprioception is so shot that if I close my eyes I fall over. Sometimes I don't even need to close my eyes. (Who needs booze? I fail those walk-toe-to-heel-in-a-straight-line tests stone cold sober!) I'm coordinated. I can learn choreography. I can dance. (Yes, those are two totally different things.) I can play the piano (or I could before the arthritis interfered). I can walk, talk and chew gum at the same time. I just have this bad habit of falling over.

*Rhythm
I got rhythm, I got music, I got my man, who could ask for anything more? You don't hang around the jazz musicians at the Con for two years, be the child of a music teacher, pass your teacher's level musicianship at the age of nine, and teach primary music without having a)a psychological problem and b)rhythm. I can find the beat in Meshugguh songs, and they go into 23/16. Music is part of me. Rhythm is integral to music. Rhythm is integral to life.

*Agility
For someone with a broken back, I reckon I'm still pretty damn agile. I can get around most places. I'll even still get up and shake my butt at a Royal Crown Revue concert (this may also come under "Rhythm"). Again, I'm just pretty restricted by things beyond my control. My residual self image (to steal from The Matrix) is of Gymnast!Rex, so I still tend to walk lightly and slightly turned-out; unless I'm angry, in which case you get Judoka!Rex, which is still light-footed, but slightly more menacing and rigid. Yesterday during rehearsals for a short presentation we're doing in Acting in Context, I was told that moved like I was dancing.

*Bulk
How is this different from body shape? Do I fit into a standard aircraft seat? Yes. My wheelchair seat is 22 inches across. I wear anything from size 18 to size 24. I'm carrying most of my bulk that isn't involved in my breasts around my hips and bellies. This is partly from horrible drugs, partly from hormones, partly from genetics and partly because I'm a girl. I really don't know what else to say to this subject.


*For those new to the programme, in September last year I had a fall and dislocated both my hips. There's still a question mark over an occult fracture in my left acetabulum/head of femur.

**Ok. When I print this out, how do I properly reference that article?

Whew. Now that I've done that I can talk about class, I suppose. This week we took the yoga further and did a full salute to the sun. And by "we" I mean "everybody else". The plank position is just not one that my shoulders are going to tolerate any more, and I really doubt that the cobra is a brilliant idea on my back. So I sat on my heels and watched everyone else struggle through it and thought to myself, "Yep. I'm back in first year Drama ..."

I actually ended up feeling very alienated throughout the rest of the class - I couldn't engage in any of the activities and spent almost two hours just sitting on the side watching my classmates flail about wildly. I can understand not wanting to change a class schedule around one student, but I'm sure my time could be spent more productively. (I'd love to sound less petulant about this, but my words aren't coming after all that palaver above. I'm certainly being more polite than I was on the day - when my lecturer thought I was patiently documenting the flocking exercises everyone else was engaging in, I was actually writing an invective filled little diatribe about sitting on my arse on the side of the classroom feeling like a shag on a rock and having no way to know if it's what I'm supposed to be doing because she never acknowledged whether she got my "Hi, I'm a gimp" email, and certainly didn't discuss with me alternatives to sitting on my arse on the side of the classroom feeling like a shag on a rock.)