Clowndance for Clowns 2024
TUESDAY: Playing Together
I planned each day of this intensive to move from processual, experiential material into more performance-focused provocations. This could have felt like a shift from clowning to dance over each day, but in fact, the two are now so intertwined that the distinction seems redundant. We were doing the practice of Clowndance, and that can look both inward and outward.
Working with dancers, I would usually focus much of the first day simply on games and play, but in this context, I wanted to bring in some more choreographic work into the mix. I knew that material using set movement might hold fears for some participants, and I was keen to dispel some of that tension by introducing it early and playfully, so that people could feel that there would be no external judgement passed on how they used their bodies.
I was delivering familiar and well-trialled material, but the way in which I introduced it all needed to be reframed, partly because the participants were mostly not dancers, but also because this was a larger and more diverse group, who processed information and instructions in quite varied ways. I was very grateful for a conversation I had had with one of my MA students at Rambert School about ways in which I could make my workshops more neurodivergent-friendly.
Working with dancers, I would usually focus much of the first day simply on games and play, but in this context, I wanted to bring in some more choreographic work into the mix. I knew that material using set movement might hold fears for some participants, and I was keen to dispel some of that tension by introducing it early and playfully, so that people could feel that there would be no external judgement passed on how they used their bodies.
I was delivering familiar and well-trialled material, but the way in which I introduced it all needed to be reframed, partly because the participants were mostly not dancers, but also because this was a larger and more diverse group, who processed information and instructions in quite varied ways. I was very grateful for a conversation I had had with one of my MA students at Rambert School about ways in which I could make my workshops more neurodivergent-friendly.
Material Covered:
We started with hellos, and a conversation around what we were looking forward to and what we were nervous about. I shared my own anxieties around the fact that this was the first time I had led a Clowndance intensive pitched not at dancers but clowns, actors and comedians, and that I had chosen this as the moment to invite my PhD examiners in!
Today’s games and movement provocations on the theme of playing together were:
Walking, with a focus on experiential anatomy, leading into Stop means Go
The Find the Game Game
The Object Talent Show
Grandmother’s footsteps and other creatures, with cheating
Live Generation, adapted from (Wild and Savage, 2024) – this was a new addition to the syllabus (see Moment 2, below)
Unison as Visual Illusion
We started with hellos, and a conversation around what we were looking forward to and what we were nervous about. I shared my own anxieties around the fact that this was the first time I had led a Clowndance intensive pitched not at dancers but clowns, actors and comedians, and that I had chosen this as the moment to invite my PhD examiners in!
Today’s games and movement provocations on the theme of playing together were:
Walking, with a focus on experiential anatomy, leading into Stop means Go
The Find the Game Game
The Object Talent Show
Grandmother’s footsteps and other creatures, with cheating
Live Generation, adapted from (Wild and Savage, 2024) – this was a new addition to the syllabus (see Moment 2, below)
Unison as Visual Illusion
Moment 1:
Playing the find the game game was more challenging with such a big group; we had a tendency to fracture, for more than one game to be happening at once, and for people to step outside the game and watch or rest for a moment. This worried me at first, and the worry threatened to pulled me out of the game too. In fact, the in-and-out nature of this iteration of the game brought unexpected gifts.
One player rested for so long that their prone body was put in role as the corpse at a funeral, attended by everyone else. After some praying and wailing, someone decided to fart loudly on the body instead; a very neat moment of clown taboo-breaking.
A player had stepped back for a moment while others were performing a sock striptease, and then re-entered the game brandishing a huge sock-eating monster (a plastic ‘wet floor’ sign they had found in the corner of the studio), scattering the sock-wavers in panic. Losing track of someone allowed them to make a surprise entrance, change the energy and instigate the next evolution of the game.
Our collective recollection of that sequence ran thus:
Playing the find the game game was more challenging with such a big group; we had a tendency to fracture, for more than one game to be happening at once, and for people to step outside the game and watch or rest for a moment. This worried me at first, and the worry threatened to pulled me out of the game too. In fact, the in-and-out nature of this iteration of the game brought unexpected gifts.
One player rested for so long that their prone body was put in role as the corpse at a funeral, attended by everyone else. After some praying and wailing, someone decided to fart loudly on the body instead; a very neat moment of clown taboo-breaking.
A player had stepped back for a moment while others were performing a sock striptease, and then re-entered the game brandishing a huge sock-eating monster (a plastic ‘wet floor’ sign they had found in the corner of the studio), scattering the sock-wavers in panic. Losing track of someone allowed them to make a surprise entrance, change the energy and instigate the next evolution of the game.
Our collective recollection of that sequence ran thus:
Sock striptease
Plastic death thing ate my sock
Sock control officer
Dangerous sock
Journal notes: 02/07/24
Plastic death thing ate my sock
Sock control officer
Dangerous sock
Journal notes: 02/07/24
Interestingly, this is not the first time socks have featured heavily in the FTGG, suggesting that they suggest the possibility for play to a lot of people. They are small and easily removable, potentially smelly in a way that is pleasurably, childishly gross, and intimate without being sexual.
Moment 2:
To create a repeated phrase for the unison as visual illusion game, I used a movement building process called live generation, developed by Ciar Wild and Violet Savage, graduating students from Rambert School. We stand in a circle and someone offers a starting movement that is repeated, adapted and added to by the group until we have built a short, repeatable phrase. Wild and Savage were experimenting with non-hierarchical choreographic practices, and in this context it seemed a good way of ensuring that the phrase came from the group collectively, rather than my imposing something on them. I also wanted to bring some really current contemporary dance practice into this clown-held space; a dispatch direct from the site of another clowndance intensive.
We built a phrase, but I’m not sure how secure people felt with the process. I suspect the generation and adaptation was mostly being led by the dance-trained among us. It occurred to me, a moment too late, that perhaps naming the movements as they appeared might help root them more in people’s minds and bodies. This is, after all, what most major dance techniques do.
To create a repeated phrase for the unison as visual illusion game, I used a movement building process called live generation, developed by Ciar Wild and Violet Savage, graduating students from Rambert School. We stand in a circle and someone offers a starting movement that is repeated, adapted and added to by the group until we have built a short, repeatable phrase. Wild and Savage were experimenting with non-hierarchical choreographic practices, and in this context it seemed a good way of ensuring that the phrase came from the group collectively, rather than my imposing something on them. I also wanted to bring some really current contemporary dance practice into this clown-held space; a dispatch direct from the site of another clowndance intensive.
We built a phrase, but I’m not sure how secure people felt with the process. I suspect the generation and adaptation was mostly being led by the dance-trained among us. It occurred to me, a moment too late, that perhaps naming the movements as they appeared might help root them more in people’s minds and bodies. This is, after all, what most major dance techniques do.
Four players moving in unison among debris of talented objects
Moments 3 & 4
The unison as visual illusion game worked quite differently with this group; with dancers, the repeated choreographed phrase represents a safe home, and deviating from it feels like taking a little risk, but in this context remembering and performing the phrase became the problem at the core of the game. So the eye of the audience, instead of being drawn to where the phrase was rupturing, became drawn instead to whoever was attempting to hold onto it.
In the first playing of the game, Nuala became the focal point by attempting to hang on to the phrase as best she could, eyes wide like a rabbit in the headlights, while chaos erupted around her. She took a big inhale before each repetition, which got funnier the more she repeated it.
The unison as visual illusion game worked quite differently with this group; with dancers, the repeated choreographed phrase represents a safe home, and deviating from it feels like taking a little risk, but in this context remembering and performing the phrase became the problem at the core of the game. So the eye of the audience, instead of being drawn to where the phrase was rupturing, became drawn instead to whoever was attempting to hold onto it.
In the first playing of the game, Nuala became the focal point by attempting to hang on to the phrase as best she could, eyes wide like a rabbit in the headlights, while chaos erupted around her. She took a big inhale before each repetition, which got funnier the more she repeated it.
VIDEO: Unison as Visual Illusion
Group One
Group One
In the second playing, Carolyn was performing the phrase as if holding it in her head was difficult, and her concentration highly likely to break. A conga line going past her as she danced it felt like a moment of peril.
VIDEO: Unison as Visual Illusion
Group Two
Group Two
Having a larger group where people didn’t know each other, and weren’t coming with the same experiences led to some rich and fascinating discussion. We talked a lot about how dance and clowning were meeting each other, and whether this work felt more like one or the other. Nuala, coming from stand-up comedy, said:
I don’t think I’ve thought about clowning, I’ve just been doing dance
Journal extract from group discussion, 02/07/24
Journal extract from group discussion, 02/07/24
Which is more or less the flip side of what dancers have said; that they’ve just felt like they were clowning. I realised, to my delight, that if that was the case, then what I have created must truly sit between the two.
The conversation also landed on questions of identity- we wondered why we always see so many more white women than anyone else in self-selecting groups like this one. Ishi pointed out how fundamentally white-centred theatre practice still is, and we talked about how the parts of ourselves that we seek to conceal are not just personal, they are social and intersectional as well. Allowing yourself to wear your idiocy on your sleeve, as someone put it, is far riskier for racialised and systemically othered people.
The reflective roll featured several people’s musings on rules and who gets to make them, and some very helpful (to me) reflections from people with previous clown training on ways in which this work felt different:
The conversation also landed on questions of identity- we wondered why we always see so many more white women than anyone else in self-selecting groups like this one. Ishi pointed out how fundamentally white-centred theatre practice still is, and we talked about how the parts of ourselves that we seek to conceal are not just personal, they are social and intersectional as well. Allowing yourself to wear your idiocy on your sleeve, as someone put it, is far riskier for racialised and systemically othered people.
The reflective roll featured several people’s musings on rules and who gets to make them, and some very helpful (to me) reflections from people with previous clown training on ways in which this work felt different:
I often think about gender & clown, and sadly, I think male clowns & teachers don’t like to talk about it- & often you get a sense that the very ‘HARD’ clown, the Gaulier (& masculine?) clown is the way. This was a gentler, more accepting, dare I say feminine or queer way to clown.
It’s strange not to be focussing on the audience
When you ‘learn’ clown, you can get to learn the exercises taught & how to do those well. In a sense, this can counter the clowning, because either you no longer fail, or fear failure, or maybe worse (?) you fake the failure (as I was taught last week). Clowns should put themselves in the shit. For me, dance choreo puts me back in the shit.
You can see perhaps more clearly, individual clown personalities when dancing
Gentle- It doesn’t need to be scary – Need to unlearn the shit
Reflective Roll notes, 02/07/24
It’s strange not to be focussing on the audience
When you ‘learn’ clown, you can get to learn the exercises taught & how to do those well. In a sense, this can counter the clowning, because either you no longer fail, or fear failure, or maybe worse (?) you fake the failure (as I was taught last week). Clowns should put themselves in the shit. For me, dance choreo puts me back in the shit.
You can see perhaps more clearly, individual clown personalities when dancing
Gentle- It doesn’t need to be scary – Need to unlearn the shit
Reflective Roll notes, 02/07/24
There were several personal post-it notes expressing how people felt about their bodies. These remind me that dance can feel very exposing, particularly for people who have had bad experiences with more formal dance training in the past. I feel a responsibility here to take care of people and see what permissions I can grant them so that they can feel pleasure in their bodies in this space.
Ooh turns out part of me hates my body
Ouch
Feeling a bit vulnerable/sad that I feel my body is stiff/awkward- not as free as I would like it to be.
I feel confident in expressing myself verbally & it’s strange not to feel confidence in expressing myself through my body
A body with none of its own thought. What is that?
- is it neurodiverse or shit?
- is it being stunted through bad teaching?
Anxiety at using my body & comparing myself to others- but actually feeling that it was valued in some way & that felt nice
Mirror showed me my body isn’t as I’d imagined in my mind- that made me happy & feel like I could let go more
Personal Post-It notes, 02/07/24
Ouch
Feeling a bit vulnerable/sad that I feel my body is stiff/awkward- not as free as I would like it to be.
I feel confident in expressing myself verbally & it’s strange not to feel confidence in expressing myself through my body
A body with none of its own thought. What is that?
- is it neurodiverse or shit?
- is it being stunted through bad teaching?
Anxiety at using my body & comparing myself to others- but actually feeling that it was valued in some way & that felt nice
Mirror showed me my body isn’t as I’d imagined in my mind- that made me happy & feel like I could let go more
Personal Post-It notes, 02/07/24
Bibliography
Wild, C. and Savage, V. (2024) ‘Live Generation’. Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance, 11 June.
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