Événement

Construction Tools: Physical Theater with Annie Loui of Counter-Balance Theater

April 11 & 12, 1-5:30
Dennis Gallagher Arts Pavilion, 66 Page St, SF

Mime. Modern Dance. Physical Theater. Weight Sharing. Contact.
Come engage in a weekend workshop with Annie Loui and Loui Movement Technique to learn new construction tools for your performances.

This workshop intensive will engage the fundamentals of movement training for performing artists including precision conditioning training and technical weight/energy sharing (Loui Movement Technique). This exploration of the construction tools of physical theater in the style of Counter-Balance will culminate in a group physical theater construction based on a piece of classical literature.

The weekend will be divided into training exercises to create common movement vocabulary for the group of students and then construction using a script that has been deconstructed into its core images and movement components. At the end of the workshop, participants will learn fundamentals of script construction, the "fleshing out" process, and critical techniques for constructing works of physical theater. You will leave the workshop with a deep sense of how Counter-Balance Theatre techniques can be integrated into your practice, process, and performances.

Read on to learn more about Loui Movement Technique, Annie Loui, and Counter-Balance Theater.

ABOUT LOUI MOVEMENT TECHNIQUE:

Grounded in the mime, modern dance and dance/theater explorations of Paris in the late 1970's, and expanded through 30 years of studio training with actors, Loui Movement Technique releases the physical/emotional honesty of actors. This is a training of energy and weight exchange in which the ultimate goal is kinetic and intimate responsiveness to a partner. The playful, dynamic and exhilarating shifts of counter-balance that characterize this work are reached through the practice of contact improvisation. Basic tumbling, energy exchange exercises and partnering dance lifts are its fundamental building blocks. A good contact session taken into text allows the spontaneous physical language of the actors' bodies to parallel the spoken dialogue. Without consciously imposing objectives actors inter-relate spontaneously, dynamically and elegantly; and the outcome is an imprinted ability to deliver emotional and physical honesty in a scene.

Counter-balance Theater uses this technique to train performers within the company, in classes at UCI, and in workshops for the wider public. The physical techniques in leveraging, complicit interchange and trajectory of motion, are used to create the imagery scored in the Counter-Balance scripts.

Counter-balance intensive workshops in Devising focus on creating these scripts organizing the scenario detailing imagery, text and sound, and the direct application of Loui Movement Technique for physical theater story-telling. Devising workshops also detail the practical creative processes adapting literature for the stage: from inception of idea to scripting, through a disciplined and inclusive rehearsal process, through to production.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:

Known for her stunning theatrical hybrids, "Vibrant and exhilaratingly alive," OC Weekly; Artistic Director, Annie Loui brings her physical theater sensibilities to Counter-Balance Theater. Blending Contact Improvisation with great literature; seven actors play a hundred characters, animals, architecture and furniture.

Annie Loui works as a director/choreographer, an educator, and creator of devised theater works. She trained with dancer Carolyn Carlson at the Paris Opera, and studied in France with physical theater masters Etienne Decroux, Ella Jarosivitcz and Jerzy Grotowski. Original physical theater pieces have been seen in France, Monaco, West Germany, and in the United States at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, among other venues.

She has choreographed for the American Repertory Theater, Trinity Repertory Theater, and off-Broadway for the Signature Theater. Longtime member of the Brandeis Theater Arts Department; she also taught extensively for the Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard before coming to the University of California, Irvine, where she runs the Movement Program for the MFA Actor Training.

She has received a Massachusetts Choreographer's Fellowship, a Belgium Artist's Abroad Award, a Beall Center for Art and Technology Grant and an NEA New Forms Grant. Favorite directing projects include two world premieres of Chuck Mee scripts; CAFÉ LE MONDE and WAR TO END WAR, and her devised theater adaptation of JANE EYRE created with Counter-Balance Theater. Intermedia performance creations include READING FRANKENSTEIN at the Beall Center for Art and Technology, and IN THE GRACE OF THE WORLD commissioned by the Orchestra of St Luke's NYC. Her FALLING GIRL inter-active video installation with Scott Snibbe was exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum and at the ArtRock Festival St Brieuc, FRANCE. Her book The Physical Actor is published by Routledge Press.

ABOUT COUNTER-BALANCE THEATRE:

With a mission to create physical theatre based on great literature, Counter-Balance Counter-Balance trains, rehearses and holds workshop performances in the Grotowski Barn, located on the edge of the UC Irvine campus. For more information please visit our website at http://counter-balancetheater.com/

Jane Eyre demo-
http://vimeo.com/36814123

This is a studio workshop, and participants should already have a grounding in physical theatre or dance.
Bring: a water bottle, notebook and a snack
Wear: dress to move, dress in layers