UC San Diego

My second year held the famous ten-minute mask piece taught by Professor Charlie Oates. During this process, I was taught to be specific with body gestures, transitioning from one person to another. In Second Skin, I tried implementing the idea of yielding to the floor, a mantra I learned from Professor Liam Clancy. The mantra helped to simplify my movement by thinking of creating a relationship to the ground, deepening my breath and thinking water in my hips, earth in my knees.

In my last play La Bete, directed by Professor Marco Bariccelli, I concentrated my movement on light, angular and whimsical characterizations, as if air were in my joints. Dorine was designed to wear a tutu with a corset, giving her a sense of boundlessness in, what is historically understood to be, a strict occupation. I was given tennis shoes, creating an image of youthfulness and living in a true sense of play. I tried to compliment the costume by doing cartwheels, spins, a still body with moving hands, or an isolated torso with a moving lower body. My hair was split into two side balls splattered with confetti and I used them to accentuate my head tilts. I paid more attention to how my costume influenced my choreography.

From the mask piece to Second Skin and then to La Bete, I came to see four major changes in my idea of movement: efficiency, clarity, yielding and imagining the earth elements to be a part of my process.