The aspect of the theory

The aspect that we chose from Tadashi Suzuki’s theory is the 10 ways of walking. It consist of various ways of walking such as the cockroach, the stomp, the side stomp, the cross stomp, the pigeon toes, the tip-toes, the bicycle walk, the kabuki shuffle and the side-kick. These different ways of walking has its own specific techniques which is taught during the training. We chose this aspect because we wanted to connect these various types of walking and make a story line out of it.

Practical explorations 

10 ways of walking: Stomping, pigeon toes, bicycle walk, side-kick, tip-toes, the crab, the side stomp, the cross stomp, kabuki shuffle and the cockroach.

  • Basically, we didn’t have any central idea or theme yet. However, Ary came up with an activity of how a “funky” music would affect these walks because as we know, Suzuki didn’t use any music in his theory. In this activity, each of us had to choose one walk and we had to have a good grasp of it. After that, each of us had to show our walks while the others followed at the back. This activity didn’t only let us see these walks differently but we got the idea of how one person has the control towards the other by these walks which we will use later on as the theme.
  • The next day we thought that the “funky” music was a bit too off from Suzuki’s theory and I wanted it to be more serious and proper. Malaika suggested that we should do like a Hakka style of performance where there’s aggressive elements in it such as their facial expression, movement and strong gesture. Thus, we watched a YouTube video regarding New Zealand’s Rugby Team Hakka to get a better idea of it. This was the starting point of aggressive element found throughout our last performance. Link: https://youtu.be/yiKFYTFJ_kw
  • We all decided to quickly get on our feet to further our exploration. Also, we realized that the opposite team in the rugby match did a “V” formation during the Hakka performance. We thought that a formation would be a great start of our piece. So, we came up with the idea of a dice as a formation because there are 5 of us – One person at the centre and one person per corner.
s8aawq63.jpg
Dice formation
  • Moving on to that, we noticed that the centre person which is Imalini has the ability to control us four and she got a lot of attention since no one was blocking her. This gave us the idea of power and aggression as the two main elements that we’re going to use which can be related to the fighting over throne or leader position which often happened back then in history.
  • Each of us need to be at the centre to show that we are against each other for the position and to experience controlling the others. Here, we decided to use the ways of walking to approach the person at the centre. The fact that we had 5 members in the group thus we have 5 transitions – One type of walking per one transition. We used the cockroach, the bicycle walk, the pigeon walk, the side stomp and the kabuki shuffle as our ways of walking.
  • In addition, we also used the stomp to deliver the idea of the beginning of a new leader. The reason why we chose the stomp is because this type of walking is somewhat similar to a soldier or an army marching. Moreover, it also create a strong atmosphere because of the loud sound of the stomp. The fact that the person at the centre was the one who started the stomping and followed by the others, gave us the meaning that he/she is in charge of the people at that moment.
  • Additionally, we had to show our respect to the leader every time the five of us met at the centre. For example:
  1. Imalini: Slapping our hands down
  2. Ary: Pushing our heads down
  3. Malaika: Pushing our forehead
  4. Amira: Making us kneel down
  5. Yuki: Bowing to him

However, there must be a person who fought against the leader to be in the position. In this we used aggressive actions like kicking, punching and pulling to show the actual moment.

  • At the end of the performance, we decided to fall onto the ground slowly because our intention was to not let anyone achieve the centre position. This shows that everyone lose in the battle as it is a strong position and no one is capable to gain it. The slowed the falling part is because most of our movements in this performance is fast phase so we wanted to show the contrast of when all of us lost.
  • For the costumes, we decided to wear all black to make ourselves look the same. However, we tried to differentiate ourselves a little bit by wearing half painted mask of different colours such as red, green, yellow, blue and purple. This shows that there are still differences like characteristics even though we have the same origin. In addition, the reason why we wore is because in Suzuki’s theory, one must obtain a no expression face or what we always called a “cool face”. Thus we wanted to avoid any laughing or change of facial expression throughout the performance.
8KOL_kdU
Half painted mask
  • There are a lot of improvisation of our performance. Firstly, we were told us to use the outer part of our feet to make the stomping stronger and louder. Also, we were reminded to go back to Suzuki’s idea of walking where the energy is send through the floor into the ground, not onto it. Other than that, we were encouraged us to do an imaginary straight line every time we used the different ways of walking. This helped us a lot in making sure that we are walking properly and have the same phase towards the centre person. Furthermore, at first we decided to put the middle person facing the audience throughout person. But as suggested, we changed it by putting his/her right shoulder facing the audience where the colored part of the mask is shown. This displays the contrast between the centre person and the others. It is as if the centre person has his/her full colored mask on because of the power and the others are half colored mask.
yxhdrhwy.jpg
Changing of body position of centre person
  • Lastly, we decided to not use any source of music at all because referred back to Suzuki’s theory, he avoided the use of non-animal energy throughout his production which shows the exposed to modernization. We also think that we don’t any music as our stomping will provide it and we will have a lot of clashes if we insert it. Furthermore, we also decided to always put our hands by our side throughout the performance because it was stated in the theory that our hands must be still.

Link to full practise: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxdanF6qOUAZc0dlalNZdmp6Nk0