Feldenkrais and Movement for Performance

"When you know what you want, you can do what you want"
MOSHE FELDENKRAIS

"Moshe Feldenkrais has studied the body in movement with a precision I have found nowhere else"
PETER BROOK (theatre and film director)

"I honestly think that people don’t realise … how much its about physicality and physical grace, you know, that in a certain respect its close to dancing and the sort of physical grace dancers have. And I .. people think its all about this intellectual thing, or this instinctual thing in terms of the interpretation of a role or being a good mimic or... and so yes, things like posture and how you walk and how you inhabit the character physically is incredibly important."
The COHEN BROTHERS : ON ACTING (the Film Programme BBC Radio 4 17/10/2008)

The Method

The Feldenkrais Method is increasingly a part of the performance world, best known to physical theatre performers, musicians and dancers it is now finding its way into more traditional acting through its wider inclusion in more drama school trainings and at institutions including the RSC.

Developed by Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984), an eminent physicist and judo expert, it is one of the most cutting edge body/mind or ‘somatic’ methods available today. Based on sound neurological principles, it uses carefully crafted lessons to explore each participant’s own particular patterns in relation to a wide range of movements and open up new choices so that they can do what they want more easily and with less strain.

The Method's application is manifold - it can be enormously helpful to anyone from office workers to sportsmen and women, for improvement in skills, ‘posture’, range and quality of movement, for recovery from injury, brain injury or chronic pain. It can also be used to address emotional experience (including trauma) on a somatic level. Its central focus is on ‘awareness’ - helping participants to become aware of what they actually do, their habits and patterns at larger and more minute levels: only when you know what you do can you make a new choice.

The Benefits and Importance Specifically for Actors and Performers

The Method can help an actor or performer be upright, move with greater ease and grace, and have a greater range of possibilities and choices. It also reduces the likelihood of injury and can help keep a good range of movement for longer in later years. All pretty useful in this business. However there are many other more profound and very interesting aspects to engage performers/actors at every stage of their careers for example:

The focus on awareness is key for actors and performers in finding out more about their habits through simple movements: and in doing that they can also find out more about what they bring on stage with them before they ‘do’ anything. In a simple way it can help close the gap between what they think are doing (trying to communicate) and what they are actually doing (what the audience gets): between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’. For younger actors it can be a journey of discovery, for experienced actors a chance to deepen their awareness as well as open up any 'ruts' or performance habits that they may have got into - an easy thing to happen under the particular pressures of having to make things work in a short time-scale.
The lessons ask the participants to listen to themselves, and move in relation to what they can sense rather than act on an idea of what a movement is. Sound familiar? It involves being ‘in the moment’ which is crucial to imagination, truth - and comedy – in performance. Even for experienced performers, spending time paying attention to what they do in relationship to a simple movement can always bring new discoveries and improvements which can carry through into the more complex situation of being on stage.
Similarly, having the opportunity to notice subtle sensations and differences and listen to yourself more carefully can promote or deepen subtlety in performance. It also easily translates into being aware of, listening and responding to others on stage with more sensitivity.
The method involves noticing and finding ways to reduce unnecessary effort, ie: Ways To Do Less. Identifying ways they do more than they need in a simple action can help a performer find the point when they are ‘doing too much’ in other areas, including – very usefully - in performance, while the pressures of making and performing regularly can often lead to over-work in many other aspects of their life too.
From working with people in classes and individual sessions, I have learnt to see and feel in them the embodiment of experience, of feeling and emotion. I know that the blocking of emotion also often involves tightening in some place at a neuro-muscular level and that tension prevents the ability to feel – let alone to communicate feeling (Stanislavsky knew it too if you look at his exercise to do with lifting the piano). I have begun to work with students to help them notice that finding the softness inside that using less effort enables allows them to find an easy connectedness to emotion – and to each other and the audience.
Being alive to the physiological changes that come with emotional shifts can also mean actors have a physical anchor so that they can repeat without losing intensity and creativity more easily too: they can find that feeling state in themselves again as something tangible. This kind of approach works largely through non-cognitive kinds of memory so that re-finding works automatically and through sensory association rather than having to do anything consciously. In fact I think sensing of inward physiological states is often be one of the ways that actors navigate their way through a piece even if they are not consciously aware of it at all - I know that was true for me. I believe this has a profound resonance with Stanislavsky’s idea of the ‘psycho-physical’ and with Michael Checkov’s psychological gesture. I even find a link to Miriam Margolis’s work here.
The lessons often involve orientation and relationship to space and include a crucial understanding of how the eyes lead/relate to the rest of movement all of which translates directly into performance (especially on stage).
Timing, rhythm and focus – three essential tenets of performance (especially stage) are all there in this method and can be pointed up and brought out in the lessons.
The Method includes very interesting and useful specific breathing and voice lessons but attention to breath is part of just about every lesson.
Finally and crucially: there are no rules in the Feldenkrais Method, no insistence on always standing in this way or that or never doing x or y. There is no special dogma or right way to do something. It is all about creating a place for the participant to explore/find out something about themselves at what ever stage they are at, how they do things and what other possibilities they can discover - not about telling them what they should or shouldn't do and interfering with or dictating their own artistic process. In fact it is more about finding ways to interfere with their own process less.

Ways of doing it

I am really open to any more collaborative or research Ideas. However the basic tools are:

1 hour (or less) lessons for groups (Awareness Through Movement) which can be (for example):

used daily, weekly or structured into half day/whole day/weekend/week workshops as pure company/personal development time
used daily, weekly or structured into half day/whole day/weekend/week workshops as part of research and development for a project either to address something specific or integrated into the work to inform the whole process
incorporated throughout rehearsals to inform the work or to address something specific

1 hour individual sessions (Functional Integration) usually on a low wide table in which the Feldenkrais Practitioner uses gentle touch to guide movements rather than the verbal guidance of Awareness Through Movement lessons. These sessions can be more specifically focussed to an individual performer's interests or needs and address any pain or difficulty as well as improving particular skills.

Victoria Worsley was an actor, theatre-maker and movement director for over 20 years, (including being AD of Jade for more than 10 years: a company which operated in that place where new writing meets physical/visual work). She discovered the Feldenkrais Method over 20 years ago while training in performance with Monika Pagnuex and Philippe Gaulier in Paris and finally made her way to the Feldenkrais Professional Practitioner Training in the UK in 2003 (funded by ACE). She teaches Feldenkrais classes at Rose Bruford and movement (including Feldenkrais) at Oxford School of Drama as well as for theatre companies and Individuals. She also has a public practice in North London.