Chair Duets

We had to make basic duets on chairs the way that frantic assembly has done them. Our task was to make a few movements to each other in partners while remaining to stay seated. This was to music but didn’t necessarily need to have rhythm. At first it was a little strange doing this work as there was initially no story to tell. All we had to do was to create movement that could repeat itself in a loop without having to stop. It started quite strangely as we had to move our partner's hands as well as our own and having to get really close together made it whole thing awkward.

Another thing that made this strange was how there was originally no emotion to it. As there was no story, there was no emotion until we changed a few things later in the lesson. We started by doing some basic movements and it was a little uncomfortable doing so as it involved sitting close to one another and using each other for the movement. After a while though, I got used to it.

Late in the lesson we learned that slowing the performance or speeding it up can have an effect on what it looks like to the audience. Eye contact with one another also did the same thing. With this knowledge, we then decided to try different things with our piece until we each found a position that is both practical and comfortable for us to use in the cycle of movements. I ended up looking away from my partner the whole time. As for the tempo, we decided to slow our piece down a little because it looked to wooden otherwise.

Finally in the lesson we learned to make some of the movement look more realistic by adding a few shrugs of the shoulder and more realistic looking falls rather than just leaning forward in the chair. This made our performance look more naturalistic even though it was all in a slow pace. For a finishing touch to our piece, we decided to make some of the movement faster than others. The pace was mostly slow with the falls from the chair faster to show it is actually a fall forward and not just a lean forward. The music used for the performance was a slow piano which made the piece look like a romance scene however when the song was changed to a rock song, the performance looked like it was a forced relationship. The perspective can change the outcome of a story to the audience even though there wasn’t really a story there for our performance.

In the next lesson, I tried to direct a performance rather than be in one. This was the most strange of all of it because I was unable to act out what I wanted to happen. Instead I was telling people what to do but I was unable to tell if it was uncomfortable for them as I wasn’t acting it out. They too felt strange because it wasn’t their ideas being used even though it was their performance. If anything it was awkward.