Soup

By completely isolating movement in the first step, it really requires to work and focus on your breathing. I found the more I stopped thinking about the movement in my hand and the more I focused on centering my breathing - the easier the exercise became. Though it's slightly harder when you bring the movements into the rest of your body, beginning at the gentle level of movement really helped me become more confident and less held back in my movements, I was able to completely move freely without thinking about what other's in the room were doing or what they may think.

Then developing the exercise into communicating with your partner one at a time makes the exercise slightly easier as you have something to respond - you don't have to simply rely on your body to make movements without starting with an offer. However, this is also harder as you're working with another person so you're more than likely to begin to think about the movements and let your mind over take. I found stopping moving for a second and focusing on centralising my breathing really aided me throughout the exercise as I was able to remind myself to let go and stop thinking - focusing on my breathing really helped the exercise become easier and more natural.  

Moving onto contact came generally quite easy to me after all the work we have been doing on contact improvisation in Physical Theatre, however, letting go in the movements is still quite a feat. Though it was only simple contact, still one at a time, it helps ease you into the full responding to each other's movements at the next stage. Maintaining eye contact with my partner, Chloe, really helped us build the connection that we worked and created offers from. The connection was really important as it helped make our movements flow more naturally and intertwine creativity - without it, the whole exercise would be in vain.

Naturally, I was quite nervous at simply letting my body make noise without adding any movements whilst my partner observed - however, it came easier than expected. After I got past the initial hesitation, I found letting my mind leave the noises I was making and simply let go, quite easy to achieve. Then, when both of us began working together in making noises, it was really easy to let loose and just begin to respond to one another. I was a lot more confident than I expected which I definitely feel wouldn't have been achieved if we hadn't have eased into the exercise gently at first.

At the last stage, combining both the movements and the sound was surprisingly freeing. I was able to completely let go and let my body move and make noises the way it wanted to, without letting my mind get involved. It was easy to centeralise my breathing and commit to the exercise. Letting the noise happen whilst moving felt extremely natural as I didn't have to hold back in what my body was producing, I didn't have to conform to the normalities of movement and making sound.

By the end of the exercise, I genuinely think I was a little bit closer at reaching complete and honest truth in my movements, I didn't need to prove anything to anyone. That exercise could have been done in any place and at any time as it completely detaches you from all sense of time and the outside world. You completely unify your emotions with your physicality whilst trusting completely in your body and your own capabilities. I really enjoyed looking at all the levels of this exercise and building it up bit by bit, it really highlighted the layers and details the human body is capable at achieve. I feel I will definitely be using it in both development of roles and my theatrical future.