Real Contact Workshop
A renowned martial artist and movement coach Akira Hino gives a workshop for performers.
In Real Contact Workshop, there are three main lessons:
1. SHINTAI (Body) Lesson
How can we practice to develop the body that can move freely? The process of practice involves much more than learning simple exercises and beautiful choreographies.In order for a performer to attain a sensitive, responsive, expressive body, the lesson focuses on three points:
[1] Kyokotsu control (*Kyokotsu is a point on the sternum, about 2 cm above the solar plexus):
Kyokotsu is at the core of whole-body movement. It initiates the stretch of inner core muscles. You can connect limbs such as arms and legs by Kyokotsu maneuvering.
[2] Rendo (connected movement, interlinking):
Rendo is needed to control movement, from dynamic one to delicate one. The body in Rendo is not susceptible to injury.
[3] To feel the body:
To feel is to use sensation. By doing a simple movement, you catch stimuli happening in your body. And by tracing the sensation of the stimuli, you can create a real, accurate image of the body. This process is very important to liberate the body from preconceptions and conscious thoughts (ISHIKI).
2. KANKEI (Relationship) Lesson
Listening to other person means that one is in relationship with the other. By listening to something you haven’t known before, your world expands or deepens. In this lesson, we learn how to listen with the body and its movement. How it feels to move according to the other, or how it feels to be moved by the other. By practicing listening to others physically, we will be in contact with some unknown movement that would allow us to know our own bodies in a new, deeper, wider way.
3. HYOGEN (Expression) Lesson
Do others see you as you see yourself? Other people’s views and yours are completely different. For performers, it is often the case that what they believe they are expressing is not what the audience actually sees. Acknowledging the gap in perception between the performer and the audience, we can study why there is the gap in the first place and how we can bridge the gap for more accurate expression. The key word here is the objective eye. In the lesson, we learn how to face each other and connect in order to cultivate the objective eye.
