Wendy experimented asking everyone to breath and draw at the same time to capture the breath. It would seem that this was exhausting and May asked if she could take a breather. May sat and breathed and others moved with her and drew. At the end of the session we all expressed how we were…
The past few sessions were about experimentation. Our ideas came from the prop we were using, a giant red piece of lycra. I like to use texture and colours in a lot of my dance work to enhance the movements we do. This time the texture and colour directly influenced what we did and it…
I was keen to introduce something completely new to Edna, playing with shadows. I do this a lot elsewhere, with groups of people or tiny pieces of acrylic and sometimes I get to combine the both. The results are dependant on the group, it really is playing and exploring your imagination, and yes it was…
What do you use your salad spinner for? Washing lettuce? Cleaning potatoes? Have you ever thought to use it for spinning paint? Today Edna experimented with consistences, colours and varying the speed, it also had the added benefit of warming the arms and shoulders. Over spinning can cause your salad spinner to take off! Beware.
Medway and Gravesham participants thoroughly enjoyed themselves this week. Not only did they move with their 1 metre length pencils, vigorously spun their own paintings and giggling over their creative paper ripping to produce horses, boats, ballerina’s, trees, vases and flowers. They passed their faces which were bright, colourful and original. They expressed at the…
Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health and Trinity Laban Dance Science Department carried out pre-tests to measure quality of life, balance, postural assessment and shoulder motion. We are all hoping that when they return in 12 weeks to carry out the post tests, there will be some significant findings to show there have…
Participants at the Parkwood Workshop enjoying a chair based exercise to music using brightly coloured scarves. Everyone enjoyed this exercise and there was lots of laughter. Sorry Rebecca but green is not my favourite colour even though it features in the photo!!
Feels like this week really is the beginning, with Rebecca and I taking the lead and touting a large, green, squidgy ball, more on this later! We repeated the ‘back to back’ drawing and also mirrored each other, first in silence then to music. At times using pens and paper, others simply facing each other….
This week we met Stephanie De’Ath, a Graduate Intern in Dance Science, from the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance. Stephanie measured and recorded the movement, flexibility and posture of everyone taking part in edna. Every time the word ‘posture’ was mentioned we all sat bolt upright, especially me. We’ll met Stephanie again in…
Today we cast our fingers using alginate, a gelatinous gooey substance made of seaweed. It got me thinking about textures and how our own hands move and sit in shapes differently to others. We played name and shape and focused on our hands, thinking about what makes our hands ours. This led to some memories of…