As an actor I used what I learnt from Feldekrais a great deal. Not always consciously, but it informed how I went about things, how I could feel myself and use myself. And now as a Feldenkrais Practitioner and movement teacher, how I did that is much clearer to me. So a blog seems a good idea. I have a piece on the website about the relationship of Feldenkrais to acting, and I don’t intend to replicate it here, but this is a space to flesh out some of those ideas bit by bit. It could also be a space to bring some of the other performing arts in since I also work with singers and musicians – and sometimes dancers and acrobats too. Because I was an actor myself for so many years and teach in drama schools off and on alongside my practice, I understand that relationship particularly well which means that it will be mostly about acting – but I also have considerable history with music and sang in many shows and I work with performers of all kinds so there is space here to spend time with that too I hope.
Moshe Feldenkrais famously worked with Peter Brook and with musicians including Yeheudi Menuen and his method has been popularised amongst physical theatre performers mostly by his friend Monika Paguneux (who taught for many years at Ecole Jaques Lecoq , where, for example, the original members of Theatre De Compiclite studied – and then with Philippe Gaulier where I studied with her) and through the International Workshop Festival here where Feldenkrais teachers such as Garet Newell and (I believe) Scott Clark were invited to teach by the Festival Director at the time, Dick McCaw. But I think it is also an interesting method for actors in all forms of theatre and even TV and film. Moshe met Lee Strasbourg and in one interview talks about how they had plans for him to teach at Lee Strasbourg’s school. It never happened but shows how widely applicable his method can be. Its something I will definitely go into here.
Here are a couple of interesting links : The first for that interview with Moshe about acting and the second is an interview with Feldenkrais teacher Paul Rubin about the method’s relveance to musicians 1) http://www.feldnet.com/Default.aspx?tabid=83 2) http://www.feldnet.com/Default.aspx?tabid=84
And I would love to hear from any of you (email) who have thoughts and wishes and responses too.