At Akropolis Performance Lab we are developing methods of training—exercises and activities—which expose the doer to the essential elements of organicity and expressivity, affording them the opportunity to confront themselves and these qualities as they are present in the doers body-life or present-moment existence.
For us, training does not necessarily equate with the teaching of some new skill; fencing or the tango, for example. Training, to us, carries more the connotation of preparation. We train, in large part, to make ready the performer’s body/mind/spirit for participation in any creative undertaking which may be required. We also train to cultivate within ourselves, both as individuals and as an artistic collective, a connection to personal and artistic heritage.
This training requires the concretization of behavior patterns which will allow the doer to encounter his/her individual social resistances, physical impediments and psychological armoring in order to allow for the embodiment of more vital, organic impulses, to facilitate the expression of these impulses, and to bring the doer into contact with personally transcendent energies. In this work, the need for a repeatable framework is essential to the focus on research and training. This is what I mean by ‘concretized behavior.’ The exercises, forms, structures of movement, must be agreed upon and set. They are the catalysts for the work with the raw personal materials of the doer’s inner process. In order to validate any discoveries or advancements the investigation must have the possibility of repetition, otherwise the accomplishments of the doer really just fall under the classification of happy accident.
