Finding Your Self in Your Moves

For years, I’ve dreamed of doing an “Alexander” version of a regular class I first ran for actors over 30 years ago at the Actors Centre in Sydney.

In that class, I used the plays of Anton Checkov to explore 9 different kinds of personality. These personality types are precisely described in a body of knowledge called the “Nine Enneatypes.” Its complexity and totality are breathtaking – no two individual people are the same. Within this system, the lines are fluid - there are limitless possibilities.

It’s like Tolstoy’s opening line in Anna Karenina:

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

This wisdom also applies to the way we physically coordinate our movements. To use Alexander’s expression of use – as in ‘the use of our self’ - we can paraphrase Tolstoy to say:

“All good use is alike; each misuse is different in its own way.”

Essentially, that’s what I want to do in my workshop in Japan and next year in Denver. Japan’s description is here, with a video in English/Japanese at the bottom.

https://workshop.upsnews.co.jp/?p=9229&post_type=events&preview=1&_ppp=8d194cfda5

The purpose of my workshop is to discover how your movements reflect your personality. 

I want to explore how movements and personality are two sides of one coin so that each unhappy experience can distort your movement system – giving you a unique way of moving that can be recognised from afar. Instead of the conventional therapeutic path of reaching into your past and telling stories, you will reach into other people and learn to tell their story, as well as your own…

***

One of the greatest playwrights of all time – Anton Chekhov – nearly always populated his classic plays with 8/9 significant characters. The more I study his work, the more I am flabbergasted to discover how Chekhov manages to represent most of the Enneatypes in each of his plays.

You usually find the doctor, the peasant, the nurse, the playboy, the artist, the tyrant, the bon vivant, the manager and the writer/philosopher. When you read a Chekhov play, you will often find a character that resonates with you.

TBH – right now, I am unsure if this is a workshop for actors or for people seeking to know themselves. Perhaps it is both, because the work of any great actor is to know how to transform their own ugliness and beauty into a work of art. First, know thyself.

So – I will defy being defined and let you tell me what it is.

More tomorrow!