Mime School Trimester
For one of the few times in over two years, I’m genuinely happy again, in a way that feels sustainable, and it’s surprising how much happiness changes you. Suddenly there’s a certain flow to things, instead of a struggle.
I decided to stay in Paris for the Fall, and I’ve enrolled at l’ecole internationale de mime corporel, a school that offers a masters degree in corporeal mime. I’m taking the first and second year courses, along with classical dance and acrobatics. We’re now entering into the fourth week.
In the advanced creation course, we work on pieces from Etienne Decroux’s repertoire. Right now we’re working on Le Combat des Lances. This is like an etude, a composition designed to improve and demonstrate technique. It is very, very, challenging.
In the general technique courses, we’re working on body scales (head/neck/chest/waist/axe conform/axe contraire/axe double/Eiffel tower) and applying these to actions like pulling ropes or extensors, short etudes like Quasimodo Offering the Flower, and stylized walks.
In the second year technique course, we’re doing triple designs on the x/y/z axes within the scales, both progressive (ascending) and degressive (descending), and a more complicated version of Quasimodo.
The two classical dance (ballet) classes provide a helpful basis for our mime technique.
The acrobatics course helps expand our range of movement. We’ve done people-stacking, handstands, cartwheels, rolls, etc. After each day’s classes I usually set up a mat and work on these — it’s taking a while to get the technique down, but I’ve nearly got the handstand, and that feels nice.
On Fridays, we have improvisations. For instance:
a person puts on a suit jacket, but hesitates.
a person stands or sits in front, with three people behind. The person in front thinks, and the three behind are his/her thoughts.
two people sit, one in front of the other. The person in back speaks, and the person in front hears.
two people sit next to each other. They like each other very much, but are too timid to let the other know.
two people sit next to each other in some kind of waiting room. They detest each other, but try to keep up appearances.
a person would like to arrive at a chair and encounters obstacles on the way.
Every four weeks, we present a personal creation, either individually or in groups. The first comes this Friday — I’ll be doing a trio based on the myth of Narcissus and a solo on Aladdin.
Another school, Hippocampe, offers an Atelier Creation that I participate in, and we work on other etudes, like the Offering of the Pomegranate and Salute to the Dawn.
In the evenings, I’ll often go to the cinema or a theatre. I’m becoming somewhat better at understanding French now, though I still struggle to follow the performances that are heavy on dialogue and light on physical movement.
I didn’t expect I would be staying in Paris this long — I thought I’d be hiking the Alps and finding a small place with good air in Spain or Switzerland to hunker down, write, study anatomy, and read essential physical theatre texts for a little while before coming back and traveling loosely around France for the upcoming mime festival. Instead, I’ve got a dorm at Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris and have become a temporary masters student, staying at minimum until the end of December. I made the decision to stay and enroll the night before the trimester began, found the room within a week, and now I can enjoy the benefit of being really settled down in a place for a little while. I got some painting supplies, and have started to build up a poetry wall again. Right now it has “To Summarize a Galaxy” by Beyza Ozer — ripped out of Poetry Magazine’s September 2019 edition — “Thither” by Samuel Beckett, and “The Tyger” by William Blake.
The first day of school, I wrote that I felt the stirring of something large, some kind of euphoria, and that I was just about ready to hold it dear to my heart. I think it’s here, or nearly.