Creating theatre should not be selective or secretive, says choreo-grapher and director Rob Tannion. Veronica Stivala attended his two-day workshop and, bruising aside, is glad she took the risk.
It goes without saying that all those who turned up for the dauntingly titled Taking Risks workshop did so with at least an ounce of trepidation. All the more so for those who had seen Rob Tannion and his troupe in action in Organización Efímera’s Fecha de Caducidad the night before: the circus performance featured mind-blowing acrobatic feats by performers who dangled, twisted and turned from dizzyingly high ropes and coils, balanced upside down on precariously balanced chairs and perched on glass bottles.
Tannion’s two-day workshop at M Space in Msida was a creative exploration of the human condition using the physical body as a key tool. With a mixture of movement text and image, this workshop, organised by the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts as part of the Malta Arts Festival, used the theme of ‘risk’ – both personal and artistic, as its departure point.
Tannion is a visually dynamic, creative and inspirational director/choreographer who works internationally across the genres of circus, musicals, events, dance, outdoor and site-specific theatre, commercials and film. He originally trained as a dancer in Australia and has worked with big names in physical theatre, such as DV8 Physical Theatre and Complicite.
The workshop was open to dancers and physical actors and, although no tasks as daring as standing upside down on a chair were necessary, participants found themselves trying out new things they might have not had the guts to do otherwise.
Coming from a theatre background I was initially daunted to try out short choreographies and moves which the dancers surely picked up far more easily than me.
Yet Tannion reassured us that getting the moves perfect was not the aim and what he was looking for was how we worked with our own limitations. Having presence was more important than getting the moves just right.
Very often, workshop directors fall into the trap of making you feel that you’ve got it all wrong and you need to change your ways and follow their way of doing things. But although this director/choreographer did push us, sometimes even literally, I never felt intimidated.
The workshop was beneficial to both dancers and physical actors. It’s no news that today the lines between acting and performing are blurred. Acting is not simply walking on stage and delivering lines.
Puts you on the spot the minute you get lazy with the risk taking
Speaking after the workshop, Tannion commented how he really hoped participants have been given some new or different creative and devising tools, in which they may begin to further develop their own creative voices in the future.
“I aim to provoke some different ways of thinking about and approaching physical theatre. For me, creating theatre should not be selective or secretive. I have spent 20 years accumulating various ways of creating work over different genres internationally.”
Actor Chris Galea explains why the workshop was important: “As the lines blur between what defines an actor and performer, it has become crucial that whatever your age, you need to be so sensitive of how your body moves along the space. So challenging the way you move, really brings something new and fresh to each ‘dramatic’ interpretation.”
In between one of the exercises where we calculatedly threw each other and ourselves around the room, Tannion reminded us of the relevance of what might have appeared to the actors among us to be merely an exercise in colouring our skins purple. On stage you’re always going to need to get shot, or hit, and you need to know how to move and fall properly by shifting your weight, he said.
Tannion’s workshop was titled Taking Risks for a reason, Galea adds jokingly. Although we were not suspended from our heels from the window of the fourth floor studio, Tannion’s way of pushing you to risk your knowledge or baggage did feel life-threatening in the same way. The adrenaline was there – physically and mentally. But it made all of us grow.
“It was really brilliant and has in more than one way, opened a lot of pathways for me to follow now,” Galea said.