I had a plan. What to write and when.
Truth is that summer happened and it has been hard to find the time to sit and write. Happy to be back. Happy to have broken my rules. Happy to have gone off track to come back to it.
As my fingers type my mind before a thought is fully formed, I visualise Rope Manipulation as a white space surrounded by several doors. And I imagine that each day, I will take you through each and every one of them. Each door gives yet another perspective of the same thing. Today we enter through the door of Understanding the Rules and Breaking them. I will tell you more about doors some other time..
CHAPTER ONE - UnderStanding Rules
Let’s unpack RULES.
Rules are guidelines, principles that govern actions. They “help” distinguish the acceptable from the unacceptable.
POINT 1 (external rules)
Rules, in rope terms, is technique which, together with tricks (rope steps with names) allow us to navigate the apparatus. The word TECHNIQUE (from the Greek techne) refers to practical knowledge. It implies the mastery or specialised knowledge of a particular art form. When we learn and practice technique on rope, we usually and mostly work on Dynamic and Rolling. If you want to be a professional teacher, you teach either, or.
If we intend technique for what it really means (knowledge), using only some of it is quite limiting. Investigating technique, according to my discoveries through the Rope Manipulation research, is to acquire an all-around, broader knowledge of the rope practice, intending to know the apparatus profoundly to its core. What I mean is.. there is so much more to it than only Dynamic and Rolling: How to use gravity, how to lock a knot, how to transfer or loosen it and many other principles. We can be experts in specific techniques in aerial rope. Say Rolling, for example. But that does not mean we have a full cognisance of the apparatus or that we are rope expertises. Through experience, like in life, we acquire knowledge. With it there comes greater understanding and new tools which unlock a whole new range of motion and possibilities as well as a more conscious and active practice.
Long story really short: Really understanding the meaning of technique, I understood that it goes beyond what I see and that, through experience, we truly get to know it.
POINT 2 (internal rules)
Rules are also HABITS. Habits are regular, often unconscious patterns that are formed through repetition over time.
Going through a process of understanding of your body and your movement with a specific focus on what you repeat, where you find yourself starting from or ending up into, it suggests to become conscious of them. Awareness is step one. Acknowledging automatisms uncovers new information about the body and further knowledge on the movement we enact. Most importantly, it gives the choice to either step out of them, divert, change or even just keep them as they are.
Rules can be of guidance, no doubt, but they can also be restricting if they become the only way to do things. Rules “help” distinguish the acceptable from the unacceptable.
If Rolling and Dynamic technique are the parameters to determine how good or bad we are at rope, we limit the number of potentialities, possibilities and aesthetics and we stop artists from creating according to their personal taste and moving in accordance with their own bodies. Because, we all know it, it is hard and scary to leave the norm.
To be continued..
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