HAPPY NEW YEAR 2016!

Happy New Year To Our Friends 

and Mime Artists Around the World!

We send you all our best wishes for the year ahead.  Hoping you have a year filled with great peace of mind, countless creative breakthroughs and most of all...that your year is filled with love and happiness.

And Stay Warm, because...

"Baby It's Cold Outside"

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This is an SD version

High Def Version Here

We have been away from posting Blog Articles for over a year now.  During this time I created a new full-length solo performance:  "WEEPING IN SILENCE" which premiered at the International Mime Art Festival in Warsaw in June of 2015.

We are now creating a new full-length Trio Performance 

for the Mime Art Festival in June 2016 titled: 

"SONATAS OF LOVE"

In the meantime, Haruka and I will be occasionally posting some new Blog Articles, which will include excerpts from my Mime Video Training Series, now in development.

 

Happy New Year!

 

 

Gregg Goldston & Haruka Moriyama

 Take a look at our updated web site:

Goldmime.com

 

Videos at:

YOU TUBE  &  VIMEO

Ocean Waves - Energy Flows Between You and Your Audience

If you are a performing artist of any kind, you may have wondered how to create strong connection of energy between you and your audience.  We generally call this "Stage Projection" which in our art form, encompasses coiling body parts, combined with throwing our thoughts in several directions out into the theater.  We even learn to use our eye muscles to control a type of psychological emotion between us and them.

Stage Projection is the precise study to make ourselves be as close to our audience as emotionally and visually possible. 

Marcel Marceau in the Lion Tamer

In other words, it is the performer's ongoing intention to be breaking the fourth wall, i.e., proscenium, and make his/her audience feel included and subjective in the scene.  Note that we don't mean breaking the fourth wall in a Vaudeville, or Groucho Marx way, meaning as if we "step out of character."  We mean that we choose to create a subliminal effect where they feel that they are on-stage with us, as opposed to sitting an watching us as if we are far away inside of a bubble in a world of our own on the other side of the proscenium.  Furthermore, we are not saying that those choices are wrong, or invalid.  We are only using those as examples to help you better understand this article and technique we are describing. 

Marcel Marceau holding "The Tiger" flag in Boston

We believe that this style of performance communication originated from Marcel Marceau and was then further expanded upon by Goldston over the past 30-plus years.  Gregg often speaks of how his audience will tell him: "his performance makes them feel so close to them that it feels as if he is sitting in their lap." 



Let's continue:

As we study coiling, we push multiple body parts to different directions in order to keep our body fully alive - creating energy flows that reach our audience.  (Here it is important to tell you that Gregg first heard of this concept from Moni yakim, when he was working with Decroux during the 1950s - 1960's era.)  

Marcel Marceau in The Public Garden

If you would like to check if your energy is actually coming across the proscenium and reaching your audience, it is best to ask your audience if it is visible to them.

Better yet, you can practice this technique by having an associate stand far from you, (50 feet - 15 meters) 

and watch you pose and move through different positions.

For me, it has been exhausting to study pushing body parts to create the energy flows out into the house.  I did not feel efficient energy continuously beaming out from my body.  I heard Gregg's voice "Push more!" and I was trying so hard gripping my muscles and twisting as many parts as possible, but honestly, I felt something not so natural about how I created the flows.  (In fact, I later learned that: "gripping my muscles too hard and twisting too many parts actually stops this effect from happening!")

Very recently, I accidentally learned that one additional image can instantly facilitate and multiply this effect.  So I would love to share this story with you.

Probably for the last several years, I have been using an image of "liquid air" filling the theater in order to create necessary resistance for the moving quality this art form requires, meaning being Off- the-Clock.  

In my own imagination, I was always carrying a stage full of quiet water around me.  This was the reason I could not instantly create this energy projection.  I was gripping and holding during the moment of a push, instead of pushing further through the gesture I was delivering. 

I then realized that if I actually push "still water" in a bath tub, my body used too little effort.  Pushing against "bath tub water" was too simple and then I saw I was not really pushing!  This study led me see that the same was happening to me on stage.  I needed a much greater muscular force in my work on stage.

Consequently, I looked for a stronger visual image.  I thought of the Ocean Waves.  As soon as I focused on the image of waves coming toward me, as if I were in the ocean in Hawaii, my body spontaneously created the energy flows that felt so great and natural to me.

The flows were in irregular directions and speeds because of what my DNA remembered about the characteristics of the ocean.  I felt that my body shape turned into a human in motion.  My jaw dropped and I was screaming inside in one of my big epiphanies. 

I just wanted to share this simple story with you all.  About a little image, which helped me immensely and gave me hope to get better tomorrow.

The beauty of this image is found in the words I just wrote and I want to repeat them again, because these words best describe what we are all trying to arrive at while we are on stage: 

"The flows were in irregular directions and speeds."

We often say in class using a different description, but we are describing the same thing: 

"All Things, All Directions, All The Time!"

I have one final thought about "Ocean Waves" that you might find very interesting...

When I showed this article to Gregg before publishing it, he reminded me of an epiphany he had a few years ago about his Umbrella play Pas De Deux. He said the following: 

Photo by kasia@teatralna.com  - www.teatralna.com

"What captivates people about this play may not have to do with helium and a floating umbrella at all.  It is more likely the fact I recreate the same physics of waves breaking onto the sand and the rip-tides that pull the water back out to the sea.  I become the ocean and my audience gets to sit on the beach and enjoy.  As my teacher Marceau might say:  You must "become" the Sea."

Photo by kasia@teatralna.com

Photo by kasia@teatralna.com

Photo by kasia@teatralna.com

So have a seat on the beach and enjoy!

Finally, 
If you want to study this style of work, we hold weekly classes (unless tied up with other projects or touring)
and we often staging 2-Day Weekend Intensives and Summer Mime Intensives.

Written by Haruka Moriyama, 
 with additional writings by Gregg Goldston



For more information about The Goldston Moriyama Institute for Mime, our Personal Mime Training Programs in New York City, or our Summer Mime Intensives, please contact us at the links listed below.

Created by:

Haruka Moriyama, 

The Goldston Moriyama Institute

www.goldmime.com   gmi.mime@gmail.com

“The Satellite Dish” – How to make your audience travel with a flying camera.

The earth is round and spinning...

Gregg recently demonstrated in class how to create an optical illusion of gradually approaching the audience.  He explained that it is possible to create the same effect we often see in film, called the “helicopter shot” where the camera is flying in from the distance and begins with a large area shot, and then slowly zooms in to the main character in the scene.  He said he uses this technique in his plays so subtly that we often don’t even see it unless he points it out and demonstrates it in slow motion.  He then showed us the “optical distance” illusion using the “Walk in Place, and showed us how he altered that illusion to create this film-like technique. 

This technique works beautifully in the beginning of a new scene, where you would like your audience to enjoy spending just enough time to observe the environment surrounding the character.  In essence, this technique gives the audience a sensation of travelling and smoothly approaching the character.  

Here is a link to Gregg's Phantom 309.  Watch and see how gradually he approaches the audience in the beginning of the play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUSXPc_y6S4

An important note here is to mention that when we create an indoor scene, we use the “flashlight” technique spoken about in our previous article linked here:
 http://gmi4mimesupport.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-flashlight-first-few-seconds-on.html
and when creating an outdoor scene, we use this.

We can also use this distance effect when play a multi-character play, to show the people at different distances from each other or within the same environment.

Today I try to focus on a scene where the character is standing in place instead of moving.  (Moving from one point to another on stage. - across the stage space)

Please bear with me while I struggle to find proper words and concepts on this subject for I am in the midst of learning and analyzing this delicate technique.  Gregg also enjoys finding ways to explain advanced techniques that have not been analytically taught in the past.  

He calls this fascinating technique "The Satellite Dish." 

"The Satellite Dish" - It's Purpose

A satellite dish moves around to receive the maximum amount of signals all the time in accordance with the planet's alignment in the space.  And, although we usually only think of this dish as a “receiver” it is also a transmitter.  This is what we want you to look at in this article, how we “transmit” ourselves into and around the seats of the theater where our audience is watching us from.

We, as performers, adjust our body - especially our torso and face – in order to project our thoughts towards our audience.  As you see in the images below, the shape of a well projected body also resembles the shape of a satellite dish, making a gentle curve around the center. 

Another significant purpose of this technique is to create an optical illusion of a flying camera subtly woven into our scene.

The priority and balance of multiple techniques are crucial to its success in performance. (Yes, always multiple techniques!)  There are various ways to use this technique conceptually when creating a play.  Today, I will concentrate on describing one example of the route of the flying camera, its physical creation on stage, and the optical effects.

Before we start the physical creation by the performer, let's imagine the route of the flying camera we are creating from inside out. This is the actual scene without the physical technique.

"The Satellite Dish" - The Route of the Camera

You are standing vertically.
Looking out of a window to your right, looking up the sky, daydreaming.

Phase 1:
A helicopter with the film camera, capturing you from the sky diagonally above, around where you are looking at. 

Phase 2: 
The camera descends slowly, making a big counterclockwise spiral down around you, passing the height of your face diagonally, then go a little lower than your chest.  Now the camera is on the left side of you, still fifty yards (20 meters) away from you in distance.

Phase 3: 
Then, the helicopter makes a G-Force curve and then starts approaching slowly towards your face, gradually ascending to your height and getting up close.  Then, the camera smoothly stops - which is the arrival of "The Satellite Dish" and the beginning of the upcoming scene.


"The Satellite Dish" - It's Physical Creation 

Phase 1:

Right leg forward, make a forth position facing diagonal left forward.  Both knees bent.  Put weight balance on your left leg.

Pelvis incline to forward as if you are bowing from the pelvis.  The angle of your pelvis indicate the relative position of the ground  - the spinning earth the character is standing on - to where the audience is.

While you elongate your torso to the maximum, subtly incline and rotate your waist to right, then subtly incline your chest to right and forward making a gentle curve in around your long torso.  You aim your chest at your front row audience.

Then adjust your neck and head accordingly to make "The Cookie" sympathetic thoughts with your inclined (over to right) face at your "Universal Audience".  Elongate your neck so that your head looks like peeking out of your window, farther front and right from where your pelvis is located.

This gently curving/twisting torso and head will later make an unnoticeable slow undulation in Phase 2.  The earth spins to the left and rear, then your torso follows after it.  The more “mime resistance” used during this, the stronger the effect is for the audience.

Try to make every rotation and inclination very subtle and delicately shaped so that you can adjust accordingly to find your final position with the impressions listed below.

1) Your pelvis - your base - is set at diagonal left (rotation) and forward (inclination).  
2) Your elongated torso, neck and chin making a three dimensional curving/twisting tall building to the direction of your audience. 
3) Your chest is making a very delicately curved (satellite) dish and the dish is inviting / embracing your audience.
4) Then your face with cheeks and eyes are peeking out of your building (torso)'s window.  
5) Adjust your body parts accordingly to make an effortless looking whole body.

Feel the delicate and resilient connection between the satellite dish, i.e., your head and torso, and your satellite base, i.e., your pelvis and below.  

Now, your audience sees your upper body closer, inclined toward them, than your lower body, which looks farther away and half gone.

Because of the angle of your torso you created, they feel the sensation of looking down on you like the New York City picture below.  This logic also applies when a tall person sees a short person.  

Phase 2: 

Slowly and gradually rotate your pelvis and above to right as one unit using your resilient and smoothly sliding feet with legs.
As you do, gradually lessen the forward inclination of your pelvis and make your torso more and more vertical.

While you do this gentle turning of your whole body and reestablishing your pelvis, gently and unnoticeably undulate your curved/twisted torso, neck and head to a kind of neutral state and align with your pelvis, only keeping your elongated waist and chest delicately curving in.  Gently finish this phase 2 in a position where your torso is past vertical and now inclined to the rear left from the pelvis, subtly adjust the projection of your thoughts using an acting moment and gradually aim your thoughts at to the Universal Audience. You feel as if you are looking down on the camera.  This is the end of Phase 2.

Your audience sees you from below like a short person looking up to you, from a little off center - left side of you.  

An imaginary hula hoop may help you understand the first half of this mechanism.  Keep your upper body, i.e., your pelvis and above, as a unit. 

Phase 3:

From that angle, now you undulate your subtly curved torso from your waist and above.  Within this second undulation, your torso becomes gradually vertical and opened outwards.  Lastly you shift your weight balance to your front leg and approach your audience with whole body like a tsunami wave.  This is the end of Phase 3.

The changing of the view of your torso angle from your audience contributes a great deal of how they feel of their relative location to you.  It may give them thrills or even motion sickness depending on how you change the speed and it's angles.

In order to help them feel agreeable and thrilled instead of sick, extremely gentle and careful angles, gradual speeding, and arrival of what we know as "G force" seem to be the key to its artistic success.

"The Satellite Dish" - The Arrival

When "The Satellite Dish" is successfully executed, the audience feels great anticipation of your upcoming drama. Usually, they don't even notice that you have physically created this illusion, as it often feels like their own mesmerizing imagination, as I always believed so.

You as the performer will also feel as if you too, have arrived closer to them during this illusion, as if you ended it by sitting in the audience's lap.  (Psychologically, of course.)  

One additional note for you about "The Satellite Dish" is that this is a “Time Transformation” and that these rules apply:
When the camera is far away, your thoughts should look far away and distilled.  There should be less thoughts, being held longer than normal.  Then, as your character arrives to the final stage of this “camera zoom” your thoughts transform and become more vivid and “close-up” establishing that you are literally in the place, the environment where the play will take place.


Written by Haruka Moriyama,
 with additional writings by Gregg Goldston

For more information about The Goldston Moriyama Institute for Mime, our Personal Mime Training Programs in New York City, or our Summer Mime Intensives, please contact us at the links listed below.

Created by:

Haruka Moriyama, 

The Goldston Moriyama Institute

www.goldmime.com   gmi.mime@gmail.com

"Now, that's the Marceau." - Pushing Shape to Reach into Space.

"Now, that's The Marceau!" is one of those sayings my students hear me say often.  Someone will create a pose that reaches far beyond the studio we are working in, and that's what we see;
Marceau's unique combination of counterpoints, contra-direction rotations and pulling one part of an arm one direction while pushing the wrist another.

Like a science, you know it's a truth when you see it, even if you don't understand why.

When Etienne Decroux was first inventing mime, the newspapers wrote: "Decroux has created: The Art of Counter-Weight."  I knew that was true when it came to creating an illusion, because to show something heavy, your body had to make another part "compensate" for the weight.  

However, I later learned...that "Mime" is always: 

Counter - "Something!" Counter-Weight. Counter-Direction. Counter-Thought. Counter-Clock.

This is what makes this art so unique and so unlike anything else.

When it comes to how we stand and move in space we are always using a coiling system based upon unique science of counter-direction.  (Contra-Point) Look closely at how Marceau is using this system of "Counter-Direction" pulls and pushes, and rotations combined with he risking of balance points.

***CLICK ON THE PHOTOS TO ENLARGE THEM***

"The Hands"

WAIT!

Don't Miss the Most Important effect that he is creating.

Look at the "stage space" around him.

"The Lion Tamer"

Look at each photo I've posted for a few minutes...Look at how he is filling the stage. 

All the air around him is bright, and he looks as large as the stage he is standing on. 

I didn't crop these shots so you could look at the stage space around him.

(I took them from the back of the balcony in 2003.)

"The Lion Tamer"

Note that on some photos I've put Red Circles on his throw points...to show the part of his body where the gesture initiates from.

 Below is almost the same pose from the same play, but from different angles.  In the first photo, you can barely see he is leaning backward as you can see in the second photo. 

"The Hands"

"The Hands"

As you can see, there is so much we can gain from this information, so I will continue to write more about this area of mime.

Written by Gregg Goldston

Photos taken by Gregg Goldston & Coiling Lines drawn by Gregg Goldston

For more information about The Goldston Moriyama Institute for Mime, our Personal Mime Training Programs in New York City, or our Summer Mime Intensives, please contact us at the links listed below.

Created by:

Haruka Moriyama, 

The Goldston Moriyama Institute

www.goldmime.com   gmi.mime@gmail.com

How To Train and Enrich "Off the Clock" Quality

Albert Einstein once said that:

"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician.  I often think in music.  I live my daydreams in music.  I see my life in terms of music."

To reach our own creative potentials, we would do well to live by his example.  Intuition and music mix very well.  It is not a crazy idea for us to become Einstein on stage and follow our intuitive voice sent directly from our right brain.

"The only real valuable thing is intuition."  -- Albert Einstein

Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein

Today, I want to emphasize our method of practicing this new way of working.  We actually do most of the work while “off-stage,” throughout the day, not just while rehearsing.  All of our students can tell you their personal stories of how this method affected their work, so trust it and try it.  Soon you’ll feel a whole new world of rhythms surround you as you perform.

1.  On your iPod or any MP3 player, create a playlist of various songs that are not familiar to your ear, preferably the ones that keep changing the rhythms and intensity of the notes.  Look for different qualities of instrumental sounds and voices.  Please refer to my previous post for how to select your songs.  

http://gmi4mimesupport.blogspot.com/2013/08/musicianship-how-to-train-your-dna.html

If you would like to receive a list of songs we provide our students with, please send us your request via email at gmi.mime@gmail.com.

2.  Listen to the playlist on a daily basis directly from your headphones (earphones).  Keep listening to the playlist until you memorize most phrases of the songs without studying them.  In other words, let your subconscious mind do the work itself, instead of your mind feeling the pressure to memorize them.

I said from your headphones not from your external speakers system.  Because we tested it and the effect from the speaker was less than a half of what you get from your headphones directly.  Headphones are closer to your brain, and it also eliminates all the auditory distractions from the world.  You will probably notice that when your sounds are coming from the headphones, the visual images around you start blending into your music more subjectively than that from a speaker.  

3.  Then go wherever you would like to.  Your studio, the park, in the street, in the subway train, your kitchen, the laundry room, a tennis court, you name it.  Now, whimsically sing various activities and thoughts as visual music.  Forget about objective eyes on you, how you look, who you are, or even your serious purpose of doing this.  Headphones help on this as well.  Try to be as animated as you can.

Here is a list of images you can use for your own training.

Combine these activities and thoughts with various instrumental sounds and voices coming from your headphones.

• Walk as a drums solo.
• Sit down as a long keen violin phrase.
• Think "Yes" as the thickness of a bass sound.
• Think "No, no..." as a soft voice.
• Think "Maybe" as a horn phrase.
• Think "What? Don't know" as a guitar phrase.
• Get excited as a vibraphone phrase.
• Sigh like a Bossa Nova singer.
• Tease as an accordion phrase.
• Shake off as African drums.

(Continue combining the activities/thoughts with texture of sounds.)

• Pick up as ...
• Open as ...
• Tie as ...
• Throw and catch as ...
• Blow as ...
• Pinch as ...
• Squeeze as ...
• Tap as ...
• Drag and stop as ...
• Break as ...
• Pour and drink as ...
• Crash and react as ...
• Slice as ...
• Blink as ...
• Pay as ...
• Hesitate as ...
• Glide and land as ...
• Fall as ...
• Wander as ...
• Bump as ...
• Laugh as ...
• Cry as ...
• Shrug as ...
• Spray and wipe as ...
• Carry and drop as ...
• Play an instrument as ...

Believe or not musicians naturally do this when they play their instruments.  What I mean is that they immerse themselves into the musical vibe first, then to some degree they become the music with their whole body and thoughts.  You can look around and see how their thoughts (facial expressions) and tension of their bodies are matching their sounds especially when they groove in a jazz session.

We, the mime artists, can exploit these dimensions of visual music and expand the quality of "Off the Clock" by fully applying that intuitive Einstein attitude towards our physical activities and showing thoughts.

Remember to keep the visual music always alive by changing the rhythms and reflecting the quality of sounds you hear from your headphones.  Those will gradually be stored deep in your DNA and someday will come out naturally without playing it from your headphones or speakers.  If you catch yourself having too much fun, that is the point and you are on the right track!

Here is what a friend of mine stated as her impression of mime and music.

"The relation between mime and music seemed much more intimate than that between ballet and music.  If ballet and music make a suspension, mime and music make a solution.  Music itself became the story and took it to a different dimension."

Your brain can stretch its potentials to like and create new kinds of music.  It is similar to stretching your body muscles when they feel tight and awkward, but eventually your body will like being stretched.

Written by Haruka Moriyama, 
 with additional writings by Gregg Goldston

For more information about The Goldston Moriyama Institute for Mime, our Personal Mime Training Programs in New York City, or our Summer Mime Intensives, please contact us at the links listed below.

Created by:

Haruka Moriyama, 

The Goldston Moriyama Institute

www.goldmime.com   gmi.mime@gmail.com

Bip vs. Baryshnikov: How I learned Mime, ...from Dance.

Hello Everyone!

Last week I received a great amount of feedback and many complements on my diagrams of how you see the Coiling, (Suspension) by drawing lines over photos of Marceau and myself.

Today I will show how one of the most interesting ways I first learned how to see this in Marceau, which was by comparing his positions to dancer positions.

For months if not for a couple of years,  me and two very important people in my life, Jeanine Thompson and Rick Wamer would diagram photos and then go to the studio and see how they each felt different form each other.  No just looked different, but felt different.



This article comes as a follow-up to last weeks.  You'll enjoy them both the most if you also do what we used to do.  See, then imitate, then feel the difference. 

Print out both pages, too and compare how they look side by side.

  

Next week I will write a much longer comparison and speak about these differences as well as the similarities.  But for today, seeing is believing, so enjoy! 

Written by Gregg Goldston

(Coiling Lines also drawn by Gregg) 

 

For more information about The Goldston Moriyama Institute for Mime, our Personal Mime Training Programs in New York City, or our Summer Mime Intensives, please contact us at the links listed below.

Created by:

Haruka Moriyama, 

The Goldston Moriyama Institute

www.goldmime.com   gmi.mime@gmail.com