Monthly Archives: May 2012

Bags of Tricks – Exploring Move Discovery in Skill Play

 


Music Prop Specifications Environment Sensory Stimulation Mood Chemicals Flow Diet/Sleep/Exercise State Sensory Deprivation Blindfolds Unstructured Play Daydreaming Gansfeld Effect Zoning Out Visualisation Dream Journal External Inspiration Meeting Others Watching Others Doodling Workshops/Tutorials Structured Play Making Mistakes Other Disciplines Systematic Variation Models/Notation Games/Exercises Awareness Teaching/Performing Theatre-Style Games Restrictions Breathing

A clickable index of this article.


Coming up with something you haven’t seen done before can be one of the most rewarding aspects of skill play. This article covers a wide variety of exercises and techniques that can potentially be used to help people come up with new moves. The image above is a clickable index so that you can dip in and out of it without necessarily having to read the whole thing in one go.

Firstly I’m using “skill play” to describe an activity that generally involves another object (or objects) and focuses on the relationship between our bodies and that object. Through practice different movements are learnt that allow us to interact with the object in different ways. My background is in circus and object manipulation but these ideas apply equally to related arts such as skateboarding, magic or any other physical skill-based creative activity. Sometimes I’ll use specific terms that might not apply to your type of skill-play but hopefully you’ll be able to adapt it.
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Bags, a Horse and a Cherry Tree

Here’s new video of me in a tutu wearing a cowboy hat. Just a quick one thrown together because the organisers of Spin Summit wished me to wear these things while alerting people to the fact that I’ll be at their event. I can’t wait! I looking forward to seeing people there! xx