Venture Grant: Theater and Dance Workshop
Please accept my application for request of Venture Grant funds in support of my attendance at Gabrielle Roth’s Mirrors Retreat in St. Helena, California, for October 22-29, 1995.
I am a senior Drama major interested in pursuing a career teaching drama, movement, and improvisation to adolescents. Although my experience is still limited—I taught a workshop to Wasson High School advanced Drama students this summer, I find Garbrielle Roth’s movement technique, the ‘Wave’, ideally suited to adolescents. Consisting of a cycle or ‘wave’ of five rhythems—flow, staccato, chaos, lyrical, and stillness, the technique offers young students the freedom of spontaneous self-expression with a structure and map to guide them.
My attraction to the field of theater springs from my passion for improvisation and expressive movement. The coursework I have taken in this area includes "Alternative Appreaches the Acting" which focuesd on movement for actors, "Projects in Dance: Image, Precess and Analysis" which linked physical posturing and movement with emotional expression, "The Theatre Institute: Emphasis on Acting" which utilized improvisation as a means to exploring personal styles of acting, and various dance technique classes. The bulk of my study, however, has taken place off-campus with teachers who have developed movement techniques concentrating on the process of self-expression rather than the finished product. I have worked with Emilie Conrad Da-oud and Susan Harper, innovators or Continuum movement, Gabrielle Roth, founder the the Wave, Mary Prestidge, pioneer of Contact Improvisation in England, Steven Harvey, Contact Improvisation teacher at the Narops Institute in Boulder, and Patricia Martinello, co-founder of Biodanza in London.
Although I have worked with Gabriele Roth’s movement and theater method for the past two years, I have not financially been able the afford the longer, more comprehensive workshops offered by Gabrielle Roth herself. In preparation for teaching I feel it’s important for me to gain a deeper understanding of her work.
Gabrielle Roth is a noted theater director and dance teacher. She is the artistic director of her own dance/theater/music company, "The Mirrors", and has been a member of the Actor’s Studio (Directors Unit). She is currently teaching experimental theater in New York. Her "Mirrors" workshop encompasses and weaves together movement, drama, and improvisation. In addition to the five rhythms, the workshop centers on "ritual theater", a technique exploring theatrical roles through the use of ego characters such as the planner, judge, defender, worrier, etc.. This combination of improvisational movement and theater teaches students to shift from one role to the next adopting and releasing characterizations more nimbly and developing a broader, more textural repertoire of theatrical roles.
It is my intention through my participation in the workship to bring to my students a deeper, more embodied sense of the rhythms that flow through our bodies as well as the create an atmosphere of play as we draw upon our humanness in attempts to understand the workings of a given character.
I realize the registration fee for this retreat is high and there is a limit to the amount of funds permissable to each applicant. I am prepared to cover a portion of the cost myself should the Venture Grant committee find my proposal worthy of funding.
Budget
Air Fare (Delta Airlines) $147
Registration Fee (includes food and lodging) $1,275
TOTAL $1,422