Brianna Shahin: Early reflections

As I sit here reflecting on my first term in PPY my mind goes back to week 7 with Vangelis Legakis. It was a time of frustration but also a time of immense persistence and self-discovery.

The first couple days of were definitely the hardest, I was very impatient and angry at myself for not picking up the philosophy and technique he was teaching us and I felt like I couldn’t understand why we were doing what we were doing. Flying Low and Passing Through is a technique where we explore the use of energy in dance and the ability to ease in and out of the floor with control and flow, while gathering energy, passing it through our bodies and sending it into space. This process, instead of slicing the space, helps project that energy where you need to go which ultimately puts your body where it needs to go.

As someone who is slightly stubborn, I let myself give in to the frustration one afternoon, and Vangelis immediately picked up on it and said to me “you think too much, feel the energy and just let it take you from one side of the room to the other, but don’t break the energy flow, because once you do, there’s nothing to drive your movement”. For the rest of the afternoon I still moaned and groaned and went home feeling bad. However, the next day felt completely enlightening and in the improvisation task of moving from one side of the room to the other, I listened to the energy flow, forgot about what it looked like, and went with it.

It was an absolute relief to finally feel like I was progressing instead of being stuck in a negative mindset. Throughout the two weeks, I learnt that it is important to find something that drives you to dance so you keep inspired, and that complaining about every aspect of your day won’t allow yourself to grow either, it’ll more likely keep you in a rut of self-pity and will blind you from your end goal. I will definitely be taking this experience with me onto other workshops to further my knowledge on energy flows and moving my body through space instead of around it. Thank you Vangelis.

#SDCPPY18