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THE VARIOUS STAGES OF THE PROJECT

From the start, Sergi Fäustino’s idea has been to convey to students what performance-creation work from and with the body means.

Broadening our perspective and reflecting on the concept of dance and creating as a group a work where the main building tool was the body itself.

Throughout the process, priority was given to the fact that the work materials (subject matter, dynamics, interests and so on) were slowly emerging without imposing any preconceived ideas, so that the work ended up being a series of small fragments created and performed by each of the students.

FIRST TERM

During the first sessions, videos of four works were screened, showing the body as the main subject of the action.

Four different ways of approaching the scene through the body and movement:

from La Fura dels Baus to La La La Human Steps, not to mention Martine Pisani and Yann Marussich.

The students were later divided up into groups and were invited to think about an idea they wanted to work with on their own creations.

All the proposals — which were very different — were displayed and comments made on what they had conveyed to them and how that had been done.

A number of sessions were then dedicated to finding a subject that interested the students enough to motivate them to create, under the sole condition that it had to be a subject that was close to them, that touched them in some way.

Running parallel to this work, various sessions were included that were dedicated to recognition of one's own body through body warm-up exercises, partner work, measuring the body itself using different parts of the body, measuring the other person’s body and, to round off, relating the body to the space.

SECOND TERM

In order to continue searching for an individual motivation, the issue arose of the situation in which people found themselves in when they were alone and everything that happened in the private space that solitude offered them. Work continued, both in groups and individually, on the creations started during the first term.

The decision was made in one of the sessions for the work to be shared and all the small proposals were looked at. The students later wrote an idea or concept that had occurred to them and a small text where they recounted a personal experience relating to that concept or idea.

Two groups naturally came about, one with people more interested in body work and the other interested in text work.

THIRD TERM

The students continued to delve deeply into the two lines started in the second term: body work and text work up to the day of the final presentation.  The work's materials were being built up very gradually and separately and in the final two sessions, Sergi organised the materials to conclude the project.

The constant was always that the students themselves should look for the expression to arrive at a proposal centred on privacy and open up an area for expression.

TRIPS LINKED TO THE PROJECT AND PUBLIC PRESENTATION AT LA PODEROSA

Three trips to the La Poderosa creation space were organised, a venue dedicated to dance and movement.

The aim of these trips was to take students out of their environment and show them what a professional creation space was like and to observe how doing a work session in a specialist environment could affect the students.

The feeling the school’s teachers, the mediators and Sergi all had was that something moved them, and after the first visit to the centre the students showed greater commitment towards the project.

The three trips, together with the public presentation at the La Poderosa venue, were a success in terms of involvement, motivation and understanding of what Sergi had been proposing, something changed regarding their perspective.

Calendar of trips to La Poderosa:
11 April
2 May
13 June: public presentation of the work Quan estic sola

REFLECTIONS WRITTEN BY 1ST- AND 2ND-YEAR ESO STUDENTS
Some of the blog’s entries:
Effects of an intense physical activity

I particularly liked the last session more than the other, because we changed body-mobility exercises in the last one.

We gave massages to our partners in the last session, which consisted of relaxing the other classmate who received the massages.

Afterwards, Mónica prepared the following exercise for us: through the massages our partners had given us, we had to express what we had felt through dance.

Most of the people danced with wrist movements, head movements and so on.

Later, when we finished that activity, we were taken to a different classroom and shown the photos we had made in the previous sessions.

This activity involved seeing the physical changes that occur in your body before and after physical exercise such as, in this case, dancing.

It was curious because we saw several transformations; there were people who didn’t change at all after their physical exercise, but, by contrast, there were enough who had changed, as you could note the exhaustion in their faces, their extremely red cheeks and so on.

Watch us on the following link Abans i després 
Manu

BODY AWARENESS SESSION
We carried out the following activity: in pairs, one of us would have their eyes closed while the other touched their limbs (legs, feet, hands and so on).

We, Joan and Àlvaro, did this activity and liked it a lot, we enjoyed it.

First we started with head movements; touching with our fingers we felt pleasant hands touching our head.

We then danced with our eyes closed, moving all our soft joints and trying to dance by moving all our joints.

The feeling was one of tranquillity.

EVALUATION OF THE FIRST TERM
The session on the last Thursday of the first term was somewhat different from the others. It involved making an evaluation of the activities that we had carried out over the first term.

The evaluation required us to deal with various issues which we all commented on.

From our point of view, when Sergi told us we had to evaluate the first term, almost all of us agreed that, to a certain extent, we thought that the option had been more about dance than body expression. That had been a surprise to us.

The activities that Sergi proposed were working well. The first activity involved making a piece of work with the body (theatre, dance, theatre with dance). It seemed like a good idea to both of us and we started the work.

In our case, when we had perfected our work sufficiently and showed it to Sergi, he told us the idea was good but would be better if we could add a dance to our work and we were unconvinced. We believed it was not needed, that it was fine as it was, but Sergi got us to listen to reason, explaining that this option was about exploring new things, in addition to traditional dancing. 

What did we learn?

We learnt that things can be done in more than one way and that there are alternatives to be explored. 

We now thought we would add a bit more dance to the option. 
Manu and Joan

The feeling was one of tranquillity.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EXTRA-CURRICULAR DANCING AND WHAT WE DID AT “CREATORS IN RESIDENCE”
We have been learning a lot in both classes, but in the extracurricular one we are learning established movements and choreographed pieces with our trainer or teacher, whereas in the option we are working through exercises such as theatre, small movements, relaxation, warm-ups... in order to free ourselves of the embarrassment we feel in expressing ourselves with our body and to work together as a group. 

One of the main differences is that in professional dancing the trainer establishes all the movements for you or helps you to develop your creation, while at the school we don’t always do the same dance, we think about what we want to communicate with the body and we dance or move about to achieve it.
N L Y

CONTAMINATION SESSION
At the contamination session, we were able to show teachers the work we had carried out on movement and explain the journey from the start of the course to the present day.

We danced in front of our teachers and they told us they really liked it, even though we danced without music. For some, music was an aid and sometimes a distraction that prevented you from bringing out what you carried inside you because you were focusing on following the music the whole time.

The teachers were told about the “Creators in Residence” programme, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.

TEXTS PREPARED BY 1ST- AND 2ND-YEAR ESO STUDENTS WHO WERE PART OF THE WORK

Manu's text
Sometimes, I feel a presence.

It is the presence I feel when someone wants to communicate with me, but for some reason I'm unaware of they don’t do it in words, either due to cowardice or fear or whatever. However, suddenly, I feel an aura, an aura that is communicated to me with gestures, looks...

Aina's text
One day, when I was in the mountains with my cousin, we heard a noise behind us. We heard it several times, and each time the sound was more intense. All of a sudden, we saw a rabbit, as white as snow, which shined like a mirage in the sunshine.

We wasted no time following that white animal with the shiny fur, until we saw it enter an underground den. It must have sensed us, I thought.

Afterwards, talking about what had happened the strange den/shelter which the white and shiny-furred rabbit had hidden itself in seemed rather odd to us.

And there we were gradually going deep into that mountain forest full of secrets and unexplored zones...

Maëva's text
The time came when I was alone, I needed someone by my side, someone to help me and listen to me, there was no one. What was I to do? Until I take a good look, she is there, that girl who makes me happy. Now I knew I’d no longer be alone, I was now with her. I recently met someone, I like spending time with her, she helps me to relax, I can manage my nerves when I'm with her, but we recently had an argument, I thought I was no one without her.

Pablo’s text
When I’m bored I speak to myself, I play with my dog, I look at Instagram and I read comic books. I like being bored.

Ona’s text
When you’re with friends and you’re having a good time, you’re all laughing and whiling your time and suddenly, it all changes, you say or do something and everyone stops laughing, there's a silence and you feel terrible, you’re embarrassed. How is it possible for one word or gesture to change everything?

Nadia’s text
I love the ASMR, which, in case you don’t know, are sounds recorded with a super microphone. I like listening to it every day, but one day I showed it to my mother, who told me she didn’t like it and that it was silly. And I don’t understand that, maybe it's because there was something bad or similar in the past.

Joan’s texts
All games are models, for example: a game where you have to achieve a thousand victories and until the thousand victories end, it’s always the same. Fortnite is a game that's always the same until you grow tired of it, which doesn’t happen to me.

I was always frightened of the dark from an early age, and I’m still afraid of it; when I walk along the street at night, I get scared. Once I was coming back from football at night, at around eight thirty, and I saw a strange man following me, I had the feeling that he followed me along four streets but in the end he turned away.

One day I was playing Fortnite with a friend. We were talking and playing, I was really enjoying it, but I had a very odd feeling because it was like being with a friend, but in actual fact he was miles away from me. I like that feeling. It’s intimacy.