Walking and gait

Si la Joconde avait des jambes

*In a sense, we can say that, for the actor, the “pre-axpression” march upstream of all intentionality of dramatic play of expression. At the very risk that this expression on stage eludes him and plays something other than the situation or the character would assume: the actor then «walks wrong».

Isn’t it extraordinary to see
that since the time Man walks, no one
did not wonder why it works,
how it works, what it does while walking.
Honoré de Balzac

At the school of Etienne Decroux, through the «stylised» steps we discovered some fundamentals of walking: weight, fall, thrust, contact on the ground. This approach gave Claire Heggen in 1984 the desire to make an in-depth study (in connection with a physiotherapist specialized in dance movement, Blandine Calais) on this elementary human action, walking. Thus was born an analysis grid shared by the entire team of actors since 1985. Why the walk? Because everyone walks and nobody pays attention.

When the step accelerates or slows down, when the amplitude of the steps decreases, when the step becomes heavier or lighter, when the step becomes bumpy, lame, that it stops abruptly or slowly, it is already the actor. In a sense, we can say that, for the actor, the “pre-axpression” march upstream of all intentionality of dramatic play of expression. At the very risk that this expression on stage eludes him and plays something other than the situation or the character would assume: the actor then «walks wrong».

Therefore walking is a fundamental issue in the training of the actor. It seems necessary for him to identify his personal tendencies and to master a wide range of various steps in the service of the character’s construction. If walking can be considered as a psychology of the person, an image of oneself on the move, it is also music, relation to others, relation to space, relation to the world. It is the convivial place, the public transport of ritual social events: funerals, demonstrations of demands etc…

If it is a miracle renewed every time, committing us to the risk of falling, it is a powerful symbol of the path that leads us irreversibly from birth to death.

Le corps à l’ouvrage, de l’art gestuel, de l’art théâtral