A Company Member’s Point of View: First Week in the Studio

by Drew DeJesus

I am pleased to be given the opportunity to provide some insight into our process, or my feelings thereon, as I can categorically say this has been a new and exciting experience for me. My training is based in acting, with only as many movement classes taken as were offered by Stella Adler during my course at NYU; however, Ms. Hilliard has managed to establish, in the period of less than a week, a Safe Place where one's background of training is all but unimportant. All that matters is how the movement affects the reality of being, and this is something that all humans may experience, in every waking moment of their bodily existences. Through what I, in word-play, describe as Physio-situational Experimentation -- that is to say, placing One, Two, Three or more Bodies into Individually Prescribed Rules of Physical Limitation in conjunction with some Pertinent Situation -- we find ourselves creating relationships of movement and sometimes language. As these relationships are Heightened and Explored, Refined, we find little gems contained therein that shed more light on the various Themes about which the Piece is beginning to circumnavigate. I am interested to see, when in such a short time we've come so far, to what distances we may travel when the time of our collaboration nears its peak.