Walk the Walk

This session was an opportunity to show the group what I have been working on and get some feedback on it. I showed the video that I had created, featuring different clips of me walking, and explained that I wanted to have my blog available for participants to browse through. I asked the group for some advice on how best to invite my participants to experience the work. Teresa asked me to play the video again, she turned off the lights and asked me to sit on a chair near to the wall where the video was being projected. It was interesting for me to see how altering something so simple as where the audience are seated whilst viewing the video and the setting around them can change their experience. By having the audience seated alone in the dark, it made this experience a lot more intimate, without me actually even interacting with them live in the space. As I have mentioned previously, intimacy between the performer and the audience/participants is something that I have been intereste...

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Me, Louisa, Jenny and Lotty decided to meet and talk about our progress on our projects, as well as doing some workshop activities to help us move forward. We began by sharing any developments we had for our projects. I explained that I had made the decision to no longer have my participants do a solo off-site audio walk, and instead I wanted my work to be based solely inside the 'instillational hub' that I mentioned during the exercise with Elenor, whilst implementing the audio ideas into this. Louisa, Jenny and Lotty shared some of their ideas for their projects, and then we decided to do an activity called 'Clean Questions', which helps to raise questions and find answers regarding your work. The idea of clean questions is that one person asks questions and another answers. The first question is always "What would you like to happen?" - in this case this is referring to during the performance. The maker will answer this question, and then the person ask...

At this midpoint of the process, Teresa and Beth got all the students from MA Performance and Choreography together in order to share our progress so far. We were paired with someone from the opposite course to us (I was paired with Elenor from the MA Choreography course) and we were asked to give a detailed description of what we had in mind for our projects so far. Once we had both done this in our pairs, we would have to do a short presentation about our partners' work and answer questions from Teresa and Beth - so it was important to listen carefully to Elenor, and also to try and communicate my ideas to her as clearly as possible. Teresa and Beth also asked us to tell our partners a bit of background context about our practice, in order to help them understand where this new project placed within it. I told Elenor about my previous explorations with walking practice, my inspirations (Marina Abramovic, Adrian Howells and Rosana Cade), and I explained my thoughts regarding my ...

It just so happened that during my process for this work, me and my friends decided to climb up Mount Snowdon. I consider myself to be quite an active person, I go to the gym regularly, I have developed a practice based on walking for the past 2 years, I have completed my Duke of Edinburgh award, and I did a performance where I walked constantly for 12 hours - however, I still knew that Snowdon would be a challenge for me. After 15 minutes of constant uphill walking, I had to sit on a verge and have a break with my friend Caleb. The rest of the group were all still raring to go, they had barely got started, but me and Caleb were ready for the climb to be over. We were very genuinely considering going back to the car at the bottom and waiting for the rest of the group to get back, but we managed to find our motivation and carry on. We were using a guide that we found on the internet to reach the top of the mountain, which had interesting facts at points along the trail, for exa...

I first became interested in walking practice on a module during my second year of my Undergrad degree, we had two guest tutors for an ensemble project, meaning the whole class created a piece together. Walking practice was introduced to us by these guest tutors, as their PhD research explored walking, and used many different walking methods and techniques to create material. During the time on this module, these tutors led many workshops and taught us some of the methods that they had been exploring. One of these methods was to go on a group walk where we had to follow the leader of the group, and only they knew the route that we would be taking. This technique meant that the whole group had to place trust in the leader, especially when we walked in areas that we were unfamiliar with. This is something that I found really interesting, and has been something that I have been exploring alongside my walking practice research. I am interested in the relationship between performer and au...

After thinking long and hard about what I wanted to make for my final project as part of the MA, I felt myself drawn to walking practice - over the past two years I have built my personal practice and developed my understanding, it only seems fitting that my final work should also explore walking practice. Over the course of my undergrad and my MA I have enjoyed making participatory durational work, I believe it is where I thrive the best and therefore where I feel most comfortable - again it makes sense that this final work should also take this form. The risk with me making another walking practice piece is the struggle to create something new and different to the work I have previously made and so I have begun my process with this in mind.

Feeling stuck in a rut and lacking inspiration, me, Jenny, Lotty and Louisa decided to have a group session together to discuss and collate our ideas, and offer each other any feedback. We began this by initially talking through any ideas that we had. Personally I felt in a place where I had no idea of what I wanted to create. I knew that it will probably involve audience interaction/participation and will probably take the form of a durational/instillation style work.  Next, Louisa suggested an exercise where we had to write down five words that described the last piece of work that we made, and then write down any exercises, research, themes and ideas that we would have if we were making another piece of work about these themes. Once we had done this for our own work, we did it for each other's. My last piece of work was the one I mentioned briefly in my last post, where I held hands with a participant and talked to them about intimacy. Below is a photograph of my map. ...

The link below will take you to a doodle poll where you can select one 30 minute slot to participate in my piece 'Walk the Walk', which will take place between 1:30 and 4:30 on Tuesday 3rd September in the Perform 1 Studio inside the Leeds Beckett University Leslie Silver Building. https://doodle.com/poll/dtze788xus3arq4a Please note, during your experience there will be a section where I ask you to walk on a treadmill at your own pace for 10 minutes. If you are unable to do this you may leave before this section begins.

I just wanted to briefly reflect on the module launch session that we had with Teresa. This began with Teresa reading us a text that she had written 10 years ago for a group of students entitled ' How do I make work? '.  As you can see from the images above, the letter details the different decisions and considerations that Teresa makes when she is making work. However, she also stresses that it is important to find the ways of working that are best for you, and these suggestions are only suggestions, not rules to be followed.  Teresa then asked us to imagine the moments after our final projects are finished, and the feelings, emotions, experiences that would happen in these moments. What people would say after watching, what we would be feeling. And then, Teresa asked us to choose two words - one to summarise how we were feeling right then, at the start of the module, and one to summarise how we think/hope we will be feeling in the moment after our pieces were fi...

For my first blog post I wanted to explain a bit about myself, what type of performance work I make, and how I have reached this point in my practice. During my time on the Undergraduate Degree in Performance at Leeds Beckett, I mainly created solo work, and I did a lot of research into durational work - completing a 12-hour walking performance and several shorter explorations myself. Durational work and walking practice were definitely two of my main focus areas as I started the MA, and I was also interested in further exploring audience interaction/participation and 1-to-1 performance , as this is something that I became interested in towards the end of my degree.  My interest into 1-to-1 performance has drawn from my want to explore the idea of intimacy and contact - something that I have just began to explore whilst on the MA. My most recent piece of work was an exploration into this, as I sat at a table and held hands whilst talking to participants about their e...

My name is Emily Mae Leigh, I am a 22 year old MA Performance student at Leeds Beckett University and this blog will track the progress of my latest project 'Walk the Walk'. Please follow this link in order to book your place in the performance.