Why Actor’s Movement Workshop?
Maria Del Bagno has been teaching actors how to move for over 20 years. An actor herself, she knows how important an actor’s awareness of their body really is. When she herself was taking acting classes, she noticed her teachers assigning her classmates to take dance class. Not a lot of actors understood the importance of honing one’s body as a creative instrument, and exploring body and spatial awareness, posture, and body confidence. Plus, they were intimidated to go to a dance studio and try taking a dance class.
So, Maria decided to design a movement class specifically for actors. She held the class in a theater, so her students would feel more comfortable in their surroundings. Because Maria’s first art is dance, she understands how to use her body as a creative instrument, which is something most actors don’t have experience with, and she uses that experience to shape her lessons. This is not a dance class, but rather a class that uses movement as a vehicle to achieve the ability to express through one's body creatively. The class has evolved over the years, but has always centered on a doable curriculum implemented in step-by-step gradients which is then applied to the acting.
“It is so important for an actor to know how to use their body and their voice as a creative instrument, because that is the tool they have to create their art.”
An actor needs to cultivate body awareness, confidence, and competence just like any dancer would need to. To command one’s space with ease, relaxation, centeredness, presence, and focus can transform the actor’s capability to meet the creative, physical, and even emotional demands of a role, and can help an actor book a job. This class helps actors become free to quickly utilize, command, and execute their impulses and imagination.
This class also addresses the typical barriers that actors face when it comes to body confidence, like tension, nerves, awkwardness, ticks, and not knowing what to do with one’s body when on stage or in front of a camera. This class also teaches actors to know how to prepare themselves physically for a role, performance, or shoot.
Standard exercise is, of course, important, but it is different and produces a different result than the curriculum of this workshop. This workshop allows the actor to create their desired amount of intention and attention on the body immediately, and yields visible and tangible results both in the present and provides the actor with tools to use for their craft for future work.
Participating in this class will help you learn how to take your body off automatic mode and instead make active and intentional real-time artistic choices to enhance and deepen your performance ability.
By the end of the workshop, actors will:
Increase body and spatial awareness
Enhance overall body confidence and creative confidence
Free the body of physical and nervous tension
Improve strength and flexibility
Increase coordination, responsiveness, imagination and expressiveness
Hear from some other actors who have gone through this transformational experience:
“Amazing! Lots of fun! There is so much more to draw from when you use your imagination and just let it go - and don’t judge or edit. This was a great class! Very beneficial for artists!”
“I gained confidence in my body to utilize it in my acting like the full instrument it is. The overall workshop opened up horizons of possibilities to create.”
“The emotional range work was enlightening and empowering! I also feel as a whole, this work boosted my confidence in my impulses.”