These are the instructions that Hamlet gave the actors in Shakespeare’s famous play. Cate Deicher has used Hamlet’s advice in another way — to help nurses, artists, and architecture students invent movement. Such “non-dance” students are often shy about moving. So Cate has developed a lengthy list of action words as an icebreaker to get students on their feet and thinking kinetically.
In our Meaning in Motion lecture-demonstration last month, Cate shared her list with audience members and invited them to choose five words at random. Then participants were encouraged to abandon their seats and improvise short movement studies based on the list of words chosen. The actions could be arranged in any sequence.
Afterwards, one participant for whom English is a second language confessed that she did not know the meaning of all the chosen words. But by watching other people’s studies, she was able to deduce what each unfamiliar word meant! Perhaps movement facilitates language study by also making it possible to suit “the word to the action.”
You can try Hamlet’s advice to link actions and words with this excerpt from Cate’s list:
“stretch, sway, reach, roll, wiggle, curve, hesitate, twist, dig, skip, kick, flail, crouch, whirl, creep, withdraw, collapse, lean, scatter, slink, radiate, flutter, wave, enclose, undulate, wander, tremble, swirl, drag, kneel, scamper….”