ABSTRACT
Of Decroux's six weekly class sessions, five were technique classes and the sixth, on Friday evenings, began with a lecture by Decroux, after which students performed improvisations. Decroux's lecture prepared the way—provided a context—for what followed.
Solo or duet improvisations often began from behind the white curtains that covered the far wall of the rectangular basement. The student-actor waited there in silence for the right moment of appropriate “emptiness” before appearing, gradually or suddenly, through the curtains’ center opening: first a hand or an arm, perhaps in slow motion, followed by a sudden unveiling of the face, an immobility followed by the gradual emergence of the rest of the body into the playing space.
One of the criticisms of corporeal mime depicts it as lacking breath— the performer, a kind of rigid automaton. However, Decroux's teaching and performance at its best highlighted the contrary. He insisted that we initiate movements internally, originating in the biceps for arm and hand movements, or in the buttocks for leg and foot movements. Movements might also radiate out from the sternum to activate the trunk. These internal vibratory displacements, thus, began invisibly before the first externally discernable ones. The body's visible movements emanated from “muscular respirators,” originating with a “singing within,” in order to become “en-chanté.” Moreover, these micro-movements continued oscillating invisibly even after the apparent movement had ceased. This idea of a pre-movement, essential in technique classes, was equally crucial to his notion of improvisation.
