Movement director
Encyclopedia
A Movement director is involved with actor movement in a variety of production settings that include theatre
, television
, film
, opera
and animation
.
Within these settings, Movement directors usually work closely with the director and the actors, collaborating with the creative team to realise the physical life of a work. They propose a physical language to performers and directors, and devise training methods or teach skills that will help facilitate a specific physical style. The Movement director may create, or research and pass on, embodied information about etiquette
, ethnicities (proxemics, gestural language, social codes), a character’s condition (medical conditions, inebriation, pregnancy, historical facts), a character’s journey (for example ageing), specialist movement (for example period, dances, dexterity in falling and lifts, animal work, cross-gendered performance) or chorus work.
Although choreography
is part of a Movement directors’ skill-set, this does not mean that every choreographer is also a Movement director. There are also important differences between the Movement director and the Fight director, where although the Movement director will engage with the effect of the relevant weapons on posture, movement and emotional state, the fight choreography itself is directed by the specifically qualified Fight Director.
Specialist Movement consultants may work in other specific areas, for example Peter Elliott
, with his seminal work in the field of primate movement and film (Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, 1983).
The National Theatre
created the role Head of Movement that was held by Jane Gibson for a period of ten years. Glynn MacDonald has been the long standing Master of Movement at The Globe Theatre, underpinning the work of each season and collaborating with visiting movement directors and choreographers.
2009 saw an important development in the appointment of Struan Leslie as Head of Movement at the Royal Shakespeare Company
. This is currently the only official Head of Movement position within a British theatre company.
Many contemporary Movement directors have established long running relationships with certain companies, with whom they have created a shared body of work and working methodology. These are for example Jane Gibson with Cheek by Jowl
, Kate Flatt and Struan Leslie with Katie Mitchell
at the National Theatre and English National Opera
, and Liz Ranken with Shared Experience
.
Other contemporary Movement directors include Michael Ashcroft
, Peter Darling
, Vanessa Ewan, Lea Hausmann, Steven Hogget and Scott Graham (Frantic Assembly), Georgina Lamb, Sue Lefton, Liz Ranken, Dennis Sayers, Toby Sedgwick
, Ayse Tashkiran, Sian Williams.
Movement directors today emerge from a rich heritage of movement pedagogues and practitioners. French Director and practitioner Jacques Lecoq
, and movement theorist and pedagogue Rudolf Laban
offer important influences. Many of their students and contemporaries became influential teachers of movement and Movement directors in British theatre, often influenced by and interweaving with the lineage of contemporary dance as influenced by Laban, and the heritage of social and cultural dances.
Claude Chagrin, who trained with Jacques Lecoq, was the ‘movement person’ with the National Theatre Company before and while it became permanently resident in Denys Lasdun’s National Theatre Building in 1976. She was also the first person to be credited for movement, on a production of The Royal Hunt of the Sun (Dir. Peter Shaffer, 1964).
Michel Saint-Denis
taught movement in London and was an influential associate director alongside Peter Brook
at the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1962–1966, introducing influences from his work in Paris with his uncle Jacques Copeau.
Other notable teachers who have shaped British movement work today through a heritage that is passed on from body to body, are Trish Arnold, Geraldine Stevenson, Jean Newlove, Litz Pisk, Yat Malgram and Belinda Quirey. Their work underpins the practice and understanding of contemporary movement practitioners and gives physical life to actors’ performances at Drama Schools and in productions across Britain.
Movement director and MA Movement Studies course leader at The Central School of Speech and Drama (CSSD), Ayse Tashkiran, is researching a comprehensive history of movement direction and creating a platform where movement practitioners are able to share their work and facilitate an understanding of their profession by a wider audience.
Industry initiatives to draw out the work of movement directors include the Young Vic and the RSC
with a variety of workshops, apprenticeships and placements.
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
, television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
, film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
and animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
.
Within these settings, Movement directors usually work closely with the director and the actors, collaborating with the creative team to realise the physical life of a work. They propose a physical language to performers and directors, and devise training methods or teach skills that will help facilitate a specific physical style. The Movement director may create, or research and pass on, embodied information about etiquette
Etiquette
Etiquette is a code of behavior that delineates expectations for social behavior according to contemporary conventional norms within a society, social class, or group...
, ethnicities (proxemics, gestural language, social codes), a character’s condition (medical conditions, inebriation, pregnancy, historical facts), a character’s journey (for example ageing), specialist movement (for example period, dances, dexterity in falling and lifts, animal work, cross-gendered performance) or chorus work.
Although choreography
Choreography
Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements in which motion, form, or both are specified. Choreography may also refer to the design itself, which is sometimes expressed by means of dance notation. The word choreography literally means "dance-writing" from the Greek words "χορεία" ...
is part of a Movement directors’ skill-set, this does not mean that every choreographer is also a Movement director. There are also important differences between the Movement director and the Fight director, where although the Movement director will engage with the effect of the relevant weapons on posture, movement and emotional state, the fight choreography itself is directed by the specifically qualified Fight Director.
Specialist Movement consultants may work in other specific areas, for example Peter Elliott
Peter Elliott
Peter Elliott is rector of Christ Church Cathedral and Dean of New Westminster in the Anglican Church of Canada. Elliott grew up in St. Catharines, Ontario. His brother Tim Elliott is a retired Anglican priest. His sister Anne Elliott is the head of the St. Leonard's Society for paroled ex-offenders...
, with his seminal work in the field of primate movement and film (Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, 1983).
Movement directors in Britain
The role described by the title of Movement director today has been in existence since at least the start of the 20th century, although rarely mentioned in programmes or credits. Movement directors often work at a crossover point, shifting between teaching and directing movement for actors, and have also been termed as Movement coach, Theatre choreographer, or Movement support.The National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
created the role Head of Movement that was held by Jane Gibson for a period of ten years. Glynn MacDonald has been the long standing Master of Movement at The Globe Theatre, underpinning the work of each season and collaborating with visiting movement directors and choreographers.
2009 saw an important development in the appointment of Struan Leslie as Head of Movement at the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
. This is currently the only official Head of Movement position within a British theatre company.
Many contemporary Movement directors have established long running relationships with certain companies, with whom they have created a shared body of work and working methodology. These are for example Jane Gibson with Cheek by Jowl
Cheek by Jowl
Cheek By Jowl is a theatre company founded by Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod in 1981. The company has performed across the world and, with their 1986 production of Twelfth Night, were the first to bring a Shakespearean play to The Swan....
, Kate Flatt and Struan Leslie with Katie Mitchell
Katie Mitchell
Katrina Jane Mitchell OBE is an English theatre director. She is an Associate of the Royal National Theatre.-Life and career:Mitchell was raised in Hermitage, Berkshire and educated at Oakham School. Upon leaving Oakham she went up to Magdalen College, Oxford to read English...
at the National Theatre and English National Opera
English National Opera
English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...
, and Liz Ranken with Shared Experience
Shared Experience
Shared Experience is a British theatre company. Its current joint artistic directors are Nancy Meckler and Polly Teale. Kate Saxon is an Associate Director.-Productions:*A Passage to India *Madame Bovary...
.
Other contemporary Movement directors include Michael Ashcroft
Michael Ashcroft
Michael Anthony Ashcroft, Baron Ashcroft, KCMG, , is an international businessman, philanthropist and politician. He holds dual British and Belizean nationality, and is a Belonger of the Turks & Caicos Islands. Ennobled as a life peer in 2000, he sits in the House of Lords on the Conservative benches...
, Peter Darling
Peter Darling
Peter Darling is an English dancer and choreographer best known for his award-winning work in Billy Elliot the Musical.-External links:...
, Vanessa Ewan, Lea Hausmann, Steven Hogget and Scott Graham (Frantic Assembly), Georgina Lamb, Sue Lefton, Liz Ranken, Dennis Sayers, Toby Sedgwick
Toby Sedgwick
Toby Sedgwick is a British movement director, actor, and theatre choreographer. He achieved critical acclaim for providing "horse choreography" for War Horse, currently playing at West End's New London Theatre and Broadway's Vivian Beaumont Theatre...
, Ayse Tashkiran, Sian Williams.
Movement directors today emerge from a rich heritage of movement pedagogues and practitioners. French Director and practitioner Jacques Lecoq
Jacques Lecoq
Jacques Pierre Lecoq born in Paris, was a French actor, mime and acting instructor.He is most famous for his methods on physical theatre, movement and mime that he taught at the school he founded in Paris, L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq from 1956 until his death in...
, and movement theorist and pedagogue Rudolf Laban
Rudolf Laban
Rudolf von Laban aka Rudolf Laban was a dance artist and theorist whose work laid the foundations for Laban Movement Analysis and other more specific developments in dance notation...
offer important influences. Many of their students and contemporaries became influential teachers of movement and Movement directors in British theatre, often influenced by and interweaving with the lineage of contemporary dance as influenced by Laban, and the heritage of social and cultural dances.
Claude Chagrin, who trained with Jacques Lecoq, was the ‘movement person’ with the National Theatre Company before and while it became permanently resident in Denys Lasdun’s National Theatre Building in 1976. She was also the first person to be credited for movement, on a production of The Royal Hunt of the Sun (Dir. Peter Shaffer, 1964).
Michel Saint-Denis
Michel Saint-Denis
Michel Saint-Denis , dit Jacques Duchesne, was a French actor, theater director, and drama theorist whose ideas on actor training have had a profound influence on the development of European theater from the 1930s on.Michel Saint-Denis was born in Beauvais, France, the nephew of Jacques Copeau, who...
taught movement in London and was an influential associate director alongside Peter Brook
Peter Brook
Peter Stephen Paul Brook CH, CBE is an English theatre and film director and innovator, who has been based in France since the early 1970s.-Life:...
at the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1962–1966, introducing influences from his work in Paris with his uncle Jacques Copeau.
Other notable teachers who have shaped British movement work today through a heritage that is passed on from body to body, are Trish Arnold, Geraldine Stevenson, Jean Newlove, Litz Pisk, Yat Malgram and Belinda Quirey. Their work underpins the practice and understanding of contemporary movement practitioners and gives physical life to actors’ performances at Drama Schools and in productions across Britain.
Contemporary developments
Movement Directors have sought to be named, in recognition of the existence of their profession, for many decades, and are increasingly gathering recognition. Relevant training for practitioners is now offered through recognized Higher Education degrees focusing on Movement in theatre, such as the MA in Movement studies at The Central School of Speech and Drama, founded by Vanessa Ewan and Debbie Green in 2004 and the MA in Training Actors Movement, led by Wendy Allnutt at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Manchester Metropolitan University also offers an MA in Movement Practice for Theatre.Movement director and MA Movement Studies course leader at The Central School of Speech and Drama (CSSD), Ayse Tashkiran, is researching a comprehensive history of movement direction and creating a platform where movement practitioners are able to share their work and facilitate an understanding of their profession by a wider audience.
Industry initiatives to draw out the work of movement directors include the Young Vic and the RSC
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
with a variety of workshops, apprenticeships and placements.