This year's mime workshop tour was a blast to make it short. I really love and enjoy teaching contemporary mime and debunking the myths about pantomime the most from what I do.
It's the hungry eyes of the people who have almost no knowledge about pantomime, the shock in others, who think they know something about mime but realize it's just stereotypes or myths. And it's the smiles and laughs of the participants when they figure out it's not too hard to make it work and play around with their imagination and with their friends.
1. Workshop at the International School of Helsinki, Finland
The tour started in my home city of Helsinki and it'll end in November in my original hometown of Liptovsky Mikulas in Slovakia at the 30th Festival PAN, that we organize. A nice complete circle for me because I started to teach in Mikulas and I teach now in Helsinki. In this mimeblog post though we'll end up in Presov because the festival is a bit later.
The International School of Helsinki was a beautiful surprise of the tour in many ways. First, the teacher has a module about pantomime that she teaches, in a regular school. She shows them all she has found and they do some physical mime and create etudes. And they called HELMIME to send a professional mime for a workshop to learn the proper way how to mime. So I came to teach a bunch of children with some basic knowledge of mime and eager to learn more, which is perfect.
It was a short workshop for only a couple of hours so we managed to touch only the basics. We went through techniques, the importance of mime as an art form and they had a lot of questions throughout the workshop and I loved that they wanted to know more about mime. And as a teacher I was very happy to see few talented students who were nailing the mime techniques and they were too modest about their skill so I tried my best to boost their confidence so they know how good they are and that they can develop the skill further.
We finished the workshop with an etude from one of the students, that she made and it was very good because the whole group helped her with feedback and I told her how to remedy the parts that are not understandable and how to upgrade it and think when creating a mime etude.
I was happy to start a flame of curiosity about the living contemporary mime in more young, smiling people.
2. The Elementary Art School in Stochov, Czechia
After the workshop in Helsinki I flew to Prague and my very good friend and a mime colleague Valeria Danhova picked me up and took me to her students in the elementary art school. She teaches acting and also some mime to them and won few prizes with a mime performance they made together. So I was looking forward to work with them.
It was a two in one workshop because first, I worked with the smaller kids, showing them all the techniques but mostly playing around with those techniques and creating the world around them. They were really concentrated for such a young group and had ton of fun with time flying by very quickly. After we were done, it was time to have a slightly longer short workshop with the older group she has but still aged only 8 - 14 ish and with some of them new to the group and pantomime.
I went a bit deeper into the techniques with the older group and it was really nice to see the
creativity and abstract thinking developing in this age group. The work of Valeria Danhova showed in this group because when I was teaching the work in a couple with imaginary objects, they were more focused and it looked really good. Objects staying the same size for example. I was asked for some insights into parts of their prize winning performance so they showed it to me and I did my best to give some good advice but to be honest, we are talking a brush level fine tuning advice because they did such a great job and I had no issues with it at all because it was simple, understandable, funny and they enjoyed performing it.
3. Conservatory of JL Bella in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia
A second time teaching the contemporary mime workshop at this conservatory and still one of my favourite ones to teach at. This time I had a larger group of students, young actors with some of them coming second time to experience the workshop again because they liked it so much the last time, they had to come again. I was nothing short of amazed and honored by the fact they feel that they can and want to learn more from me.
This workshop was more in depth because we had five hours together and the age of the students was 15 - 18. It was a large group of more than 20 students so unfortunately I couldn't get into the pure acting exercises based on mime. But for such a large group they were quiet and very focused, asking a lot and answering my questions, brainstorming, being creative and playful which is everything I could wish for.
I really enjoy teaching contemporary mime to actors because as I say "A good actor should be a good mime in the first place" and it's great to see when they see it after a while too.
So this was a very intensive mime workshop with a lot of talent floating around and trying new things, thinking about mime and incorporating mime into their acting skills. I am not trying to make new mimes at these workshops, it's not something you can force on to someone. It either happens, the flame starts burning and they start to get interest or even love mime and even start doing it actively, or not. Or the flame dies if the teacher or a mime teaching is horrible at teaching or performing.
And this little miracle happened. Students really loved the workshop and they loved my performance after the workshop even more because after this particular workshop I managed to perform my solo etudes for them and I was so happy because they loved it.
4. Private Conservatory in Presov, Slovakia
The last workshop for now was a smaller and shorter workshop for acting students in Presov. The problem with a 3 hour workshop is that you just can't manage to show and teach everything important.
So I didn't deviate too much from the other conservatory and even though I enjoy the most teaching mostly the acting side of contemporary mime, which is very important for future actors, this time, for various reasons, I had to prioritise and get more into movement and body. It is also important and crucial and I enjoyed it a lot and it looks like this year is more physical so there I went with the flow and got physical.
We had a lot of fun again, everyone learned something new, made new synapses in their brains and sweat a bit. Some sceptical students were smiling in the end and didn't say anything after the workshop, only the smile remained.
The surprise of this workshop was an unexpected guest, a mime teaching them pantomime regularly throughout the year, Juraj Bencik, who also once performed with Cirque du Soleil. He came, sat down and made a lot of notes in his notebook so I am hopeful that their classes of pantomime will be enriched by some new insights from the workshop.
Final Thoughts
This was my second workshop tour and it only showed me how important it is to make this trip and teach young students of acting, our future actors in theatre or on our screens the oldest art form of pantomime in its newest incarnation of contemporary mime.
Thank you for being there with me by reading this mimeblog and if it got you curious or unhappy with not too many details, well, you have to be there to experience it with us. So I hope to see you at any of my workshops and if you want to know more don't be afraid to contact me.
I hope you enjoyed reading about bright, yound actors learning mime.
If you have more questions don't hesitate to drop by my website www.contemporarymime.com or contact me @contemporarymime on any social media and ask me more or get an online class of mime with a glass of wine.
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