Pilot Activity Re: The “Artist Within” 3rd Training “YOUR INNER CLOWN, HUMOUR STRATEGIES AND OTHER COMPETENCES” Leipzig, Germany
Humor and Integral Expression and Dance Therapy
Event: KAB 2016, Conference of the Hungarian Association for Expressive Arts Therapy Venue: SÍN Culture Centre, 1139 Budapest, Gyutacs u. 10. Date: April 30th 2016 Time frame: 1,5 hours Number of participants: 12 Number of participants on the whole event: cca. 100 Group leaders: Tibor Cece Kiss and Krisztina Zsiday How: based on the experiences, learning, process, approach gained during the training course in Leipzig about humour strategies and clowning, integrated with the professional knowledge of group work and Integral Expression and Dance Therapy Why: Our aim was to test how we can incorporate the experiences and approach into our work with other helping professionals Name and contact of the persons / organisation doing the workshop: Tibor Cece Kiss, info@ikte.hu Kriszta Zsiday, zsidaykriszta@gmail.com
IKTE, http://www.ikte.hu Target group: conference-goers, mostly helping professionals, and volunteers
Description of the activity and results ● Verbal opening circle, exptectations of the participants, introduction from the group leaders ● name-game with throwing balls of different size and material ● Chase circle ● “Oh James!” - people catch and “shoot” each other in the circle ● Augmentation, exaggeration of emotions in the circle ● Mirroring of each others movement in pairs, using “broken” or “curved” mirror ● Transformation / Refraiming of situation in pairs. One person stops in a position, the other completes it in a way that gives it a specific meaning. Than the other person changes his/her position to give it another, entirely different meaning. And so on. ● Transformation / Refraiming of situation in trios, in spotlight, the group is observer, vitness role. Anyone can go in and replace any one person, and embodying a different position giving the whole statue a different meaning. ● closing verbal circle, evaluation Pros and contras concerning the used methodology As it was our impression already in Leipzig, Integral Expression and Dance Therapy and Humour Strategies/Clown work have a lot in common. Both approaches work with the body and movements, with bodily experiences and expressions. Working more explicitly with humour can help in alleviating difficulties and weaken resistances. Humour creates distance which can be helpful when being too close to a difficult experience might be overwhelming. What must be paid attention to, however, is to use humour strategies in an Integral Expression and Dance Therapy setting with care, not to totally disconnect from the experience, but rather find a more acceptable way of connecting to it. Forced humour might be disruptive and destructive. Recommendations on the methodology We highly recommend the use of humour strategies in an Integral Expression and Dance Therapy setting for the benefits that can be expected. But use it with consideration, the overuse of it might prove counterproductive.
Copyright Recipients are free to use all or parts of this document for personal use however are requested to inform the author. Recipients are requested to acknowledge The artist within – Applied eMOTION consortium and the author in any reference to the content of this document. In the event of any further queries please consult the author. Acknowledgements This project was possible with the financial support from the Erasmus+ program. The methodological resources and inspiration came from the The artist within – Applied eMOTION long-term adult education project (www.theartistwithin.eu). The generosity from the fund and these organisations is much appreciated.