Building Connections Through Movement & Sound

My Name is Sher Levesque and I am a Movement/Sound Specialist and teacher at Theatre Adventure.

With the help of the Reeve Foundation, I set out to create an educational movement resource for people with diverse mobility challenges and caregivers that support them in their explorations of the performing arts. Intent on helping students build a universal movement language that brings new awareness to how they orient and move through space. This shared movement language will help them learn more about their preferences and skills around movement and also help them use this information to enhance the group relationship process and their overall ability to connect to others in their theater troupe.

I have had the opportunity to introduce & explore performance-oriented skills & techniques in our theater programs. Many people with disabilities often do not get to access the performing arts in the same ways as others without a disability. They often get to explore the wonderful therapeutic and social aspects of things like music, dance, and theater but have less access to classes or training that teach the foundational skills of the performing arts.

I bring a lot of my background from working with people with various disabilities into this work using strength-based & trauma-informed approaches in any assessments that help me better understand & connect to the individual.

I draw on my background in meditation, yoga therapeutics & somatic practices. Somatics can be described as mind-body practices—ways to feel the body from the inside out-finding relationships and connections in our bodies. All of these things can support someone studying performance work.

The pandemic has helped foster a disability revolution here in the United States. The mainstream or those without disabilities are learning about the complexities of people with disabilities to access and navigate everything in life. For example, there has been a lot of energy in professional dance organizations and communities around accessibility to dance for people with disabilities-from attending performances to training and performance opportunities.

There was the group work component and some specialized one-to-one work with several students. The teachers at Theatre Adventure identified four students from one of our troupes who have a range of mobility/movement issues that often come along with their different types of disabilities. I met with these four students for several one-on-one sessions. I also worked with them along with other students in the troupe each week in classes & rehearsals. We incorporated the work from our one-to-one session in different ways that impacted the whole group in classes and performances in our spring theater production.

Each one-on-one session was unique. The first sessions were focused on reconnecting in person with the students and their support. I had worked in person with these students before the pandemic and then online since then. I had not seen many of them in person for over two years. So rekindling that in-person relationship with these students/their support was super important. There was also the consideration of environments/space for the one-on-one sessions. I met with one student at our theater program, one at his high school, and two students at their homes. The connections and the relationship building are, of course, central to the work and so individualized.

The group work focused on all the students and anyone supporting them during class (teachers, support staff, family/friends) learning foundational techniques to enhance their movement awareness and skills.

Over the year, I introduced warm-up practices/techniques that taught LMA language, the concept of structured improv in both dance and music, vocal warm-ups, and the importance of “practicing/how to practice beyond class/rehearsal times.

Overall, I wanted all the students/their supports & theater teachers to develop and understand a common movement language and to explore consistent warm-up & movement practices that support their passion for performing.

One of the more important things to point out is how this type of movement & the approaches to the work impact student lives beyond the theater. This work aims to support students living with paralysis to build relationships both within and beyond Theatre Adventure programming. These relationships include discovering new ways to use movement as a focal point for interaction and communication. They can use their newly acquired movement vocabulary for creative expression on the Theater stage.

ELIJAH

I have worked with Elijah one-on-one before, and we have an established relationship. Much of my previous work with Elijah was focused on his musicianship, so when I visit, he expects me to bring a lot of instruments! He often talks a lot at the beginning of our sessions, so I like to give him that time to establish & express himself. Elijah has a very strong connection to sound & music, and we’ve found that sound can be used to enhance his movement skills.

A big piece of my work is to train our staff and those who work directly with our students in these practices and methods. I offer directions and suggestions that they can adapt to the person they are supporting in an accessible and meaningful way. Elijah always has a support staff, family member, or friend with him to help with mobility through all activities in his day-to-day life. I tailor my approach to complement and enhance the movement work they are currently focussed on.

While working with Elijah and his team, I ask questions and gather information to help me assess what strategies might be helpful and discover if anything physical, mental, or emotional has changed since our last visit.

Elijah has been doing a lot of physical therapy work and is focusing on stability and flexibility, so I tie that into what I am doing. Here Elijah is, lying down on the floor, and I was thinking about his range of motion with his upper body and also noticing where he might be holding tension in his body in general. Doing gentle shaking can be another way to check where he was at.

Elijah is a very somatically aware person-oriented to physical sensation and the use of touch to navigate his day-to-day life. So I know that this can also be a strategy to engage Elijah in this work. When I am tapping on his wrist, he knows he should be tapping the mallet. When he is playing an instrument, I am looking at how he's moving his upper body.

Here I am using a theraband which is a thick & stretchy elastic band used in physical training and strength building. Elijah has great strength, so he can hold onto that theraband. I'm trying to get him to pull his body back and then release it. If he does it well, it makes that loud snapping sound that he finds funny and engaging.

For a lot of students who are Neurodiverse and really into sound, having things that create different noises can help in doing therapeutic movement work.

In the one-on-one sessions in the spring, I started to focus on the student’s character work for their upcoming production. You can see Elijah in his costume as we explore movement & sound work for the Waterbird character he will be playing in the Spring show, The Seeking Traveler and the Cloudworld.

ANTHONY

This is my first time seeing Anthony in person in a few years. It was fun to reconnect with him to explore his strength and range of motion. We used the Theraband to explore strengthening and stretching his body in fun new ways.

Anthony is not able to use his limbs on his own, he requires physical support from family during classes and all actions of day-to-day life. Notice that when I lift his leg, I am supporting the joints, his ankle, and his knee, with my hands. Anthony’s explorations with Therabands can provide his family with ideas on how to playfully engage with him and support his movement work. Partner work to create a dance. Anthony loves physical partner work. He enjoys exploring different ways we can work together to create fun and interesting movements.

Anthony attends theater classes online, and we usually see his whole face. I am encouraging him to explore using his face to show different emotions. This is tricky for him as he loves to smile, laugh, and tell jokes. Anthony is very expressive with his face, and eyes-this is how he communicates to the world. He is not able to use his voice to speak words. During the project, one of his family members spoke about how it may be helpful for Anthony to explore and utilize a range of facial emotions to help him be able to better communicate with others, including people out in his community. You can see Anthony is skilled at using his eyes and his gaze with the intention of expression, communication, and connections. The intention of the movement is always important.

Anthony also loves working with sound as a support for connecting with movement. As we workshopped ideas for his character’s movement for the show, we discovered he loves not just shaking his wrist with the seed bead shaker, but he loves to shake his whole body. He used these techniques during his performance as a waterbird in The Seeking Traveler and the Cloudworld.

ALEX

Alex is another student who loves sound, music, and working with instruments. You can see that I am playing different instruments with him to see if a particular sound captures his attention that day. Every visit, he gravitates towards a different sound. Alex prefers learning through auditory and somatic experiences. Sound is something that we feel in addition to “hearing.” That is one reason why it can be helpful to skillfully use sound and music to elicit movement in addition to verbal and visual instructions.

During this visit, he loved the sound of the chimes, and they elicited the most smiles and laughter. At school, Alex is working on many movement-related things and keeping his hands on the middle plane and table height instead of up overhead all the time. He is working on using his own hands to hold cups, utensils, and instrument mallets in band class, where he plays the bass drum. 

Alex has very sensitive hands and often prefers not to hold objects for too long. If he doesn’t want to hold something, it might go flying across the room. As he gets more comfortable holding things, he will gain more independence in his life and activities I’ve noticed this year that he is growing in this area. 

Alex prefers to guide other people’s hands to clap or play instruments instead of using his own, I have been helping him to open up. It’s super important that any movement work I do complement and support his movement work at school and home. 

So as we moved into character development, I made sure we considered his preferences and his movement-related goals at school. Alex loves the vocalizations with the hand clapping. We used these vocalizations in a scene from our spring show that included Elijah, Anthony, and Jenny. 

JENNY

And here is Jenny. We are close to the debut of our Spring show and working together on her character’s movements Jenny loves to dance but says that movement work can be challenging for her at times. She is a passionate & dedicated student (and teacher) and loves to learn & grow. She spends time outside of class researching movement by watching performances and theater warm-up exercises. Jenny has indicated that this kind of movement work can be helpful for her in other areas of her life, working on her balance and general mobility. She wants to learn how to move more freely while being careful not to do any movements that might create or increase pain.  

Through this work, Jenny discovered that bending her knees helps her feel more balanced and stable. Early on in our one-to-one sessions, we focused on breathing practices to help her center & relax. Jenny also focused a lot this year on using space and how to move through space. We are practicing rowing a boat, alternating rowing right and left while walking across the floor stage. As a mentor Jenny was able to model this movement for her co-star during her performance in The Seeking Traveler and the Cloudworld.

Theatre Adventure troupe members benefitted greatly from their work with Movement Specialist, Sher Levesque. As a result of the Reeve grant project, the participants gained new skills and greater comfort with movement. This was evident during the actors’ enthralling performances of, The Seeking Traveler and the Cloudworld. Audience members appreciated the actors’ physicality, skills, and the artistic self-expression they brought to their characters on stage.