Clowning Videos

I was inspired (and intimidated) by these videos and got some ideas for our Clownlympics performance from them. Rowan Atkinson has a great sense of play and reminds me of an overgrown kid in this drum skit.  He kept his drum set very clear and his movements precise. I was impressed by how well the drummer matched his movements during the performance (even though I'm sure it was all choreographed).

The first thing I noticed about Marcel Marceau was how beautifully he moved his hands - it could be a dance! He established each mask well in terms of where they each were and I liked that the scene built and by the end he was using his entire body to match each mask.  Something that made his performance easy to follow was how consistent his 'neutral' face was in between the masks.

Bill Irwin had a wonderful style of movement that was free, agile, and exact. I particularly enjoyed his hat moves - it is now my life ambition to learn how to do that forward-spring-into-the-hat move if it's the last thing I do (which it probably would be).  He squished and expanded very well too, I thought, and his physical comedy style reminded me a lot of Dick Van Dyke.

For Jeff Wills, my eye was immediately drawn to his handlebar mustache.  The concept for the piece was original and very clever and he used a great balance of looking slightly out of control but still safe enough that the audience was never too concerned about him falling, and being concerned for someone's safety makes things decidedly less funny. I've never seen aerial dance used as a comedic tool and I thought it was really fun.

http://www.theplace2.ru/photos/Rowan-Atkinson-md2030/pic-377550.html