Mime 4: Duck the duck

::The theatre was in silence, the stage brightly lit, and Amy was waiting in the wings to begin her act. Mime was one of the hardest forms of dance, and as such required a lot of skill. She would be incorporating traditional mime acts into the dance, as well as some more modern and innovative moves.::

The costume:



From the sidelines of the stage, she picked up her wand and whispered a spell, pointing to the back of the stage, where the entire wall was covered with a smooth, white screen.

The audience watched as the show begun...::

...to be continued

::Amy watched as the lights dimmed until the hall was left in darkness, and then the introduction began on the screen at the back of the stage. There could be no sound in a mime act, and this magical display was a good way of introducing the dance to the audience.



::Duck walked onto the stage when the words had finished their display, still in the cover of darkness and took her place in the centre. And then, the lights came back on and she started her performance.::

::The first move she was going to display was one of the most famous in mime artistry, the pretence of being trapped in a glass box.

She spread her palms flat and pretended to touch a wall in front of her, moving around in the air. The effect was rather good, she had perfected the art of making every hand movement come to a sudden stop to indicate exactly where the wall was.

She then made a sad expression to the audience, not only is mime about the movements of the body, but also about the expressions on the face.

Gracefully spinning around, she repeated the hand movemennt on the other sides of the 'box', before making it look as though she was pushing through a malleable surface to escape from the box.

The audience applauded as she took a bow. The first part of the act was done, but there was much more to come...::

::Now out of the glass 'box', she mimed pulling on a rope. The trick here was to make it appear as the rope was attached to something heavy, and therefore it appeared as though it was a struggle to pull the rope.

It looked quite effective, but she didn't want to linger on one move for too long, and swiftly moved onto the next.

She then pretended she was leaning on a wall, her body poised as though there was actually a wall there. It was a strange effect, but the audience seemed to like it, as they applauded madly.

She smiled and bowed again, the next part of the mime was unusual, a departure from the usual style, but she hoped it would work well.::

::She moved to the side of the stage and quickly waved her wand to change her outfit. This was a breakaway from traditional mime, but she hoped it would entertain the audience as much as the normal style did.

She then pointed her wand at the stage and conjured a large box.

The music then began to play out.

http://www.nordic-michaelball.com/MusicLib/Musikbibliotek.htm (scroll to near the bottom of the page and click the link "Doll on a music box/truly scrumptious".

The new outfit:

::She walked back onto the stage, clumsily, like a doll, and moved over to the big box. The sides of the box fell open to reveal a doll, which started rotating.

She then started moving in a comical dance to the music, tripping over her feet and doing staged tumbles which resulted in forward rolls, all the while not uttering a word in keeping with the idea of mime.

This dance continued for a little more, before the music box started to close up, the music began to taper off, and Amy finished her dance by gamboling forwards and ending up lying on the floor with her chin cupped in her hands.

The audience began to applaud, and she jumped up, a grinning expression on her painted face, and bowed to the audience. This dance was over.