Leaders exercise

One of our first lessons was led by Sarah Niven and we were working around one specific exercise which entailed following a leader within the space. It starts with everyone around the edge of the room and one person walks into the space in any given direction with one movement, which could be clapping etc. Then another person would jump beside/behind the joining in with the movement until they reach an edge of the room. Then the other person would walk fluidly in another direction with another movement. More people would join in to create a clump and keep this going, ideally getting to a stage where the leader was unidentifiable.
 At first it felt too organised and the leader stood too far from the group; sometimes the leader would struggle to think of a movement and other times the group would stop at the edge of the room with everyone hesitating to become that leader.
 It ended up to be a really beneficial exercise and we all had to learn something as we went along. It taught us to be more disciplined because at first everyone was talking and we quickly established how hard and unfocused the exercise would be if this continued. It also opened a small window for us to begin devising, we were allowed to create movements which were performed in unison as a group, which could be incorporated into the final performance. We also began to experiment with how the exercise could in fact be in the final performance. So the movements began to be performed with military precision and went from child play into marching, then movements which reflected soldiers. It was really interesting to do this with spontaneity and see how people reacted to the stimulus.