Another influence of my performance is a video from Buzzfeed’s Ashly Perez, who challenged herself to improve her dance and performance skills in thirty days.

This video contains vlogging, rehearsal clips, and the end dance performance. throughout the thirty days, she overcame struggles with skill, stamina and health, as well as gaining new confidence and building self esteem.

In one particular part of the video, Ashly decides to put some music on and freestyle dance in front of her mirror, she feels the rhythm of the music, improvises her movement and has fun.

The ability to just be in the moment, letting go of worries by dancing freely and singing along to music is one of my most uplifting pass-times. It has helped me get through many hardships in my life, raising my spirits and thoughts. It truly is a coping mechanism.

In first year of university I played Tulip in Simon Armitage’s Eclipse as a part of National Theatre’s Connections annual festival. A year later, the cast decided to go for drinks and see the new company’s show. During drinks some of the current students asked the alumni and rest of the cast about advice on module choices. Not completely sold on my decisions, I asked Martyn Horner-Glistner about his solo performance.

Influenced by Marina Abramovic, durational performances, and the use of technology, Martyn created an hour long autobiographical piece investigating the inner workings of his mind. Martyn used the time in his performance as a self-exploration and self-lead therapy session.

Having only two viewing points: an above window and a camera feed in a separate room, Martyn was able to symbolically change the space to represent his mind, with himself inside it, physically shutting out the audience. But still being able to react to messages and support, involving anyone and everyone, through social media.

Martyn used different sized images to represent the problems in his life and how big they were. He used these to recollect memories and explained how he needed to deal with each problem, either placing them in the bin (letting them go from his mind) or keeping them. However, he had created a safe space in the centre of the room to retreat to if he had to have a mental and physical breather.

Recommending everyone to try this process, Martyn said he found this experience exhausting but in turn extremely liberating.

So that’s what I intend to, try the process, but in my own way.