Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Alongside director Frances Loy and the cast, conversations around power, strength and command of self/others/environment led me to dwell on the creation and physicality of power.

There are so many types of power and control as well as multiple ways of gaining and losing it. If I compare an assertive, bold mode of communicating with a more quiet power, I cannot help as I sit here and write, 'try on' these qualities, postures and physical attitudes.

Of course, the need or desire for power is context-driven, with a fight or flight response lurking in the background. Growing or shrinking, or going towards/away as a result of something or someone in the environment, or to internal thoughts, are processes we don't always pay attention to, but were useful global concepts to play with whilst supporting the cast prepare for A Doll's House. (In Rudolph Laban's terms, this is the category of modes of Shape change, the process of creating relationship).

How much space do we take up, how much space do we allow ourselves to take up, what zones of the space around us do we continually expand into, reinforcing that dimension or area? All these choices, conscious or not, feed self-perception of presence and power, as well as communicating to others about how much or little impact we wish to make.

We are implicitly and explicitly encouraged to move in certain ways, as suits the micro and macro socio-cultural time and place, and the expectations of gender and class, we are born into. And whilst individually we have greater access to certain ways of moving than others, we all have potential for movement qualities we don't necessarily think are 'us'. Aspects of a shared physical heritage or palette, though honed and sheared in different socio-cultural times and interpretations yet spatially and temporally eternal, are reawakened when you begin to explore how it feels to move as someone else, in another gender or collection of characteristics. You really are exploring your own potential for configuring movement choices. Getting to explore and access new and difference ways of moving is extraordinary and rather than separating 'parts' of yourself off, your conception of yourself increases as you gain more choices. And with choice, as an integration of body-mind, going from coping with an environment to having more power in any circumstance is indeed empowering.

Coming into a sense of your own weight and breath is a pre-requisite for presence. How easily mere presence slips over into something else: domination, reliability, objectification, availability for communication. Power when integrated feels distinct to the impression of power, which appears more forceful and aggressive: we can sense it.

Let's look at taking up more space and reinforcing that part of your personal space you choose to fill.

Take your attention to your collar bones and breast bone and as you breath slowly imagine this area widening and advancing slightly as you inhale. As you exhale allow your chest to return, but imagine you are still the volume  that you were when you inhaled. Don't inhibit any movement but don't force it. Feel the width across your shoulders. What does this feel like?

I feel a sense that I can take my time and there is something reassuring and straight-forward about making decisions. The space in front of me is mine with a sense of authority, and I can luxuriate in it at my own pace. Any quicker with the breath and tempo and a feeling of defiance might creep in, perhaps with more desperate assertion. Or maybe it's pride. Or warmth towards something or someone. The list continues. One thing's for certain, my heart can't help but move with this action and it is not singular in its expression.

Increasing your pressure on the ground may increase conviction, whilst lowering your centre of gravity makes level and direction change easier as well as making it harder for others to push you over. These conceptual-emotional aspects of gaining and sensing power, regardless of gender, are physically tangible and were included in my rehearsals with the cast, as well as spatial dynamics and tensions.

Walking from rehearsal to the tube crystalizing their masculine roles, some of the actors reported that people stepped aside to make way for them, rather than a more habitual (and also enjoyable) nimble weaving in and out of available gaps. How easily movement changes relationship. As a title, 'body language' is insufficient: it implies static form, yet it is the process of motion that tells the story, regardless of the degree of motion. Mere breath is a gesture, and in this production the audience is so close as to feel it.

Something becomes a cliche when we've seen it too much, so in response to the comment in the Independent that 'Torvald's ''masculine'' body language can look cliched', I offer this. The physicality that Margaret-Ann Bain employed for her interpretation of Torvald was perhaps recognizable as something potentially archetypal for it to be interpreted in the pejorative terms the Independent chose. An archetype of alpha dominance? Maybe we've simply seen too much oppressive, patriarchal, possessive, class-based superiority, domineering posture-gesture activity in the physicality around us for it to appear unusual as movement choice. By women playing male roles, it forces us as an audience to see it anew, and hopefully, to stop taking it for granted.

Alexandra Baybutt, Certified Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst

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