​​​​​History of the Alba Method / Alba Emoting

 

Origins:

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The origin of the method can be traced to experiments conducted by psychologists Susana Bloch and Guy Santibáñez at the University of Chile in Santiago in the early 1970s. (Bloch & Lemeignan, 1992). Santibáñez had recorded changes in the respiratory movements of patients with anxiety neuroses while they spoke about conflictive events; when he then instructed them to recite the events again while maintaining even, relaxed breathing, the patients reported less stress and anxiety. Expanding data collection to include other physiological parameters such as heart rate, arterial pressure, and muscle tonus, Bloch and Santibáñez confirmed the initial results with both normal subjects under hypnosis, and with trained actors using emotion memory; more significant, “across conditions and subjects, each emotion was characterized by the same specific pattern of physiological responses.

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They identified six emotions-- joy, sadness, anger, fear, erotic love, and tenderness-- "basic" "because they correspond to universal invariants of behavior-- in a Darwinian sense-- and are present in the animals and in the human infant," (Bloch & Lemeignan, 1992) and proposed that all other emotions (e.g., jealousy, pride, etc.) derive from these. Wondering if the physiological experience of emotion could be aroused physically, without a real or imagined stimulus, they focused on the aspects of emotional behavior that could be reproduced at will, and created prototypes of changes in respiration, posture, and facial expression, which they called "emotional effector patterns." The pair also created a seventh pattern, based on Santibáñez first observations, to return the body to emotional neutrality through relaxed alignment, slow, deep breathing, and release of facial tension. Naive subjects taught to reproduce emotional effector patterns were, in fact, found to experience the corresponding emotions; they were also able to neutralize both the subjective and physiological arousal using the neutral, non-emotional pattern.

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Bloch and Santibáñez then teamed with theatre director Pedro Orthous to apply these discoveries to train actors to better express emotions onstage. They began the development of ways to teach the respiratory-postural- facial patterns. During this process, they discovered that when actors worked on the patterns, the emotions induced tended to linger after the exercise was over. They then developed a specific technique to break the emotional bodily patterns through specific behaviors. This technique, called step-out, allows persons to end an emotional state at will and enter a non-emotional state. Bloch, Orthous, and Santibáñez named the whole procedure for working with emotions the BOS Method (Bloch, Orthous & Santibáñez, 1987).

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Further development of the system was temporarily halted by the coup in Chile. Bloch and Santibáñez went to different countries, and Orthous died in 1974. Years later, from her post at the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris, Bloch, resumed experiments "as an avocation" with actors from the Teater Klanen of Denmark, headed by Chilean director Horacio Muñoz. It was during this period that the method was renamed Alba Emoting, after a production of Federico García Lorca's House of Bernarda Alba (Bloch, 1994). Muñoz eventually returned to Chile, where he continued training actors in the method.

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Aside from a few articles available in scientific journals, the still-experimental method was largely unknown to actors and educators outside Chile and Denmark until Bloch's 1991 presentation at the annual conference of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE). She offered workshops at ATHE conferences over the next several years, finally making plans to begin formal training sessions, satisfied that the method was "now refined and ready for a wider diffusion as an alternative technique for the work of actors." (Bloch 1993) 

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Diffusion:

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In Cachagua, Chile, in October of 1993, Susana Bloch offered the first training seminar in Alba Emoting open to actors and teachers worldwide. Bloch was assisted by associate trainer Joan Polvsen, one of the original actors who worked with her at Denmark’s Teater Klanen. Limited to ten people, the two-week session attracted a polyglot group of participants from Europe and South America, and the United States. Three of the participants, Michael Johnson-Chase, Nancy Loitz, and Roxane Rix, arranged with Bloch and Polvsen to offer another training seminar in the US the following year.

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Susana Bloch continued to offer training sessions in the US, Europe and South America through the 1990s and beyond. In 1995 Bloch granted independent teaching privileges for the first time, to Roxane Rix in the US and Solange Durán in Chile.  Rix, Nancy Loitz, and Joan Polvsen worked with Bloch over a period of years to develop basic principles of pedagogy, leading to the first system of Certifications, publicized in 1997 in workshops and through web sites for the newly formed Alba Emoting Inc. and Alba Emoting North America.  That same year, Juan Pablo Kalawski presented his thesis introducing application of the method in the field of psychotherapy.

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As Alba Emoting continued to spread – slowly and deliberately, by Bloch’s design -  an informal system of teaching apprenticeship was developed; although by the end of the 1990s there were still only a handful of certified teachers worldwide, that number was poised to increase dramatically in the next decade.  As a result, introductory and full-length workshops became more available, teachers and practitioners began to publish articles and book chapters about applying the method, and key aspects of this revolutionary approach to emotion became more generally understood and accepted.

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In 1996, Susana Bloch published her first book aimed at the general public, Biología del Emocionar y Alba Emoting , co-authored with her friend and colleague Humberto Maturana.  By 2006, Bloch had published three more books in Spanish, Alba Emoting, bases científicas del emocionar (2002), Surfeando la ola emocional (2006) and Al Alba de las emociones (2002) . A rough English translation of the latter, The Alba of Emotions, had only limited distribution, mostly through workshops, but served as the basis for the more refined English language version published in 2017, Alba Emoting: A Scientific Method for Emotional Induction.

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Alba Method Association: 

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As demand for training in Alba Emoting grew geographically and across disciplines, the need for a common organization emerged. The Alba Method Association was founded in June 2013 to fill that need. Early actions of the temporary board included a review of certification processes, training protocols and vocabulary. The name Alba Method was adopted at that time. Founding members of the Alba Method Association were Patricia Angelin, Hyrum Conrad, Rocco Dal Vera, Juan Pablo Kalawski, Nancy Loitz, Roxane Rix, Elizabeth Townsend and Brant Wadsworth.

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Sources cited:

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Bloch,S. (1993) Alba Emoting: A Psychophysiological Technique to Help Actors Create and Control Real Emotions. Theatre Topics. XXI:3, 131-138

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Bloch,S. (1994) Personal interview with Roxane Rix

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Bloch,S. & Lemeignan, M. (1992) Precise respiratory-posturo- facial patterns are related to specific basic emotions. Bewegen & Hulpverlening. 1, 31-38

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Bloch,S. , Orthous, P. & Santibáñez-H, G. (1987) Effector patterns of basic emotions: a psychophysiological method for training actors. Journal of Biological Structures. 10, 1-19

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