At 20th Century Studio’s “Enter The Forbidden Zone! The Planet of the Apes Experience,” located at what is normally San Diego Wine & Culinary Center (across the street from the Convention Center at
200 W. Harbor Drive, San Diego), we learned a bit about how to walk like an ape under the tutelage of Alain Gauthier, movement coordinator. Here are my thoughts and impressions.

What helps is comfortable shoes (sneakers). Look at the shoes he is wearing. I was wearing rubber-soled ankle boots that I can run in.

Gauthier told me first, flat feet and bent knees. An ape is anatomically different. An ape doesn’t bend at the waist; it bends at the hips, so butt out. Apes have longer arms proportionally than human beings and this is simulated with the things that look like crutches. That means the shoulders are weight-bearing.

What helped me here was dance lessons. I was aware of heel lead versus toe lead. Being bent-kneed or in plié is also something you’d find in dance. Having practice moving arms and legs same side or opposite sides is also something common in dance movement. Moving sideways is also something one might be forced to do in dance.

The weight-bearing on the shoulders is something that one might experience in gymnastic disciplines like parallel bars (even or uneven) and the pommel horse.  As you can see, the arm extension devices are not like crutches (under the arm), but if one has been in crutches for an extended period, that might help as well, particularly in bending at the hips instead of the waist.

In this video below, I believe Gauthier is demonstrating how an orangutan would move because it has proportionally longer arms than a chimpanzee or a gorilla.

I think this chart of “Size Comparisson of the Great Apes” by Harry Wilson illustrates this.

Throughout this demo, I couldn’t help but think of the Sherman Brothers (Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman) and their classic, “I Wan’na Be Like You (The Monkey Song)” performed by Louis Prima, Phil Harris, Sam Butera and Bruce Reitherman.  I wanted to go back and learn more, but there’s never enough time.