Monday, August 30, 2010
I remember my second singing teacher helped through my fear of the keyboard by encouraging me to improvise.
We would take a random object from her house - a vase, an ornament, a pot plant - and try to "give voice" to it.
However bizarre or starnge or odd it sounded.
She would join in, and we would toss sounds back and forth to each other in an amazing liberating way. A way that helped me understand, not just theoretically, but understand in my body, that I do have a singing voice and the sounds it makes can be beautiful and can communicate.
The best of these sessions always left me with a feeling that we had communicated, on an incredibly deep level...
and listening to Meredith Monk's SONGS OF ASCENSION for the second time this evening, it is as if she has taken this to a totally wonderful and hugely sophisticated and profound level.
It's worth noting, too, that what Bausch and Monk have in common is that they work with a stable core of collaborators. Our structures militate very strongly against this.
It's a great strength that theatre Alba possesses - outside the system.
There's no point lamenting this: what matters is to try to create such a stable structure for oneself and ones fellow artists.
We would take a random object from her house - a vase, an ornament, a pot plant - and try to "give voice" to it.
However bizarre or starnge or odd it sounded.
She would join in, and we would toss sounds back and forth to each other in an amazing liberating way. A way that helped me understand, not just theoretically, but understand in my body, that I do have a singing voice and the sounds it makes can be beautiful and can communicate.
The best of these sessions always left me with a feeling that we had communicated, on an incredibly deep level...
and listening to Meredith Monk's SONGS OF ASCENSION for the second time this evening, it is as if she has taken this to a totally wonderful and hugely sophisticated and profound level.
It's worth noting, too, that what Bausch and Monk have in common is that they work with a stable core of collaborators. Our structures militate very strongly against this.
It's a great strength that theatre Alba possesses - outside the system.
There's no point lamenting this: what matters is to try to create such a stable structure for oneself and ones fellow artists.
Labels: meredith monk
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