Future Practice Research - Evolution into Singing

Play Research

I'm so pleased that I have found two professional players to try out the body out opera experiment with.  I'm hopeful there may be a third or fourth person to join us.  We won't be able to start until after the new year, but this is great news for me as I can continue to explore creating narrative for opera and also find ways to flow with body out impulse into any kind of sung expression.

The Evolution Bit

The playmates are not Bel Canto singers and so, unlike Opera Erratica's workshops where trained Bel Canto singers are learning how to use theatre improv tools, my task will be to see how confident, competent theatre and vocal improvisers can be helped to discover bel canto singing through their body experience and play.  I can see I can offer some technical observations or make suggestions for physical exploration.  I can also share a music improvisation palette of tools.  I don't know if anyone has tried this approach to arriving at a classical vocal competance but I'm confident we'll discover some interesting things about the methodology. Looks like I'll be documenting this kind of work and hopefully creating performance pieces for some time to come. 

Future for POWOW

Holding more workshops for the group of us that have already begun to explore in our first five workshops and expanding these opportunities out across the South West will be on my list to do once I finish this final year at Uni in July 2012.  Some of the participants have allowed me to interview them and others, I hope, will fill in a questionnaire.  I'm building up the evidence I need to apply for funding.  In the meantime I have to document this for a 30 minute presentation for my academic purposes and I have video, audio, photo and text to edit for that purpose. 

More Manifesting 

To carry the positive energy forward and to allow me to develop as a practitioner I realise the next stage requires resources.  These things are on my manifestation/wish list:-

1. Pianist, guitarist, violinist, cellist, double bass, percussionist, brass and woodwind players and many other improvising musicians to be available for collaborative improvisational sessions both with myself and with the three, four or five of us who will be creating performance material, with a view to (professional) performance.
2. Bel Canto singers who want to explore theatre improvisation with me. 
3. Funding from interested sources so that we can afford the transport and room hire costs that we'll incur in the next stage.
4. Donated rehearsal room in Bodmin or Launceston for us to use once weekly from January onwards.  If the fourth and fifth persons decide to join us we live as far apart as mid Devon to West Cornwall.

Expansion and Contraction

I'm noticing that this blog changes back and forth from an 'I' to 'we' state, that the activity is sometimes inner reflective and then outer active, that there's a kind of breath and energy ebb and flow.  I feel in a flow, that I'm in the right place, doing the right thing and that's precious to me.  I regularly find myself returning in my mind to the people, information, experience and tools that I encountered on the one and a bit terms I studied at Cornwall College, St Austell on the first FdA in Performance Arts that they ran and, despite my gripes about this and that, I'm very grateful to have been studying at Dartington and now University College Falmouth.  Once again, dots are being joined and a path of crumbs might lead somewhere useful.

Kim
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