17.1.08

meredith monk: notes on a voice

















Theatre practitioner/choreographer Meredith Monk writes these 'Notes on the Voice', published in
Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance:

  1. The voice as a tool for discovering, activating, remembering, uncovering, demonstrating primordial/pre-logical consciousness.
  2. The voice as a means of becoming, portraying, embodying, incarnating another spirit.
  3. The dancing voice. the voice as flexible as the spine.
  4. The voice as a direct line to the emotions. The full spectrum of emotion. Feelings that we have no words for.
  5. The landscape.
  6. The body of the voice/the voice of the body.
  7. The voice as a manifestation of the self, persona or personae.
  8. Working with a companion (the accompanying instrument: organ, piano, glass, etc.): repeated patterns or drone creating a carpet, a tapestry of sound for the voice to run on, fly over, slide down, cling to, weave through.
  9. The voice as language.
  10. History: Beginning - 1967, duet of voice with Echoplex reverberating unit
    (Blueprint), the free voice as electric impulse [...] Continuing - 1970, duet of voice with electric organ [...] The traveling voice (moving through dreamscapes). Now - [...] the voice of the 80-year-old human, the voice of the 800-year-old human, the voice of the 8-year-old human [...] the full range of the voice (pitch, volume, speed, texture, timbre, breath, placement, strength); the voice as a vehicle for a psychic journey
found on the poetic practice journal link

meredith's official website here

listen to her beautiful sound here at ubu web

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