We live in times when our voices need to be heard. They should resound in their richness to express our deepest needs and be received and understood by others with the intentions they are charged with. And yet, with so much to say, when we reach for our voice, it often feels as a stranger we don’t really know much about, and its expression falls short of what we would wish from it. It might feel blocked, or forced, or simply awkward. Trained to express ourselves ‘adequately’ to match the daily needs of ‘emotionless conversation’, we often lose touch with the vital tool of survival that our voice is a tool that we remember experiencing as children, which only animals retain. Our voice has the potential to express our primal needs and make them clear and strong, at a time when voices are rarely heard. We can awaken this dormant tool of expression we are gifted with through regular encounters with our voice, aimed to relieve some of the stress and tensions that block our expression through it. Just as with physical disciplines, the more we work with the voice, the more flexibility and strength it can gain and the more articulate it will become.

The workshop will touch upon several basic elements:

• Physical release: using simple exercises to release tension in the body that could obstruct the vocal work.
• Breath: awareness of the presence of breath and the way it exists autonomously in our body. Recognising how accumulated physical and emotional tension can affect the way we breathe. Using breathing patterns to activate the use of the diaphragm.
• Resonators: human sounding vibration. Discovering new sound qualities when awakening different resonators in our body. Our vocal expression can become richer if we uncover different facets of our own voice.
• Creation through voice: colouring, shaping, directing the sound towards a particular aim.
• Co-sounding: existing in relation to other voices, in an unstructured soundscape and within a particular polyphonic musical relation/structure.

This workshop, with its very simple form and slow pace, reaches out to people who are not from the performance environment. It calls out to office employees, social workers, housewives, parents, teachers and nurses to come together and explore in a friendly environment the phenomenon and pleasure enclosed within the unique tool we possess – our own voice. It offers a place to experience, release and share the beauty and strength of our sounds.

Comfortable clothing should be worn so as to allow for free movement on the floor/ground.

Fee: 30 PLN (1 session)

Please email your applications to Sabina Majcher at s.majcher@grotowski-institute.art.pl. Candidates are accepted on a first come, first served basis. Number of participants: 10.

More information here