This past jam session on Sunday, March 29, we focused on the voice. In the first half of the session we spent time exploring with sound, unconcerned about quality in the traditional sense. The object was not to produce “pretty” or “aesthetically pleasing” sound but to explore resonance, pitch and tone in ways that we are usually not permitted. Some artists explored the interplay between body and sound and how one affected the other. This exercise did not have very many limitations; it was a free (and hopefully freeing) exploration of the voice. We hope to continue with this type of work in future jam sessions. [Editor’s note: we recently had a workshop with Tom O’Connor, a movement teacher, who taught us several partnering exercises for body mobilization that also help open up resonance in the voice, something that we may introduce in future jam sessions.]
For the second half of the jam, artists paired up and each pair had a rod. The initial goal was to move around the space holding the rod between partners by the hand. We then introduced a sound to initial the passing of control between “leader” and “follower.” Then, artists were given the words “here” and “now” to use during those exchanges and it was interesting to see language developing - was it always laden with meaning or was it possible to explore these words just as sound? The last layer of this exercise was adding music to play with.
In a post-jam discussion we considered whether or not language was introduced too soon into the work and if we spend more time on voice work without introducing that type of “meaning.” In the coming weeks, we’ll continue on our voice sourcing journey.
Here are some photos from the day’s work:
