Next Workshop - Awakening Your Embodied Voice with
Maggy Burrowes
Saturday and Sunday, 17 – 18 May 2014
12 – 5pm both days
£60 per day
The Urdang Academy (formerly MovingArtsBase)
134 Liverpool Road,
London, N1 1LA (10 minutes walk from Angel Tube or Highbury & Islington Tube/Overground)
My main reason for training as a Feldenkrais Practitioner was to develop the Method in the context of voca
l awareness, health, and performance training. I saw no difficulty in backing up one obscure profession – jazz singing – with another! The human vocal equipment is continuously engaged in one vital function – breathing – and regularly engaged in two others – preparing food for digestion, and communication. The complexity and sophistication of our communication function is unparalleled in the animal kingdom, however the awareness we have of the muscles involved varies enormously from structure to structure, and that is in part due to the vital importance of the other two functions. The human larynx is in more danger of choking while eating than any other creature – a newborn larynx is positioned high in the mouth so that breathing and suckling can go on simultaneously, but by 6 months the larynx has moved back and down into the throat and from this moment on the three functions interconnect in a much more complex way. In order to protect us from choking several important vocal structures act so automatically that we only have a limited awareness of, and control over, them. On the other hand many of the articulatory muscles are much easier to control and very easy indeed to sense.
