The vocal body

Abstract

In current understandings of voicing, especially in long-standing training formulae for actors and singers, the body is considered as a supporting mechanism. Good, healthy and aesthetically pleasing voice is produced when all the relevant body parts function efficiently. Still, this chapter asks: is the mechanistic paradigm the only option? Can we decisively map our physiology into apparatuses that contribute to sound-making and parts that resist participation in voice or stay unaffected by sounding? What are the consequences of such a paradigm for both the extra-daily and the everyday voicers? Drawing on my work as a movement specialist and director with experimental opera groups which seek to challenge the body-voice dichotomy (Experience Vocal Dance Company and Opera in Space) as well as my doctorate project on the physicality of the voice in vocal dance, post-Grotowskian practitioners and Korean pansori singers, I wish to share my observations on the possibilities of physiovocal unity. Using a practical session with my opera singers as a case study, I will attempt to foreground an integrative perspective, which moves beyond understandings of the body as a mere facilitator or homebase of vocal emission.