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Katie Rose
from: Katie Rose
Category: General Discussion

The Moving Voice

The Moving Voice
Dancing Your Song and Singing Your Dance


I am delighted to be collaborating on a special Dance & Voice event with wonderful Beverley Drumm, founder of Nectar of Life this month.  Our discussions have got me thinking about the relationship of movement and voice and how both support the liberation of joyous, authentic self-expression.
Dancer in the Dark - Ramtin Zanjani

Liberating You
If theater is ritual, then dance is too... It's as if the threads connecting us to the rest of the world were washed clean of preconceptions and fears. When you dance, you can enjoy the luxury of being you.
- Paulo Coelho

Movement liberates us from the constrictions of habitual postures and grooves we have got caught up in.  In shaking out our bodies, our voices are also liberated.  My first singing teacher, the wonderful Jana Dugal, used to get me to run round the room when I was nervously about singing.  It instantly loosened me up and took my self-consciousness away.

Take a walk and a warble on the wild side

There is a need to find and sing our own song, to stretch our limbs and shake them in a dance so wild that nothing can roost there, that stirs the yearning for solitary voyage. ? Barbara Lazear Ascher
When we reclaim our voices and our bodies, we gain access to an enormous amount of primal, wild energy. The internal intelligence within us (call it what you will Higher Self, Intuition, Psychic Sat Nav, spider sense) becomes more clear and apparent.  In that moment of knowing ‘yes this is what I want to sound, this is how I want to move’ we become more available and empowered to make new choices.  This liberates our wildness, creativity and the positive power of the inner rebel to chart our own course in life.

Play
Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music ? William Edgar Stafford
Singing and dancing liberates the playful child within us and moves us from analysis to curiousity, from fear to adventure.  We drop the judgements that inhibit our engagement with life and become participants instead of observers.  We jump in, get muddy, mucky, messy and allow ourselves to enjoy, laugh, wail, whoop, scream, boogie-woogie, wobble, fall over, jump, hop, cartwheel, foxtrot.

Courage
To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. - Agnes De Mille
I do not own a TV so I notice what programmes seem to be captivating people on Social Media - and right up there at the top are Strictly Come Dancing and Gareth Malone’s The Choir.  There is a fascination with the process of learning to dance and sing that has millions tuning in to watch the current heroes and heroines being put through their paces.  It is instinctively understood that to express ourselves creatively involves courage, discipline and the willingness to change and go beyond our everyday concepts of who we are.

Rhythm
Our biological rhythms are the symphony of the cosmos, music embedded deep within us to which we dance, even when we can't name the tune.
- Deepak Chopra

We are innately tuned to natural rhythms - from our heart beat, to the cycle of the moon - everything has a innate moving music to it.  You only have to look around a tube carriage of commuters plugged into their ipods to see that we instinctively respond to music by moving and sounding - foot tapping, head nodding, finger twitching, humming, whistling - even in the most constrained of spaces, we are singing and dancing. 

Connection
On many an occasion when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred. In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists. - Michael Jackson
Paradoxically, it is when we feel most ourselves, express our uniqueness that we are most able to feel connected to everything around us.  As we dance our own dance and sing our own song, we remember that everything is dancing and singing with us.

I invite you to come and connect and discover your singing dance and dancing song with us at
The Art of Dance - Dance and Voice on Wednesday 20th November at the Skylight Centre.

Wishing you the joyous liberation of your unique dance and song



Moving Your Voice Tips

1. Shaking - liberate your expression by standing with knees soft, feet planted then shaking the body, gently then with increasing strength.  Relax your jaw, open your mouth and allow sounds of all shapes and sizes to emerge. 
2. Moving Sound, Sounding Movement - allow yourself to move and stretch, sounding as you do so - what is this sound of my elbow bending? how do my knees sing as they bend?
3. Freestyle - put on your favourite track of the moment and sing and dance it to your hearts content.

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