The Science of Opera with Stephen Fry and Alan Davies
A Chinese Talent Took Apart Mozart With This Unbelievably Exciting Encore
7 Rules For a Highly Effective Movement Practice
1. You are a human being before you are a dancer.
Or an “x”, “y”, or fill in the blank with your activity.
2. Fundamentals are not of lowest level, but of highest importance.
In the world of athlete development there is this thing called the performance pyramid which we can use as a guide for how the flow of an athlete’s training life would ideally look like. Life, however, isn’t ideal, and this is especially true in dance.
3. Move honestly.
Honesty… On all levels of life, it is something I am trying to understand. What is truth? Is honesty the same as truth? What is “truth” when it comes to our bodies in motion, and how does it serve us?
4. If you cannot breathe during the movement, you do not own the movement.
Breath is an incredible built-in indicator of what your body is experiencing (making it an excellent tool for moving honestly). Your emotional state and physical health can be interpreted via the quality of your breath, as well as you ability to load and use core musculature to provide dynamic stability and decelerate spinal motion.
5. Slower is better at first- You can’t do it fast until you master it slow.
Until it becomes an unconscious process, movements often need to be practiced very slowly in order gain competence.
The more slowly you move, the more awareness, the more control, and the more honesty you’ll have in the motion.
6. Get out of your comfort zone, don’t be afraid to make mistakes and fail.
Unfortunately for your sense of pride, failure is how we learn and there’s no way around it.
7. Check-in before and after your practice.
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Workshop at Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris
During January, 2-4, 2017 a 3-day workshop with Maria Joao Pires, Milos Popovic, Julien Brocal and Giuseppe Ravì took place in Paris at Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris.
Giuseppe Ravì, the founder and the master coach of Respiro e Movimento®, shares his impressions and some photos from the event.
When people asked me if I ever met anybody using his/her body 100% according to the principle of Respiro e Movimento while performing prior to working with me, my answer had always been “never”. Then I met Maria Joao Pires and I had to change my answer.
The way she uses her body to produce her amazing sounds has really surprised me. I can say that the day I met Maria I met the final result of my work without even starting working with her. The first time we did a workshop together I was even more surprised by her explanations of what was behind her incredible sound. Surprisingly these were the things which I used to work on with musicians all the time, but which the majority of musicians doesn’t consider.
In the beginning of the workshop Maria often asks pianists what is the most important part of the body when they play piano, and the usual answers are hands, fingers, eyes… When you play an instrument you are in fact playing 2 instruments: your body is the first one and the piano is the second. Being connected to your body gives you the capability to connect to the piano. The whole body is important. Using the body at 100% as Maria does makes a huge difference. The sounds change completely.
What I do with my method Respiro e Movimento is exaclty establishing a connection between musicians (singers, dancers, any performers) to their bodies and giving them the possibility to use their bodies at 100% during their performance.
Working as a team with Maria Joao Pires, Milos Popovic and Julien Brocal is really special. During our workshops musicians change their perspectives about playing the piano and we observe an emotion of surprise and wonder on their faces. This is the experience that makes a difference. Even though some of them have been playing piano for 30 years. It is a new dimension, new awareness, new tools – all of these make them improve their performance in an amazingly short time.
ECOLE NORMALE DE MUSIQUE DE PARIS
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THE INSTRUMENT
THE WORKSHOP
Felicity Jones on How She Finds Inspiration For Her Characters
For all her characters, Jones creates scrapbooks. “Pictures that I see that remind me of the person I’m playing, little bits of writing,” she describes of its contents. “As much as possible, I’m trying to understand who the characters are and why they’re making the decisions that they’re making.”
For Jyn, she also did something a little different, knowing that, coming from another galaxy, Jyn is a different character to most. As THR describes, “Before the six-month shoot outside London began in August 2015, she spent hours watching music videos, particularly those of Florence + the Machine.” “It became a very important part of finding her. She walks almost a bit like a caged animal. Her fight sequences become like dances,” Jones says.
How We Breathe Affects Our Thoughts and Emotions, Northwestern Researchers Find
Zelano and colleagues discovered that the rhythm in which we breathe directly affects activity in our brain. Yet, there are a lot of factors involved such as how deep or shallow our breathing is and whether we do so through our nose or mouth.
In fact, there is an exact synchronicity between these two processes. The Northwestern team delved further and found that three major areas of the brain are affected by breathing: the hippocampus which is responsible for memory, the amygdala—our emotional center, and the piriform cortex, which controls our olfactory system or our sense of smell. These are all part of the limbic system which is responsible for our basic emotions such as anger and fear, along with our instinctual drives such as hunger, the sex drive, and caring for offspring. The limbic system is also responsible for our higher emotions.
So how can you use this knowledge to your advantage? Cognition may work better when we inhale through our nose, especially when worried or scared. This can help us react better to situations. Deep breathing exercises can also improve our memory and help us to make better decisions where our emotions are a central part of evaluation. So should you stay with a partner whom you love, even though they don’t ever want to get married and you do? Breathe in deeply through your nose while you think it over. It should help you sort it out.
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Making A Ballet Tutu