OKNO-CLOSE ENCOUNTERS 2021. FLOWS
Part 2
Moveable Cinema/Dynamic Expansion – workshop by Shannon Cooney
Mosaics of the Air - workshop by Aleksandra Kotecka, Tomasz Wierzbowski and Krzysztof Paździor
Shannon Cooney - demonstration of working methods
Mosaics of the Air – concert of Georgian polyphonic chants
Educational meetings – The Association for the Protection of Heritage Młyn-Papiernia in Barlinek
Moveable Cinema/Dynamic Expansion: Somatic dance/movement practice with Shannon Cooney
Moveable Cinema is a movement practice created to expand the felt-sense and consciousness of vision while in movement. Shared through a series of mandalas (or practices) it enables one to find a unique path to research consciously how the expanded sense of vision can be an available process to tune one into one’s body and acutely to the present. Beyond self-oriented practice, practices with others challenges and enriches subtle and powerful forms of witnessing. This becomes a vital and reliable tool for performance. Moveable Cinema exists within the frame of Dynamic Expansion, an integrated and somatic approach to orient to the Craniosacral System; tuning into its fluid dynamics and stillness phenomena grounds the practice. Tuning into and moving from the Fluid Body connects one to their deep knowing and the freedom of movement. This practice offers many possible applications to one’s personal artistic/creative work or practice including: a vibrant palette/range of movement qualities, joy in movement, fine-tuned visual field perception, enhanced depth of focus, heightened and subtle states of presence, refined self-perception skills, new systems of connecting with self others and, profound and grounded experiences in the sensorial field.
For this workshop, we will learn to recognize how these practices can be embodied and made available to “perform the present”. Whether this is in a theatrical context or in personal life, we expand on the practice of being seen. We will learn ways to score somatic practice into written dance/theatre/interactions. This addresses the questions of how to take profound discovery and score/write them so that they can be revisited and written into choreographic contexts.
Mosaics of air by Aleksandra Kotecka, Tomasz Wierzbowski and Krzysztof Paździora
The workshop introduces three-part polyphony, basing on the various musical scales of Georgian music, both folk and religious, and making use of various musical formulas. Through a selected set of exercises formed during more than ten years of both teaching and learning experience of the leaders, it will aim at developing what can be called a sense of polyphony. Working on a steady breathing, voice emission and color, as well as on close listening during singing – not only to each of the three parts being sung simultaneously, but to the whole vertical aspect of the music performed at the given moment, results in obtaining such a quality of sound, where each of the individual voices disappears in the whole of a given harmony and can be no longer made out. Polyphonic music taken in this approach is a tool for enhancing the focus and improving the quality of presence of a performer. The type of sensitivity which the workshop intends to develop brings about, first and foremost, the ability to listen: in the literal sense – to the sound created at the given moment, as well as in the more general one, helping recognize the exact qualities of the given performative situation as a whole. The workshop intends to focus on harmony, rather than melody, treating harmony as means of objective expression. Music will be treated as a platform for building a particular understanding between the participants and their unique common experience. We believe that music can become tangible and that meetings of voices can create mosaics of air.
The Concert
For over five years Aleksandra Kotecka, Tomasz Wierzbowski and Krzysztof Paździora have been exploring the domain of polyphony together. In their voice laboratory they focus mainly on the vertical dimension of vocal works in order to extract the maximum sound from each harmony. Thanks to this approach, each interval turns out to be a meaningful unit, carrying specific moods, tensions and solutions, which constitute a kind of micro-tales, thus posing a challenge to performers and requiring their full commitment to vocal action. Drawing on musical traditions which use unevenly tempered scales, Kotecka, Wierzbowski and Paździora strive to enter the depths of each sound, transcending Western European thinking about music based on the piano keyboard. Their attitude to vocal work is guided by the conviction that music can become tangible as long as the full potential of individual harmonies is respected. With this approach, music becomes a medium for objective expression.
“The presented material has resulted from our deep fascination with Georgian music and many years of laboratory research aimed at bringing out the full potential hidden in harmony. Georgian polyphony made us realise that far beyond correct, pure singing lies a fuller sound, carrying much more musical meanings and even capable of turning the air between singers and listeners into a geometric mosaic”.
Aleksandra Kotecka has collaborated with Teatr ZAR since 2004. She participated in the creation of productions: Ewangelie dzieciństwa, Cesarskie cięcie, Anhelli. Wołanie and Armine, Sister. She authored and co-authored music for several films and performances in Poland and the United States. She created the music production studio Foxterrier Production. She is involved in exploration of Georgian polyphonic chanting, both during source trips, as well as within the frames of her own research. Together with Tomasz Wierzbowski, she conducts musical work for Anhelli. Skowyt, the ZAR Theatre’s production, and together with Tomasz Wierzbowski and Krzysztof Paździora, she conducts an in-depth project of work on polyphonic Georgian chants. Another field is her interest is music of Eastern Orthodox Christianity which she studied in Lviv, St. Petersburg and Supraśl. She shares the results of her work during workshops. She has been practising yoga since 2005. She has completed three year-long courses led by Paulina Stróż, a certified teacher with Junior III degree. In 2016 in India she completed an eight-week course focused om breathing. In order to improve her workshop continuously, she participates in workshops with the best teachers from Poland and abroad. She is currently training for the Introductory II exam. In her vocal practice and in her workshops she uses her experience in working with the breath in yoga.
Tomasz Wierzbowski acted and played music in the Zar Theatre’s performances Ewangelie dzieciństwa, Cesarskie cięcie, Anhelli, Wołanie and Armine, Sister. Author of the 3/2 publishing series devoted to music (so far, within the series two books have been published, translations of How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony by Ross W. Duffin and Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization by Stuart Isacoff). We authored and co-authored music for several short films and theatre performances in Poland and abroad. Together with Aleksandra Kotecka he is involved in the work of the music production studio Foxterrier Production. Together with Aleksandra Kotecka he also conducts musical work for the ZAR Theatre production Anhelli. Skowyt.
In the last decade, Aleksandra Kotecka and Tomasz Wierzbowski have jointly conducted numerous vocal workshops in Poland and abroad (USA, Europe, Asia, South America) for individual participants – professionals and amateurs, theatre groups and drama school students. Thanks to many years of workshop work with such diverse groups, they have developed effective teaching tools, which they also successfully use in long-term programmes such as Actor’s Atelier (the first edition took place in Paris and Wrocław in late 2018 and early 2019).
Krzysztof Paździora. Graduate of the Faculty of Puppetry at the Academy of Theatre Arts in Wroclaw. For nearly four years he has continued his studio work on singing Georgian polyphonies with Aleksandra Kotecka and Tomasz Wierzbowski. He assisted, among others, in a workshop project within the frames of Nilüfer Theatre Festival in Turkey. He cooperates with the Klinika Lalek Theatre and Wroclaw-based Teatr Piosenki under the direction of Bogusław Klimsa.
ZDJĘCIA
OKNO-CLOSE ENCOUNTERS 2021. FLOWS
Part 2
Moveable Cinema/Dynamic Expansion – workshop by Shannon Cooney
Mosaics of the Air - workshop by Aleksandra Kotecka, Tomasz Wierzbowski and Krzysztof Paździor
Shannon Cooney - demonstration of working methods
Mosaics of the Air – concert of Georgian polyphonic chants
Educational meetings – The Association for the Protection of Heritage Młyn-Papiernia in Barlinek
Moveable Cinema/Dynamic Expansion: Somatic dance/movement practice with Shannon Cooney
Moveable Cinema is a movement practice created to expand the felt-sense and consciousness of vision while in movement. Shared through a series of mandalas (or practices) it enables one to find a unique path to research consciously how the expanded sense of vision can be an available process to tune one into one’s body and acutely to the present. Beyond self-oriented practice, practices with others challenges and enriches subtle and powerful forms of witnessing. This becomes a vital and reliable tool for performance. Moveable Cinema exists within the frame of Dynamic Expansion, an integrated and somatic approach to orient to the Craniosacral System; tuning into its fluid dynamics and stillness phenomena grounds the practice. Tuning into and moving from the Fluid Body connects one to their deep knowing and the freedom of movement. This practice offers many possible applications to one’s personal artistic/creative work or practice including: a vibrant palette/range of movement qualities, joy in movement, fine-tuned visual field perception, enhanced depth of focus, heightened and subtle states of presence, refined self-perception skills, new systems of connecting with self others and, profound and grounded experiences in the sensorial field.
For this workshop, we will learn to recognize how these practices can be embodied and made available to “perform the present”. Whether this is in a theatrical context or in personal life, we expand on the practice of being seen. We will learn ways to score somatic practice into written dance/theatre/interactions. This addresses the questions of how to take profound discovery and score/write them so that they can be revisited and written into choreographic contexts.
Mosaics of air by Aleksandra Kotecka, Tomasz Wierzbowski and Krzysztof Paździora
The workshop introduces three-part polyphony, basing on the various musical scales of Georgian music, both folk and religious, and making use of various musical formulas. Through a selected set of exercises formed during more than ten years of both teaching and learning experience of the leaders, it will aim at developing what can be called a sense of polyphony. Working on a steady breathing, voice emission and color, as well as on close listening during singing – not only to each of the three parts being sung simultaneously, but to the whole vertical aspect of the music performed at the given moment, results in obtaining such a quality of sound, where each of the individual voices disappears in the whole of a given harmony and can be no longer made out. Polyphonic music taken in this approach is a tool for enhancing the focus and improving the quality of presence of a performer. The type of sensitivity which the workshop intends to develop brings about, first and foremost, the ability to listen: in the literal sense – to the sound created at the given moment, as well as in the more general one, helping recognize the exact qualities of the given performative situation as a whole. The workshop intends to focus on harmony, rather than melody, treating harmony as means of objective expression. Music will be treated as a platform for building a particular understanding between the participants and their unique common experience. We believe that music can become tangible and that meetings of voices can create mosaics of air.
The Concert
For over five years Aleksandra Kotecka, Tomasz Wierzbowski and Krzysztof Paździora have been exploring the domain of polyphony together. In their voice laboratory they focus mainly on the vertical dimension of vocal works in order to extract the maximum sound from each harmony. Thanks to this approach, each interval turns out to be a meaningful unit, carrying specific moods, tensions and solutions, which constitute a kind of micro-tales, thus posing a challenge to performers and requiring their full commitment to vocal action. Drawing on musical traditions which use unevenly tempered scales, Kotecka, Wierzbowski and Paździora strive to enter the depths of each sound, transcending Western European thinking about music based on the piano keyboard. Their attitude to vocal work is guided by the conviction that music can become tangible as long as the full potential of individual harmonies is respected. With this approach, music becomes a medium for objective expression.
“The presented material has resulted from our deep fascination with Georgian music and many years of laboratory research aimed at bringing out the full potential hidden in harmony. Georgian polyphony made us realise that far beyond correct, pure singing lies a fuller sound, carrying much more musical meanings and even capable of turning the air between singers and listeners into a geometric mosaic”.
Aleksandra Kotecka has collaborated with Teatr ZAR since 2004. She participated in the creation of productions: Ewangelie dzieciństwa, Cesarskie cięcie, Anhelli. Wołanie and Armine, Sister. She authored and co-authored music for several films and performances in Poland and the United States. She created the music production studio Foxterrier Production. She is involved in exploration of Georgian polyphonic chanting, both during source trips, as well as within the frames of her own research. Together with Tomasz Wierzbowski, she conducts musical work for Anhelli. Skowyt, the ZAR Theatre’s production, and together with Tomasz Wierzbowski and Krzysztof Paździora, she conducts an in-depth project of work on polyphonic Georgian chants. Another field is her interest is music of Eastern Orthodox Christianity which she studied in Lviv, St. Petersburg and Supraśl. She shares the results of her work during workshops. She has been practising yoga since 2005. She has completed three year-long courses led by Paulina Stróż, a certified teacher with Junior III degree. In 2016 in India she completed an eight-week course focused om breathing. In order to improve her workshop continuously, she participates in workshops with the best teachers from Poland and abroad. She is currently training for the Introductory II exam. In her vocal practice and in her workshops she uses her experience in working with the breath in yoga.
Tomasz Wierzbowski acted and played music in the Zar Theatre’s performances Ewangelie dzieciństwa, Cesarskie cięcie, Anhelli, Wołanie and Armine, Sister. Author of the 3/2 publishing series devoted to music (so far, within the series two books have been published, translations of How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony by Ross W. Duffin and Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization by Stuart Isacoff). We authored and co-authored music for several short films and theatre performances in Poland and abroad. Together with Aleksandra Kotecka he is involved in the work of the music production studio Foxterrier Production. Together with Aleksandra Kotecka he also conducts musical work for the ZAR Theatre production Anhelli. Skowyt.
In the last decade, Aleksandra Kotecka and Tomasz Wierzbowski have jointly conducted numerous vocal workshops in Poland and abroad (USA, Europe, Asia, South America) for individual participants – professionals and amateurs, theatre groups and drama school students. Thanks to many years of workshop work with such diverse groups, they have developed effective teaching tools, which they also successfully use in long-term programmes such as Actor’s Atelier (the first edition took place in Paris and Wrocław in late 2018 and early 2019).
Krzysztof Paździora. Graduate of the Faculty of Puppetry at the Academy of Theatre Arts in Wroclaw. For nearly four years he has continued his studio work on singing Georgian polyphonies with Aleksandra Kotecka and Tomasz Wierzbowski. He assisted, among others, in a workshop project within the frames of Nilüfer Theatre Festival in Turkey. He cooperates with the Klinika Lalek Theatre and Wroclaw-based Teatr Piosenki under the direction of Bogusław Klimsa.
ZDJĘCIA
