The Soul of Song

Exploration with Maud Robart

In ancient Africa, the essence of art was the celebration of life.

And what does it mean to celebrate life ?

It is an intimate and vital experience which Maud Robart proposes to explore through a careful approach to traditional models drawn from the Afro-Haitian voodoo repertory, such as ritual songs and movements. When fully embodied, these models have a percussive and ardent effect on the sensibility, and open us to new, liberated energies. In an impetus for being, the natural flow of pure spontaneity then reveals the dancing soul in everyone, one’s own creative identity.

This experience can be entered via a fine listening. The process is fulfilled by adapting to others in the space and to the space itself. It requires the participant to engage a “transparent” attention, present simultaneously to the melodic and rhythmical precision of the songs, as well as to his/her inner perceptions.   

A dynamic tension between rule and freedom brings the creative subject to surrender to the living forces of the songs, and to flow confidently into the source of life itself.

Field of exploration

Based on oral transmission, this approach aims at regaining, through gentle induction, the innate unity of body-voice. The focus is on discovering the wave of the song and its internal movement.

Key elements

• Rhythmical sonorities and walking dances are the basic elements of this practice of archaic song and movement
• Structures of collective action in space, subject to pulsation,are introduced in order to learn to move within one and the same energy
• At the beginning of each session, a cycle of physical exercises will be suggested, as a subtle invitation for the body-mind to become more available

Conditions of participation*

The exploration is open to anyone in good physical and psychological shape, able to assume the consequences of a personal challenge, and to engage, with full awareness, in a process of self-inquiry and artistic discovery.

Participants should be able to:

• to sing in tune 
• to keep repetitive rhythmical patterns in song and gesture alive over a period of time
  
• to expand one‘s attention to embrace the totality of a given situation
  

The driving principle of the practice combines observation, listening, repetition and personal rigor.

* NB:  The number of beginners is limited to 7 – 10                                                                                                                                                                                                                         At the end of the workshop, participants are not allowed to use, share, or publish the methodological and technical elements of the practice.

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