Jane R. Heirich
We all breathe, we all speak: Using voice and respiratory re-education in every Alexander lesson
We all breathe and we all speak. Any workshop I teach is appropriate for all teachers who work with Alexander students. This workshop also welcomes teachers and trainees who are not confident of their own vocal use.
This will be an active-participation workshop. We will consider F.M.'s respiratory re-education activities, using voice (both speaking and singing). We will discuss applying this to all of our AT students, not just to singers and actors. We will explore the significance of Alexander's "Primary Control" for our own breathing and our own voice use. We will explore the relationship of our general coordination to breath and vocal use. The challenge for us all will be to put hands on another person, while at the same time monitoring our own breath and voice use.
Activities may include: Preparing a pupil for respiratory re-education using F.M.'s 1910 version of Hands-on-the-back-of-a-chair;
Freeing up the hanging structures, both respiratory and vocal, using shallow and ever-deeper Monkeys;
Making sound in the Semi-Supine exercise, using our self-observation skills;
Working on the floor for whole-system "support", using developmental movement as seen in a young baby.
Jane R. Heirich teaching has focused on the intersection and integration of two educational processes: the more than 100-year-old F.M. Alexander Technique and the centuries-old bel canto vocal singing tradition. This tradition of vocal technique has survived as a basic tool for developing unfinished voices, as well as for “finishing” those voices that are working reasonably well. Alexander Technique skills support this vocal developmental process by always looking at the whole mind/body system in a subtle and sophisticated way.
Recently retired from 32 years of teaching at the Residential College of the University of Michigan, she currently maintains a private teaching studio for voice and for Alexander Technique lessons; and she is the Director of an AmSAT teacher-training course that began January 2005.
Her book, “Voice and the Alexander Technique: active explorations for speaking and singing,” was published by Mornum Time Press in 2005.
go back>>>