Breath - Body - Voice

Composing for Voice: Exploring Voice, Language and Music, Second Edition, elucidates how language and music function together from the perspectives of composers, singers and actors, providing an understanding of the complex functions of the voice pedagogically, musicologically and dramatically. Composing for Voice examines the voice across a wide range of musical genres (including pop, jazz, folk, classical, opera and the musical) and explores the fusion of language and music that is unique to song. This second edition is enlarged to attract a wider readership amongst all music and theatre professionals and educators, whilst also engaging an international audience with the introduction of new co-author Maria Huesca.

New to the second edition:

A review of the history of singing
An overview of the development of melisma
A chapter designed to help performers understand each other, as singers and actors often receive disparate educations
Case studies and qualitative research around song, lyric and meaning
A discussion of the synthetic voice
An introduction to the concept of embodied composition
Interviews with composers and singers
Summaries of various vocal styles, including bel canto, the lyric voice, the belt voice, the rap voice, the dramatic voice, the virtuoso voice, the folk voice, the crooner, the live voice and the actor’s voice
A website with many of the links and performances of music discussed, as well as related workshops and seminars: www.composingforvoice.com
Composing for Voice: Exploring Voice, Language and Music, Second Edition,articulates possibilities for the practical exploration of language, music and voice by composers, singers and actors.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Words

Chapter 2. Composers and Singers

Chapter 3. Singing and Text

Chapter 4. Voice/Music/Text I

Chapter 5. Voice/Music/Text II

Chapter 6. The Singer and Actor; and Beyond

Chapter 7. Vocal Examples

Chapter 8. Interviews with Singers

Chapter 9. Conclusions and a Way Forward

Chapter 10. Educational Activities

Integrative Performance serves a crucial need of 21st-century performers by providing a transdisciplinary approach to training. Its radical new take on performance practice is designed for a climate that increasingly requires fully rounded artists. The book critiques and interrogates key current practices and offers a proven alternative to the idea that rigorous and effective training must separate the disciplines into discrete categories of acting, singing, and dance.

This thesis examines the concept of the true voice as a method for the exploration of identity. A revised Delphi approach was used to facilitate the open discussion of this concept amongst a group of specialists from various areas of voicework and singing.

The primary objective of the study was to provide a framework of understanding from which to view a holistic approach to vocal development, with particular relevance to the singing voice, as well as lay the foundations for further study in this area through presenting a range of opinions on the true voice.

The study gave definition to the concept of the true voice and revealed that it could be used as both a framework of understanding as well as an application to voicework.

The aim of this paper is to address the question of transcendence and self-transcendence from the point of view of a new epistemology of breath and breathing. The question how to relate our self-transcendence to the irreducible otherness of the other is one of the key topics in a more recent thought of Luce Irigaray. In this paper, we first present Feuerbach's philosophy of sensibility and continue with some of the major concepts in Luce Irigaray's thought: auto-affection , self-affection, and attentiveness. They then enable us to open an in-tersubjective space, needed for a new inauguration of ethical gestures, based on our renewed awareness of breath. Breath is presented in the context of Schelling's and Irigaray's thought and linked to a deeper level of ontology. We wind up this paper with an elaboration on Irigaray's and Caputo's teaching on Jesus and Mary. Povzetek: Dih kot način samoafekcije: nove topologije transcendence in samo-transcendence Namen članka je premisliti vprašanje transcendence in samo-transcendence z vidika nove epistemologije diha in dihanja. Vprašanje, kako povezati našo samo-transcendenco z ireduktibilno drugostjo drugega je eno najpomembnejših vprašanj v filozofski misli Luce Irigaray. V tem članku najprej prikažemo Feuer-bachovo filozofijo senzibilnosti in nadaljujemo z nekaterimi temeljnimi pojmi iz Irigarayjine filozofije: avtoafektivnost, samoafektivnost ter pozornost. Ti po-jmi nam omogočijo, da si razpremo intersubjektivni prostor, ki ga potrebujemo za novo inavguracijo etičnih gest, temelječih na prenovljenem zavedanju diha. Dih je tu analiziran skozi Schellingovo in Irigarayjino filozofijo ter navezan na njegovo globljo ontološko raven. V sklepu članka sta na kratko predstavljeni in analizirani učenji Irigarayjeve ter Caputa o Jezusu in Mariji.

TECHNIKA HLASU I.:Učebnica pre stredné a vysoké školy umelecké.
Z OBSAHU:
ĽUDSKÝ HLAS /VÝVOJ ĽUDSKÉHO HLASU V PROCESE EVOLÚCIE / VÝVIN HLASU/ ZÁKLADNÉ DELENIE ĽUDSKÉHO HLASU / HLASOVÝ PREJAV /TECHNIKA HLASU /
DYCH – RESPIRÁCIA/Javy súvisiace s dýchaním / Dych a hlas / Dychová opora / Bránica / Bránicové dýchanie / Dýchanie – pohyb bránice / TVORBA HLASU – FONÁCIA/ Hlasivky / REZONANCIA /REČ – ARTIKULÁCIA /VLASTNOSTI HLASU/
ZÁKLADNÉ (fyzikálne) VLASTNOSTI ĽUDSKÉHO HLASU /FUNKČNÉ (fyziologické) VLASTNOSTI HLASU /PORUCHY HLASU/ZÁKLADNÉ SYMPTÓMY SPOJENÉ S OCHORENÍM HLASU/ KLASIFIKÁCIA HLASOVÝCH PORÚCH / HLASOVÁ HYGIENA/ PROSTREDIE/ ŽIVOTOSPRÁVA / ZLOZVYKY, DOBROZVYKY /HLASOVÝ POKOJ / A ĎALŠIE

Dátum vydania: 2018.
Vydavateľ: Akadémia umení v Banskej Bystrici, Kollárova 22, 974 01 Banská Bystrica.  ISBN 9788089555918

In his quest for awakening, according to the traditional account the Buddha tried and discarded various ancient Indian practices as being not in themselves conducive to awakening. Nevertheless, closer inspection shows that key elements of these practices became part of the Buddhist path, a transformation that involves mindfulness in one way or another. In this way, fasting transforms into mindful eating, breath control into mindfulness of breathing, and a reformulation of an aspiration for annihilation of the self, apparently held by ancient Indian cultivators of the meditative sphere of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, comes to be conjoined to the cultivation of mindfulness of the body. These transformations shed light on the importance and adaptability of mindfulness in early Buddhist soteriology.

The present study traces back the meanings of the word prāṇá – " breath " , " breathing " , " life force " in the context of Atharvaveda. In Atharvaveda prāṇá is often associated with life and longevity, with breathing and breath, with the maintenance of life, with seeing, hearing, power and offspring. Prāṇá is the master of all living and non-living and controls the whole universe. He is the observer of everything. By wind or air, the breath prāṇá is connected to the whole universe. The disappearance of prāṇás leads to death, and on this conception are based some of the spells for eliminating enemies by drawing their breath away. On the basis of the meanings of the word prāṇá in the studied excerpts from Atharvaveda, a semantic map of the word was created. For comparison with the Bulgarian language, a semantic map of the word "дишам" – " to breath " , was also created.

In lowland South America, breath animates human and non-human bodies, pulsating through the materialities of organisms. Humans, however, should manage their bodies to recast and reconfigure breath in its most life-enhancing manifestations: singing and smoking. These are the specialized domains of those able to manage their vitalities in such a way as to produce potent effects in themselves and in the world around them, including influencing atmospheric conditions, the lives of animals and plants and the harming and healing of others. In these relational onto-epistemologies, intersubjectivity, intercorporality and states of non-cognitive interaffection find new depths. Breath, properly managed, can make and unmake worldly forms, including bodies and the societies they come together in. Focusing on two Amerindian communities, the Warekena of northwestern Rio Negro, Brazil and the Shipibo-Konibo of the Ucayali valley in Eastern Peru, this article examines the interface between human and non-human subjectivities, and how resonant interaffective atmospheric conditions are induced to promote health.

This paper is a translation of a published paper in Spanish. It includes a reflexion about the importance of the voice in human psychology and about different ways in which the voice has been used therapeutically. The last part of the paper points to an approach to the voice from the point of view of Gestalt Therapy, in particular around the concepts of phenomenology and field theory.

This look at Tuvan singer Sainkho Namtchylak is from an early draft of a chapter now published in Fischlin, Daniel, and Eric Porter (eds.). Sound Changes: Improvisation and Transcultural Difference. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2021. Namtchylak was one of five Asian women profiled, the others being Korean composer/geomungo-player Jin Hi Kim; zheng player Han Mei, and pipa players Min Xiao-Fen and Wu Man, all from China. Namtchylak’s part was cut from the final draft to keep it within the word limit, and for other reasons having nothing to do with her equal significance as an artist.

The maintenance of rules within the ‘black box’ of code, away from human eyes, constitutes a major difference between digital games and the social history of their analog counterparts. Meanwhile, the incorporation of new types of human behavior into digital games’ rulesets has placed games on the cutting edge of machine surveillance technologies. This article examines several digital games that stand in opposition to these trends, by opting out of monitoring certain aspects of player behavior, and opening social dynamics of trust and cheating that digital games have historically avoided or shut down. Chief among these examples are Asphyx (Droqen, circa 2012) and With Those We Love Alive (Porpentine, 2014), two games that incorporate player breathing into their mechanics, while forgoing any technical means of monitoring players’ respiration. In place of the usual command/output logic of human–machine interaction, these games map a more intimate alternative, in which players’ relationship to their avatars and in-game actions is built from a foundation of trust, shared truth, and consent between human bodies and software operations.

Acting methodologies have long been divided into two simplistic streams: “outside-in” and “inside-out.” These reductionist models fail to account for the range and synergistic nature of the elements integral to an actor’s work. Exploring these elements I discovered a personal tendency toward favouring an intellect removed from its source in breath, body, and imagination, and disengaged from sensation and emotion. Undertaking an exploration of deep embodiment through the practices of Syntonics©, Linklater voice work, Middendorf Breathexperience, and Batdorf Technique, and applied in Theatre@York’s production Oh What a Lovely War! I discovered a rich new source of information arising not from intellect, but from an intelligent, unified, physical being, or body-mind. This experience has revealed a new understanding of how to approach acting, in which every element becomes a potential entry point into a holistically integrated, reciprocal system, and in which visceral, sensate awareness births true presence and performance.

Introduction
The Acousmatic Question: Who Is This?

Chapter 1
Formal and Informal Pedagogies: Believing in Race, Teaching Race, Hearing Race 

Chapter 2
Phantom Genealogy: Sonic Blackness and the American Operatic Timbre

Chapter 3
Familiarity as Strangeness: Jimmy Scott and the Question of Black Timbral Masculinity

Chapter 4
Race as Zeros and Ones: Vocaloid Refused, Reimagined, and Repurposed

Chapter 5
Bifurcated Listening: The Inimitable, Imitated Billie Holiday

Chapter 6
Widening Rings of Being: The Singer as Stylist and Technician

https://www.dukeupress.edu/Assets/PubMaterials/978-0-8223-6868-7_601.pdf

An examination of the spirituality of Jesus as viewed through the lens of his native Aramaic language in the Peshitta version. It appeared as a chapter in the anthology The Revelation of the Breath: A Tribute to its Wisdom, Power and Beauty, edited by Sharon Mijares, published by State University of New York Press in 2008.

Breathing is not a common subject in feminist studies. Breathing Matters introduces this phenomenon as a forceful potentiality for feminist intersectional theories, politics, and social and environmental justice.

By analyzing the material and discursive as well as the natural and cultural enactments of breath in black lung disease, phone sex work, and anxieties and panic attacks, Breathing Matters proposes a nonuniversalizing and politicized understanding of embodiment. In this approach, human bodies are conceptualized as agential actors of intersectional politics. Magdalena Górska argues that struggles for breath and for breathable lives are matters of differential forms of political practices in which vulnerable and quotidian corpomaterial and corpo-affective actions are constitutive of politics.

Set in the context of feminist poststructuralist and new materialist and postconstructionist debates, Breathing Matters offers a discussion of human embodiment and agency reconfigured in a posthumanist manner. Its interdisciplinary analytical practice demonstrates that breathing is a phenomenon that is important to study from scientific, medical, political, environmental and social perspectives.

This article examines how exposure to capitalist environments accelerates speech. Voice is proposed as a partial register of how we are as bodied subjects within affective environments with semiotic and communicative pressures. Voice is a locus of trauma, a sonic scar that sounds out the semiotic pressures of capitalism. Accelerated speech is posited as symptomatic of semiocapitalism. Mirroring, vocal convergence, psychotropic stimulation and exposure to accelerated speech in television and Internet are proposed as key factors that influence our speech rate. The trend of compressing increasing amounts of dialogue into television shows is argued to be a dramatic microcosm of how semiocapitalism conditions us to communicate faster. Finally, manifestations of our speed limit are explored. Vocal stalls or hesitations, the deceleration or pause of the semiotic flows we voice, are posited as symptomatic of the disjunct between the accelerating demands of semiocapitalism and the human cognitive and corporeal limit. The shift from speech to voice is symptomatic of trauma. The human buffering of the vocal fry is the sound of the human, subjected to the accelerating demands of semiocapitalism, reaching its limit.

""" Slam poetry, which first came into being in Chicago in 1986 as a competitive form of performance poetry, is only the latest development in a series of poetry movements in the United States that radically turned away from the written-to-be-silently-read to a written-to-be-performed poem. The book investigates contemporary American performance poetry as a continuation of poetry as an oral and social medium that finds its cultural realization in an interaction between the poet, the poem and the audience. After a survey of the historical development as well as different performance movements in the United States, the author provides an analysis of representative audio and visual poems of these movements by Jerome Rothenberg, Allen Ginsberg, Gil Scott-Heron, Ntozake Shange, Laurie Anderson, and Patricia Smith. The book is highly recommended to teachers who want to take poetry ,,off the written page in their classroom and engage their students in a multimedia experience with poetry, but will be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about this particular performance genre.
"""

Sōphrosynē is a word with deep cultural significance. Genres as diverse as epic, tragedy, history, and philosophy speak about it as an ideal of human behavior. Yet, the traditional etymology (‘soundness of mind’) overemphasizes its cognitive or intellectual aspects, at the expense of its behavioral or emotional aspects. Drawing on linguistic, anthropological, and psychological studies of archaic Greek culture, I here propose a new etymological understanding of sōphrosynē that also accounts for its ancient association with emotions and behavior. I find support in the language of Homer and hitherto neglected evidence from personal names beginning in Sō-. I conclude that sōphrosynē is best explained not as a normal cognitive state (‘sanity’), but as a cognitive-behavioral achievement: namely, the verbal action of ‘saving the mind’. This prototype accounts for both the word’s meanings ‘sanity’ and ‘self-control’: the self-controlled person ‘saves her mind’ (action), whereas the sane person ‘has a safe mind’ (state). Each meaning represents, so to speak, different sides of the same linguistic coin.

The results of this investigation are far-reaching. By abandoning an intellectualist account of the Greek word sōphrosynē, we are in a better position to understand the idea or value denoted by it. The interpretation ‘soundness of mind’ is quite symptomatic of our own cultural distance: it seems to be dictated by a culture that gives preference to the cognitive or intellectual (‘mind’) and sees it as susceptible of health (‘soundness’). In other words, our common sense has freely assumed that the archaic Greeks shared the same model of the mind as we do. On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that they located mental activity not in the head but in the chest: more specifically, in the lungs and the heart. This pulmo-cardiac theory of the mind is based on the observation that a variation in mental activity corresponds to a variation in respiration. Since breath moves briskly within those organs in moments of emotional unrest or cognitive indecision, it was identified with the thought-impulse of the thinking and feeling person. If so, the word sōphrosynē testifies to a holistic conception of human and animal consciousness, where body and mind are regarded as such an interdependent unity that ‘self-control’ entails a real psychosomatic achievement.

Motion capture-based renderings of dance performance constitute a complex, but highly interesting cultural phenomenon at a time when motion recognition and haptic technology increasingly affect society at large. Applications of digital motion capture technologies that aim to support the analysis and transmission of dance performance can be understood as an alternative way of bringing dance into the ‘orbit of writing’ (Rotman 2008). Despite the growth of these practices and their significance for the contemporary discourse on the transmission of dance knowledge, this phenomenon has not yet been thoroughly investigated from the perspective of dance research and practice. This thesis evaluates implications of contemporary practices of digital dance capture. How is dance conceived of as a type of knowledge that can be transmitted in these practices? How does motion capture invite us to know dance differently? This thesis examines different modes of ‘corporeal computation’ of dance by analyzing different ways of making motion data speak. The notion of ‘the motion capture imaginary’ is introduced as a conceptual framework that interconnects various characteristics associated with ways of seeing and knowing dance in the motion capture setting. Foregrounding the value of dancers’ embodied experiences, the thesis suggests that the pursuit to render motion data into accessible feedback calls for further investigation of topics that are typically part of the tacit knowledge of the dancer, such as the central importance of the breath. The process of making sense of motion data streams thus encourages new investigations of technique and knowledge transmission in performance and presents opportunities to articulate the corporeality of dancers in different ways.

This article uses the concept of "breath" as a hermeneutic key for applying the ecological hermeneutic of retrieval to suggest ways of reading the Magnificat with an ear to an Earth voice. The principle of voice, articulated by the Earth Bible Team, can be understood as a biblical principle, evident in the psalms. Much of the Second Testament, however, seems not to mention Earth directly and this raises questions concerning the application of the principle of voice. Taking the Magnificat as an example, I ask how might the interpreter retrieve an Earth voice in a text that seems oriented toward inter-human concerns for social justice? I suggest four ways in which the voice of Earth might be retrieved in this song in the mouth of a woman, Mary of Nazareth, through: i) the materiality of the text; ii) attention to the human body, especially the senses and the breath; iii) attention to the sustaining capacity of Earth in relation to poverty and riches; iv) the implicit reference to the land in the promise to the ancestors. The overall intent of the article is to situate the human question of poverty and oppression as an Earth question. kai\ h0 galli/ asen to_ pneu~ ma& mou e0 pi\ tw~ | qew~ | swth~ ri/ mou Luke 1:47 BREATH, HUMAN AND OTHER-THAN-HUMAN, IS A PHENOMENON THAT CONNECTS humans with the wider Earth community of which we are part. 2 William Bry-1 This article is a revised version of a paper given in the Ecological Hermeneutics Section on the theme "Poverty, Ecology, and the Bible," at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD, 24 November 2013. 2 For ecological hermeneutics, it is critical to recognise the embeddedness of humankind in, and interdependence with, a wider Earth community. At the same time, the Earth is much more than any human community or their habitats. Inevitably, when writing about humans and Earth some distinctions as well as interconnections will be evident in the choice of language.

Wlodzimierz Staniewski, director of the Polish Centre for Theatre Practices Gardzienice, considers directing as a praxis pertaining to the field of musical composition. His pieces have been theorised as either “ethno-oratoria” or “village operas,” while the pedagogy developed by the group is a territory for the exploration of the tensions between the physical and the vocal. Building on my recent fieldwork with the company, this chapter problematizes the separation of vocality and choreographic/movement practices in performer training and uses Gardzienice’s example as a case study in physiovocality. Meanwhile, the core principles of Staniewski’s work, namely mutuality, musicality and chorality, are analyzed as points of departure from music theaters towards a theater of musicality.

In this article, I show how certain contemporary Italian philosophers (Giorgio Colli, Giorgio Agamben, Adriana Cavarero, and Emanuele Coccia) responded to Jacques Derrida's critique of the voice and developed a new, ultra-materialist pneumatology.

I trace the political and aesthetic significance of ngoma, a competitive form of dance and music that emerged out of the legacies of colonialism and apartheid in South Africa. Contextualizing ngoma within South Africa's history of violence, migrant labor, the HIV epidemic, and the world music market, I follow a community ngoma team and its professional subgroup during the twenty years after apartheid's end. The book intricately ties aesthetics to politics, embodiment to the voice, and masculine anger to eloquence and virtuosity, relating the visceral experience of ngoma performances as they embody the expanse of South African history. I also show how ngoma helps build community, cultivate responsible manhood, and provide its participants with a means to reconcile South Africa's violent past with its postapartheid future.

In international research and theatre practice, voice has returned as a problem and as a question mark. This article locates ‘absolute presuppositions’ (according to Collingwood) that have defined the way voice has been treated and staged, and counter-proposes 4 theses towards redefining voice: moving away from logocentric metaphysics; turning towards the material body that produces voice and the intersections of its identities; focusing on the area of the ‘vocal in-between’; and approaching voice as event, process and multiplicity. The epistemic strategy advanced in the article is the parallel discussion of theoretical lines of argumentation within interdisciplinary voice studies and cases studies from music, theatre and sound performance as well as systems of voice pedagogy. In this way, the embodied, materially enjoyable, intersubjective and multiply constructed voice is proposed as a field that is yet-to-come but ripe for further exploration. The writing style deployed in the article is ‘emphonic’: a manifesto-list, first-person quotes, hyperlinks, direct questions, and a playlist are mined as opportunities to restore vocality in the realm of research publication. Overall, the article argues that re-examining voice in the above-mentioned ways cultivates opportunities to break away from what has been constituted as vocally self-evident, in theatre and beyond.
• The English translation of the 4 theses proposed (4th page of this version of the article, p. 24 of the published article) is:
4 THESES ON VOICE
1. Voice is not—primarily or exclusively—the bearer of linguistic meaning.
2. Current research is moving away from the universal, abstract ‘I’ of voicing and towards voice as sensed materiality, as well as towards the various intersections of its embodiment.
3. The ways in which voice is studied and understood are shifting away from the distinct examination of vocal production and vocal reception, and towards the area of the ‘vocal in-between’.
4. Current research enquiry turns from the voice-object and the voice-subject to voicing as process, event and multiplicity.

Στη διεθνή βιβλιογραφία και σκηνική πράξη η φωνή επανέρχεται ως πρόβλημα και ερωτηματικό. Το άρθρο εντοπίζει απόλυτες προϋποθέσεις (κατά Collingwood) που έχουν καθορίσει την αντιμετώπιση και παραστασιακή πραγμάτωση της φωνής, και αντιπροτείνει τέσσερις θέσεις για την επαναδιαπραγμάτευσή της: την απομάκρυνση από τη λογοκεντρική μεταφυσική· τη στροφή στο υλικό σώμα που παράγει τη φωνή και τις ταυτοτικές διατομές του· την επικέντρωση στην περιοχή του φωνητικού ενδιάμεσου· και την προσέγγιση της φωνής ως συμβάντος, διεργασίας και πολλαπλότητας. Η επιστημολογική τακτική του άρθρου είναι η παράλληλη συζήτηση τάσεων στις διεπιστημονικές φωνητικές σπουδές και παραδειγμάτων από μουσικές, θεατρικές και ηχητικές περφόρμανς, καθώς και συστημάτων διαπαιδαγώγησης, με στόχο την κατάδειξη της ενσώματης, υλικά απολαύσιμης, διυποκειμενικής και πολλαπλά κατασκευασμένης φωνής ως πεδίου μη τετελεσμένου αλλά πρόσφορου προς περαιτέρω διερεύνηση. Ο τρόπος γραφής είναι έμφωνος: η λίστα-μανιφέστο, πρωτοπρόσωπα παραθέματα, υπερσύνδεσμοι, άμεσες ερωτήσεις και μία playlist αξιοποιούνται ως ευκαιρίες αποκατάστασης της φωνής στον χώρο της επιστημονικής δημοσίευσης. Συνολικά, το άρθρο διαπιστώνει πως η επανεξέταση της φωνής με τους παραπάνω τρόπους διαμορφώνει ευκαιρίες ρήξεων με ό,τι έχει καθιερωθεί ως (σκηνικά ή όχι) φωνητικά αυτονόητο.

The actor's preparation for theatre implies in a constant commitment in the research mechanisms to enable their bodies and voices for the performance moment. The aim of this article is to describe and think about a body and voice working proposal for actors, based on voice therapy concepts and specific acting techniques. With these discussions, I bring reflexions that I believe to be necessary to think about work alternatives for actors. However, I consider that actors also need some working pedagogies related to the specificity of
their stage work. What I have shown here is a unique pedagogical approach to the learning and technical training
for actors in theatre. The methodology exposed here serves as an example for pedagogical approaches that theatre schools can include in their curricula in order to provide a different perspective to actor's technical preparation.

This article builds upon Davina Quinlivan’s pioneering work on cinematic breathing by considering the conspicuous but often-overlooked place of breath in horror films. The author focuses specifically on the way still-breathing bodies – i.e. those of actors pretending to be deceased on screen – prick our senses and draw our attention to one of the genre’s unavoidable paradoxes. Stated simply, what all but the most metatextual or parodic horror films wish to hide – to keep concealed inside their own literal and figurative ‘basements’ – is the inherent artifice of fictional death, which has traditionally been represented by way of living actors who must mask their breathing in order to sustain the feeling of dread on which the genre is affectively reliant. Taking the title and premise of the recent U.S. theatrical release Don’t Breathe (2016) as a leaping-off point, but expanding the scope of this essay to include a representative cross section of international productions and trashy exploitation cinema, the author hopes to contribute to a better understanding of the genre’s unique respiratory tendencies as well as the risible yet significant textual ruptures that occur when bodies continue breathing after they have stopped living.

This both visual and textual contribution consists of a series of four separate embroideries on textile (Fig. 1, 2, 3, 4), which can be assembled into a unique piece (Fig. 5), and of a text, that engages with a reflection on the overall process of creation with and transformation of a particular daily object: a yarn of golden thread. The contribution has been inspired by the first ‘Walking Threads’ walk and event in Seaton Park, Old Aberdeen, March 2014, from which the ongoing ‘Walking Threads’ project has been initiated. The work is intended as a specific way of ‘thinking through making’ (Ingold 2013) and of further developing the research insights that appeared during and after that walk. In what ways materials, artefacts, skill apprenticeship, gesture, , lines, breathing and the ‘weather-world’ (Ingold 2007a, b, 2015) can relate to each other? It is also a personal attempt to respond to the Ingoldian call towards a ‘Graphic’ Anthropology’, within which ‘to follow the materials, to learn the movements and to draw the lines’ (Ingold 2013) are the main points at the very core of its agenda.

This book provides a historical and anthropological analysis of vocality based on ancient and modern sources: myths of voice,voice and violence, divine sounds experimental music, sound gestures. Between cries and shouts, singing and music, in this interdisciplinary and experimental work the voice is analysed as privileged manifestation of a distinctive human trait, the breadth of reason, in its striving for diversity and differences.

Due to the simultaneous linguistic and musical quality of voicing, voiced breath poses theoretical challenges to notions of ‘embodiment’, especially as they are used in theatre practice/studies. In this article I make two intertwining arguments to address questions of the place of semantic meaning and conscious thought in performance practice/theories as they arose in my anthropological engagement with laboratory theatre. Firstly, theatre and performance practice/theories keen to embrace ‘embodiment’ often leave out things like explicit analysis, reflexivity, referential or semantic meaning and so on because, as my ethnography shows, they are judged as secondary, and thus belonging implicitly more closely to disembodied ‘mind’. I engage in anthropological comparison to show how other ways of being/knowing complicate any sense in which practices labelled ‘embodied’ can be seen as primary in contrast to conscious, linguistic or explicit knowing. Instead I outline an onto/epistemology of emergence that offers an alternative imaginary in which no binaries exist a priori. Rather all is a matter of ongoing mutual constitution.

Secondly, while the discourses of embodiment in performance practice/theory that I critique may continue to reproduce dualist assumptions, theatre approaches influenced by Grotowski’s anti-method, focussing on continual revision of practice, offer insights for scholarship concerned with the ontological indistinguishability of social, psychological and physical phenomena. Laboratory theatre practices offer a prospective way of knowing, enabling an exploration the ontological equality of breath, in this case in song, and the sorts of meaningfulness associated with language and analysis. 


In 2011 my Nanna (grandmother in Maltese) passed away in circumstances that remain traumatic to me. I turned with to my daily practices to find ways to scream, to grieve: to anthropology and to a particular practice of song in laboratory theatre, where encounter is actively sought. Arising from ethnographic and analytic engagement with such practices, in this article I offer an anthropologically inflected critique of notions of embodiment in performance studies and performance philosophy. I present the alternative imaginary of emergence onto/epistemologies and the prospective investigative practices of laboratory theatre. I do this by weaving autobiographical, ethnographic and anthropological threads to explore my own practice relating to the work of my collaborator Gey Pin Ang, a Singaporean director, actor and pedagogue.

This article investigates the ontological significance of the voice, speech and listening within a theatrical context. Through an analysis of two performances; Societas Raffaello Sanzio’s ‘Giulio Cesare’ and Roger Bernat’s ‘Domini Públic’ it considers what might be in the voice that goes beyond language and that which is on the edge of understanding that might bring about alternative ‘ways of sensible being’ (Rancière 2009, p.10).