Last Friday I visited the rehearsals of Ebbw Vale Male Choir in their home town. I was very warmly welcomed, but I sensed slight anxiety amongst the choir members about the movement workshop that I was going to lead at the end of their rehearsals.
For many this was the first time they had been asked to move whilst singing and it took some time to get used to the idea. My purpose for working with the choir is to find choreographic connection points between the choir and the dancers and to be able to move the choir around the performance location. In this workshop, I focused on the choir identifying and syncing the basic rhythm of walking with singing. I feel that this was beneficial to the singers as they seemed to gain more confidence not just in their physicality but in their singing too.
This was a good start. My plan is to play more with rhythms and simple pedestrian movements and slowly build the singers’ ability to multi-task.
