Exploring voice & gesture: finding strength and power.

Whether in dance theater, performance art, or musical theater, today's dancers often need to speak onstage. Choreographers as diverse as Pina Bausch and Joe Goode are asking those who are usually seen and not heard to talk. Thanks to the efforts of Ellen Hemphill, a leading vocal coach, dancers are losing their timid, quivery voices and finding powerful ones that match their physical prowess.

To help develop this skill, the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina, offers the popular workshop called "Voice/Gesture Exploration for Performance Art," co-taught by Hemphill and her colleague Rafael Lopez-Barrantes every summer. The workshop is six weeks long and meets four times a week for two hours a day. Hemphill enjoys the intensive teaching that is offered at ADF. "Students really want to be here and are artists. Someday I'd love to create a work on the ADF students," she says.

Furnished with a small upright piano and several chairs, Hemphill's classroom at ADF is spacious and light with a smooth wooden floor and blackboards on several walls. Last summer she talked about how she approaches her work with dancers.

"The class starts with the students taking a deep breath and walking in a circle until the breath is expended. They then repeat this exercise while adding a sound. You hear breath going through the voice and learn to measure breath with the expression of sound. Gradually they build up to a longer breath and more resonant sound."

Hemphill believes that working on breath and sound helps students break preconceived ideas they have about themselves. "Technically we all have several vocal resonances; mostly we stay within our own range of sound. This method teaches a way to develop the other resonances." She uses metaphors to describe the different vocal resonances: "Metal" is the head voice; "wood" is chest; "earth" is the lower abdominal; "water" is below that, and "air" is above metal.

"Very early on I ask them to select some everyday gestures--gestures they or their friends use. Then they learn to transpose and enlarge them. Voice and gesture are at the core of this class and most of the other classes I teach." She calls this process building a gestural vocabulary.

"Once they have created a series of gestures, I ask students to do them in sequence. Later they do them while singing a familiar song, then later still while speaking a monologue."

Locating a body source for sound dictates which vocal resonance should be used. When asked to demonstrate one, a student jumps into second position with arms opening to the sides. "I'm trying to remember my sound," she says.

"Well, if you're doing that movement, it's got to be earth," Hemphill says.

Weaving songs in and out of classes, particularly call- and-response types, where she sings out a call and students mimic it in response, sharpens their listening skills as well as frees them to sing together uninhibited. "I also use the piano as a tool for students to hear their own range. It's not so important to be able to sing, but to learn to express your voice."

By the time the students have built a vocabulary of 15 gestures, they might add a word on count 4, a breath sound on 7, a laugh on 12, and a whistling sound on 13. While singing a song or reciting a text, they repeat this gestural phrase. Asked by student Eric Love how one develops a gestural vocabulary for a scene, Hemphill replies, "Take what you've done in class and just block your monologue using that."

After ADF student Angelica Kushi's monologue, Hemphill says gently, "Do the same thing, but with a sense of urgency. Run to the people in the room," and "Do it again at 2 percent, then 100 percent, and finally 200 percent." Movements get larger as her voice rises to the "metal," or head voice range. Another student must repeat her monologue with its accompanying gestural vocabulary while pacing back and forth. A nervous, breathless quality imbues her performance with a sense of fear.

Although she loves teaching dancers, Hemphill says of her students, "In general, they are insecure about opening their mouths. The main danger with dancers is that they learn movement so quickly that it can become rote, so that they sometimes lose the essence or root of it. And, of course, they don't have the experience with text that actors do."

Kushi claims, "Through her class and her amazing teaching ability, I found a new power in my body and a real inner strength. As a dancer I often feel as if I neglect the vocal and breathing power. After many of the exercises I felt that my body became more grounded and powerful. I noticed that the confidence I gained from this class immediately influenced my dancing. I was able to be more present in my dancing and have a clear focus."

This is the kind of growth in confidence that Hemphill calls "a blossoming of consciousness and talent."

Watching her class, one would have to agree.

Carol Egan is a freelance dance writer who lives in Hawaii.