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-“The experience allowed me to appreciate Monk’s work on a deeper level.” -“Each day was miraculous…it opened me up to possibility.” -“The workshop exceeded my expectations. The teachers were all phenomenal.” – former workshop participants |
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Friday-Sunday, Workshop Fee: $350 With Tom Bogdan, Janis Brenner, Allison Easter, Ellen Fisher, Katie Geissinger, Lanny Harrison, and Workshop Coordinator, Pablo Vela Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble consists of some of the finest and most adventurous singer/performers active in new music theater. Reflecting diverse backgrounds and interdisciplinary approaches to performance, members past and present share Monk’s process for creating work. Beginning with breathing techniques and a detailed vocal and movement warm-up, participants work with the voice and body as multifaceted instruments for exploring range, timbre, gesture, resonance, character, landscape and rhythm. The work aims to uncover the fundamentals of performance as a vehicle for spiritual transformation. Selected pieces from Monk’s repertoire will also be taught.
To begin to build the “feel” of an ensemble, both in rehearsal and performance. To provide a springboard from which participants can discover and develop a personal viewpoint and means of expression. More Info: The workshop is open to all levels of performance experience. Participants should wear clothing and shoes allowing for ease of movement. 14 Students Maximum For a registration form, click here. Please complete and mail registration form by December 31st, 2009. Acceptance into the workshop is also on a first-come, first-served basis. Preference will be given to students able to attend all three days.
Session Descriptions AM Session: PM Session: Friday, 1/15 Saturday, 1/16 Sunday, 1/17 *Instructors and schedule subject to change. Participants will be notified beforehand. Ellen Fisher’s session will be movement based, using some of Meredith's language of gestural shaping. There will be group improvisations as well as simple solo & group choreographic problem solving, using terminology of rituals, rites and trance dance. Katie Geissinger will lead an extensive vocal warm-up, exploring relaxation, breathing, flexibility, ease of production, and expressivity. The workshop will focus on calling, canoning, voice and movement, and hocketing exercises, incorporating selections from Monk’s vocal repertoire. Lanny Harrison will focus on shape-shifting and transforming characters in changing landscapes and environments within solo, duo and trio forms, working predominately from a movement base. She will also touch on how Shambhala Buddhist practice can inform all theater work. Tom Bogdan will deal with a simple approach to voice production and teach a basic tour of exercises to help with breathing, resonance, range and color. He’ll also teach a round, do an improvisatory exercise and work on one of Meredith's pieces, “Panda Chant”, “Quarry Weave”, or other. Pablo Vela’s class will be devoted to Composition. Form in three-dimensional space: vertical, horizontal, diagonal, curved, straight. Content and Meaning: near/far, tight/loose, up/down, flat/full; and, last but not least, Style. Janis Brenner’s & Allison Easter will co-teach the final session which will include a brief physical warm-up, and a vocal warm-up with the teaching of a song to be sung in "round". Material from “Quarry” and “A Celebration Service” may be incorporated. Movement/voice integration through structured improvisations and character development will also take focus.
Biographies Tom Bogdan teaches voice at Bennington College and has worked with Meredith Monk since 1991. Ms. Monk wrote NY Requiem especially for him. Bogdan has received critical acclaim for his performances in Concert, Opera, Recital, Cabaret and his own interdisciplinary pieces, L’Amour Bleu and Tell Me The Truth About Love, both produced by the Danspace Project, NY. Of his many recordings his favorites include Monk's ATLAS, Tom Bogdan's L'Amour Bleu, a gay celebration of love, and his For Your Delight with pianist Harry Huff. He received a Fulbright award to teach Monk’s A Celebration Service to a Hungarian Ensemble in Budapest. Bogdan's new cd Hungarian Folk Songs by Bartók and Kodály is available on Centaur Records Janis Brenner is an award-winning dancer/choreographer/singer/teacher and is Artistic Director of Janis Brenner & Dancers in N.Y. She has toured in 31 countries and is recognized as a "singular performer" with a multifaceted artistic range receiving numerous honors/grants from the US State Dept., The Trust for Mutual Understanding, Asian Cultural Council, The Fund for US Artists, UNESCO for work in Indonesia, Senegal, Taiwan, Russia, etc. Janis has been with Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble since 1990, receiving a group "Bessie" award for The Politics of Quiet in 1997. Her classes/workshops in technique, improvisation, choreography, repertory and voice have been taught throughout the world. She is currently on the faculty at Juilliard serving as Choreographic Mentor and Creative Process instructor. www.janisbrenner.com Allison Easter has worked with Meredith Monk since the 1985 revival of Quarry. As a member of Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble, she has sung on recordings, toured the US, Europe, Asia, received a “Bessie” Award for her work in The Politics Of Quiet, and directed the chorus of Quarry in the 2003 Spoleto Festival. She was the first American woman to appear in the Off-Broadway percussion sensation STOMP. She played Vengeance in Will Pomerantz’s A Tale Of Two Cities, Jerri Lewis in Tony Zertuche’s Anchors, Ms. Porgy in the feature Vacuums, Anita Chambers on Law & Order, and danced with Susan Marshall and Company receiving a special mention in The Village Voice. She has produced and directed original works at Ensemble Studio Theatre and she has taught dance and performance at Bennington College, Naropa Institute, Marymount Manhattan College, Sarah Lawrence and NYU-Tisch. She currently teaches modern dance at Pace University in downtown NYC. Ellen Fisher's performance art production combines gestural actions partnered with visual components such as film, video, shadow play, puppets and apparatus. Her performance work is informed by ethnographic research on the rituals and trance dance of South Asia. She began performing with Meredith Monk/The House in the ‘70’s, in such works as The Plateau Series and Recent Ruins, and more recently has appeared in mercy, impermanence and Songs of Ascension. She is currently working on Monk’s Songs of Ascension. Fisher has also toured internationally with her solo performances. These works have been funded by NEA, NYFA, Jerome Foundation, Art Matters Inc. and the Asia Cultural Council. In addition to solo work, she continues to collaborate with community groups and other artists on intergenerational and intercultural projects. Katie Geissinger ours festivals all over the world with Meredith Monk, in concert and in music theater pieces including ATLAS (Houston Grand Opera), and The Politics of Quiet, for which she is a Bessie recipient. She has toured internationally with Philip Glass and Robert Wilson's Einstein On The Beach, and Bang on a Can's OBIE award-winning The Carbon Copy Building. Katie has appeared on Broadway in Coram Boy and in Baz Luhrmann's production of La Boheme, and at BAM in Jonathan Miller's production of The St. Matthew Passion. She has recorded for ECM and Elektra Nonesuch. Katie made her Carnegie Hall debut in the Bach Magnificat, and has appeared there in the spoken role of the Witch of Endor in Honegger's Le Roi David, and in Golijov's Ainadamar. The past two summers she has been in residence at Bang on a Can's new music institute at MASSMoCA, where she sang in Gordon, Lang, and Wolfe's Shelter and Reich's Music for Eighteen Musicians, and she recently completed a developmental workshop there for Hottentot Venus, by Philip Miller. Katie recently appeared at BAM's Next Wave Festival in Monk's Songs of Ascension. Upcoming projects include a new orchestral piece by Ms. Monk with the St. Louis Symphony Chorus and the LA Master Chorale, and performances of Songs of Ascension in Dartington, England and at the Edinburgh Festival. Katie's teaching experience ranges from choral work in Estonia and San Francisco to workshops at Naropa, Oberlin, ETW at NYU, Berklee, the Carnegie Hall Professional Training Workshop, and LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts. Lanny Harrison has been a member of The House since 1969, playing many leading roles in Monk’s productions including recent performances of mercy and Quarry. Since 1966 she has performed in Off-Broadway musicals, films, theatrical duets and her own one-woman shows, which have toured internationally. She teaches acting for children, theater at the Gallatin division of NYU, workshops at the New York Shambhala Center, meditation and has taught at Naropa University for many years. Since 2000 she has been a member of the Shambhala Arts team at the Shambhala Institute in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and has practiced Tibetan Buddhism as a student of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche since 1973. Pablo Vela has been a member of Meredith Monk/The House since 1975, performing in major productions on stage and film. He was also Associate Director of Monk's opera, ATLAS: an opera in three parts, American Archeology #1: Roosevelt Island, and The Politics of Quiet. Vela received his theater training at Yale University and, in addition, studied with Viola Spolin (improvisation) and Jacques Lecoq (masks and mime). He teaches at The City College of New York. Cocktail Cabaret, which he conceived and directed, will be performed at The Club at La MaMa on Jan.30, 31 and Feb.6, 7, 2010. Two weekends. Photos: Whitney Museum, Stephanie Berger (banner); Songs of Ascension at Ann Hamilton's Tower, Babeth VanLoo; Eric Weiss (inset) |
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