Performance Presence – Maggy Burrowes

Updated article originally published 24.2.12 Some singers can sing so high they can produce a distinctive upper register called Whistle; Mariah Carey is famous for “Whistle & Fry–How Useful Are Vocal “Special Effects”?”

A first Experience Of Feldenkrais

I did not know what to expect from, or after the first Feldenkrais workshop I attended. I found the sequences gentle and relaxing. It was liberating and exhilarating to feel different parts of my head, neck and shoulders moving independently – as they did so there was a sense that they were strengthening. During the course I learnt that these gentle movement lessons could heal pain experienced in the body. I was, at the time, experiencing discomfort in my knees when going downstairs. I was also experiencing pain in my right shoulder which had begun approximately three weeks before the workshop.

The day after I was completely free of pain, both in my shoulder and my knees. I walked downstairs in a way which would be considered usual as a way of descending stairs. I had not descended stairs in this way for approximately three years. I had either relied heavily on the handrail for support, or taken the steps one at a time – how wonderful it was to be pain free.

Marion Goldstraw (2008)

Embodied Voice – an attendee’s experience…

“Thanks very much for your wonderful voice course. I am still working through the material and have a much larger range at each end of the scale. It was really interesting to have speech contextualised into its effect on laryngeal movement and brought me a new awareness in that area and a sense of how voice production affects the diaphragm and its attachments to the spine, rather than just the other way round.

The untrammelled, quite deep (for me) voice that your workshop gave me at the end was gratifying but it changed into something different later. Your workshop also changed my listening. Yes it it true that I still sing out of tune (I can hear it now) but I had an experience towards the end of your workshop – I stepped out of the passageway from the studio into the street and all the cars and trucks and drills and birdsong were a symphony! It was so weird – I never usually listen much let alone savour such sounds and I certainly never realised they were all at different pitches. I must stress that I am not musical and this was not my usual perception of the world.

Rosalind Brown