About Voice Yoga

 

 

What is Voice Yoga?

Voice Yoga consists of a series of exercises that gives pride of place to the voice as a central, creative force in our lifes. Our existence depends in important ways on our speaking, listening, sounding and singing abilities. The class promotes awareness of the many roles of the voice in our daily lives. It expands our creative vocabulary, without necessarily talking about music, the singing voice or any musical style. The point is not so much to learn any specific new technique: we play with the voice in a lot of different ways and listen with fresh ears to the hidden potential of our voices.

In Voice Yoga, sound, silence and resonance become a mirror for the self. The sounds produced by ourselves,  allows us to ‘see’ ourselves more clearly, to hear what’s living deep inside us. In ever-growing cycles of creating and perceiving we learn about music and sound, about ourselves and about the environment.

Structure of the classes

We usually start with silence, breath and body movements to turn away from our busy mind into the body and to the sensations we actually experience. We let the voice come out of a natural breath flow. We listen to and follow its natural resonances. We do not try to sing in an artful way, but to experience how body-mind-voice are intimately connected, and how voice and resonance can serve as a bridge to overcome the dualistic notion of body <> mind. From then on, all kinds of styles and genres of vocalising and musicking may happen, some structured, some wild, some giving insight in your voice, some therapeutic. Exercises are based on yoga, musical and theatrical techniques, vipassana meditation and our innate love to play like children.

The idea behind Voice Yoga is comparable to yoga and tai-chi: the effect of the exercises is gradual. We believe that only with repeated classes you can really learn to connect the energies of voice & sound with the whole of your body and mind. You slowly become more and more familiar with your voice and its powers; you will begin to hear and feel things you did not hear and feel before. That’s why we suggest you to sign up for four classes a time after your trial class.

The teacher

Voice Yoga is designed and taught by Mark van Tongeren, who brings with him 25 years of experience in working with sound, music and theatre and many different cultures.

In my Voice Yoga Review of 2014 you can read about some recent experiences:
https://fusica.wordpress.com/2014/12/30/voice-yoga-2014-re-view/

For whom
For those seeking to enrich their voices, let off steam and unlock their hidden creative potential. For singers and those who are afraid to sing. For actors, musicians and other artists and professionals who work with sound. Perhaps more than anyone else, people who want to experience and learn about the therapeutical effects of sound seem to benefit from Voice Yoga. The human voice is a tool that assists human beings to produce a mirror-like reflection of the world around them in their minds. By gaining a deeper understanding and experience of the mechanisms of making sounds, words and music, and of listening, we gradually deepen the connections within ourselves (our body-minds) and with others and the world around us.

Dates and time
please look here for current dates and times (voice yoga dates 2015).

Prices
Every class lasts two hours. The price is 400 NT$ for a single class, and 1500 NT$ for four classes (375 NT$ per class). You do not have to attend four classes in a row; we’ll just tick off your presence four times and then you can sign up again for four times. Students and others with limited financial resources can get a reduced price: just send a message.

How to register
Feel free to join the Voice Yoga class any time. It is best to send a message every time you want to come, then we prepare a place for you. Write to mark at fusica dot nl or send a text-message to 09 10 38 27 49.

Place
Canjune Training Centre, 4th Floor, number 3 , Lane 151, Fuxing South Road, Section 2, (this is about 20 meters from the corner of FuXing South Road, go up the stairs to the hairdresser and take the elevator to 4F; if you’re early the streetdoor may be closed). Nearest MRT: Technology Building (10 min. walk). Telephone training centre: 02 – 27 00 72 91.

Voice Yoga dates 2015

Here follow the dates of the Voice Yoga classes for the New Year. Changes may still occur: new dates or times will be replaced on this same page. If you plan to come, send an email to Mark van Tongeren (info at fusica dot nl) or a text message (09 10 38 27 49) half a day earlier (Thursday morning/Monday afternoon). You can always check this page if you are uncertain if there will be a class.

DATES FOR 2015

Afternoon class: Thursdays 2-4 PM

January 29

February 5, 12, 26

March  5, 12, 19, 26

April 2, 23   no classes on 9th and 16th due to Tuvans’ concerts and workshop.

May 7, 14, 21, 28

Summer break till August. Later dates t.b.a.

Evening class: Monday 7:30-9:30 PM

March 9, 16, 23, 30

April 6, 20, 27 no class on 30th due to workshop in Hong Kong

May 11, 18, 25 no class on 4th due to workshop in Hong Kong

June 1, 8

Summer break till August. Later dates t.b.a.

PLACE

Canjune Training Centre, 4th Floor, number 3 , Lane 151, Fuxing South Road, Section 2, (this is about 20 meters from the corner of FuXing South Road, go up the stairs to the hairdresser and take the elevator to 4F; if you’re early the streetdoor may be closed).

Nearest MRT: Technology Building (10 min. walk).

Telephone training centre: 02 – 27 00 72 91.

RESERVATION

Please notify Mark of your intention to join the class, by sending a text-message (SMS) with your name to 09 – 10  38 27 49 or an email to info at fusica dot nl.

For those unfamiliar with Voice Yoga, you can read more about it in this Fusica blog post.

Festival Transverbal

A gong resounds on the groundfloor of a spa. Through the mezzanine situated at the spa’s glass façade, its sound waves travel to the basement, where a voice answers the gong. A multi-level dialogue begins, in more than one sense of the word. Instruments and voices, audience and performers mingle in a unique sound-space-event that tests the limits of music, mind & body.

Festival Transverbal is dedicated to the memory and legacy of the German multi-medial artist Michael Vetter, who passed away, aged 70, on December 7, 2013. It bridges an ongoing search for sound’s soothing inner secrets with its more expressive post-modern/avant-garde forms.

Expect voices, singing bowls, sheng (mouth organ), a gong, performers moving through the space, an immersive 60-minute sonic surrounding. Talk to or play with the musicians afterwards!

Through this Festival we keep alive the spirit and works of Michael Vetter, who inspired many musicians, artists, and other individuals along his extremely versatile and moving career in Europe and Asia. Michael Vetter had an incredible output of art works (starting at age 5); compositions, LPs/CDs; tours and performances; and educational methods for (experimental) flute, voice and instruments, among many other things. His musical career spanned the period from his late school years (early 1960s) until the months before his death (september 2013), when he worked on pieces by Karlheinz Stockhausen that many musicians have played and performed piecemeal, while none really gave them a try in their entirety. Thus, shortly after his death, Natascha Nikeprelevic, Vetter’s foremost successor, and Stockhausen Verlag worked on the publication of Expo, one of Stockhausen’s scores with pluses and minuses (+ -) as guiding points. Vetter recorded it with Nikeprelevic and FX Randomiz 8 weeks before he passed away. (The CD appeared in May of this year, listen here).

Michael Vetter’s visit to Taiwan, together with Natascha Nikprelevic, left a great impression on those who had the chance to see/hear them or work with them, during their residency at the Taipei National University of Arts, where Chung Minder from the Theatre Department invited them.

Michael Vetter always straddled the paths outside clear-cut styles, usually combining elements from here and there, and most of all relying on his own experimental genius to create fresh insights and sounds at every moment. His long-time affiliation with zen in Japan and outspoken zen themes in the 1980s aliened him from some of his former avant-garde colleagues, who shied away from (or were not interested in) anything to do with Eastern “spirituality”. However, looking back on his life in its entirety, it is clear that Vetter was dedicated to creative imagination and disciplined, daily musical and artistic rituals, above anything else. For Vetter, the world itself was constantly exploding with creation, unfolding, coming-into-existence, into a myriad forms, colours, sounds. He observed this world with intelligence, humor, commitment and compassion. His love and dedication to the arts and existence (‘Dasein’) as a whole was the starting point for his creative response to them. Or rather, it seemed he was able to let creative forces take their course through him, as a critical, subtle moderator.

Michael Vetter making Indian ink drawings, Academia Caparaia, Italy, 2009

It is in this spirit of capturing the uniqueness of every meeting (between performers, with a certain space and with a certain audience, at a given time) that we want to inaugurate a Festival which we hope to repeat in following years.

We prepared this Transverbal Festival in collaboration with Canjune Spa and Nicole’s Creative agency. It will be held on Sunday, November 16 at Canjune Spa. There are two identical concerts, you can join us either in the afternoon (3 PM) or in the evening (7 PM). The participants are Hans de Back, Lu Chi-Chung and Lee Wei-Lin, Li Li-Chin and Mark van Tongeren, and probably a few more musical assistants.

For more information and tickets, please follow this link to accupass.

Limited number of tickets!

Please also note that there will be a limited number of seats in the space, and limited storage space for your bags. Do not bring your own food/drinks.

We believe this concert will be less suitable for young children.

Sainkho Namtchylak returns to Taipei

Tuvan folksong / extended vocal techniques / throat singing-diva Sainkho performs once again in Taiwan. Sainkho was born in Soviet-era Tuva, in a Siberian outpost within eyesight of Mongolia. She developed more than average singing skills and during the late 1980s she took advantage of the political/cultural reformations (perestroika) to set out on an innovative career that soon put her in the international ranks of outstanding, progressive singers.

She moved to Austria in 1994, and was begged to come back to Tuva by president Sholban Kara-ool this month, while she visited Tuva.

She established her name with sweat and original interpretations of Tuvan songs in the early 1990s and experimental work. Nowadays much of Sainkho’s output is ecclectic, avant-garde, with an electrifying, ear-catching aura to it. She is an amazingly busy and energetic performer, who constantly travels the world to collaborate with ever new musicians, pouring out CD after CD, and re-inventing herself every year.

Exactly ten years ago, she gave a memorable concert in Zhongshan Hall, and a throat singing workshop in TNUA (reported in Chung Mingder’s book OM. Overtone singing as meditation). At that time she brought with her German Popov, an old friend of mine from Amsterdam (born in the Ukraine), and singer/guitarist Caspar David Sacker from Austria. I am happy to see that this time she works with a local musician (and again a friend of mine), the Taipei-based pianist Lee Shih-Yang. Also taking part will be Dickson Dee, a Hong Kong sound artist.

This concert is highly recommended for all people interested in Tuvan/Mongolian music, throat singing and new vocal techniques. When I spread this message through my Fusica newsletter there were still tickets left. Now there aren’t…  But I had reserved a bunch of tickets for the students of my R E S O N A N C E  course through Lee Shih-Yang. If you are interested respond quick (reply below) and I can see if he still has a ticket for the October 5 show for you . Tickets are 500 NT$ minus a little discount. Hope to see you there!

2014新點子樂展Innovation Series – 人聲風景「即興篇」
SoundScape-Improvisation Across the Horizon

Videolink Youku
Taipei,

Experimental Theatre

October 4 19:00

October 5, 14:30

Breath-performance @ Red Room Aside

 

Tonight I am going to do a short ‘breath performance’ at a special edition of Red Room, the monthly event in the Aveda kitchen hosted by Chu Ping and Roma and Manav Mehta. The breath is a central focus of my performances, sometimes in the foreground, always in the background. And I thought the news of the passing away, on August 20 2014, of Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja (or simply ‘B.K.S.’) Iyengar would be a fitting occasion to start and end the performance using special breathing techniques.

 

Iyengar was instrumental in bringing yoga to the west in the 1950s and began to adapt it to the different lifestyles of American practitioners. Though he received criticism for changing the one-to-one transmission to a group practice and using physical tools such as woodblocks and straps, there can be no doubt that his methods have been a great success and have benefited hundreds of thousands of people in the West. And one can certainly not say that he himself was not fully part of the tradition, as an early video of him with is his own guru Tirumalai Krishnamacharya demonstrated. This is the full version of the 1938 film, but you can find several shorter sequences on Youtube.

It was Tirumalai Krishnamacharya who traveled India to promote hatha yoga and its associated practices and philosophies and thus began the revival which then crossed over to other parts of the world.

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya shortly before his death in 1988, aged 100

One may certainly include me in the league of teachers who misinterpret yoga or use its name for purposes other than its original intentions. But I do not agree with those criticasters who deplore what Iyengar has done. I think yoga is a fantastic practice and profound philosophy that can benefit people in many different ways. Indians should be proud to see so many people around the world doing some form of yoga or yoga-derived practices today.

I am very often in favor of traditional practices above modern forms myself, for example when it comes to indigenous music. But the modernisation and adaption process is irreversible and in the case of yoga, even those not-so-dedicated practitioners like myself learn things and solve problems that you can not learn otherwise (I struggled with lower-backache for many years; physiotherapies did not solve it but hatha yoga did).

So to thank and honour Mr. Iyengar I will begin tonight’s performance with a very extended, silent inhale and finish with a very extended, resounding exhale.

If you are curious, read more about Iyengar in the Washington Post and on The Atlantic.

Voice Yoga dates 2014

VOICE YOGA

In this class we use the voice in its immense richness, not only as a musical instrument, but as our primary tool to communicate and exist through/with/for/from sound. In Voice Yoga, sound, silence and resonance become a mirror for the self. The sounds produced by ourselves,  allows us to ‘see’ ourselves more clearly, to hear what’s living deep inside us. In ever-growing cycles of creating and perceiving we learn about music and sound, about ourselves and about the environment. A ‘quintessence of science, sound and self’ as I  called it in my book Overtone Singing.

DATES AND TIME FOR 2014.

EVERY THURSDAY, 10-12 AM

JANUARY 9, 16, 23, 28

FEBRUARY     13, 20, 27

MARCH         6, 13, 27

APRIL         3, 10, 17, 24

MAY         1, 8, 15, 22, 29

JUNE     5, 12, 19

AUGUST     21, 28

SEPTEMBER      4, 11, 18, 25

OCTOBER     2, 9, 16, 23, 30

NOVEMBER     6, 13, 27  [no class on November 20]

DECEMBER     4, 11, 18, 25

PLACE

Canjune Training Centre, 4th Floor, number 3 , Lane 151, Fuxing South Road, Section 2, (this is about 20 meters from the corner of FuXing South Road, go up the stairs to the hairdresser and take the elevator to 4F; if you’re early the streetdoor may be closed). Nearest MRT: Technology Building (10 min. walk). Telephone training centre: 02 – 27 00 72 91.

RESERVATION

Please notify us of your intention to join the class, by sending a text-message (SMS) with your name to 09-10  38 27 49.

For those unfamiliar with Voice Yoga, the information about Voice of Dao posted earlier still stands.

Thursday evening Voice Yoga class

Thursday evening Voice Yoga class

Would you like to join the Voice Yoga class, but are you busy during the morning? Then from this week on you can enjoy a refreshing Voice Yoga class every Thursday evening. Starting time is 19 PM, we finish at 21 PM. Because the Canjune staff prepares the training centre for closing after 21 PM, we will wind down and take a 10 minute rest before 21 PM (in the morning session we usually do this after the class). So you can enjoy a full two hours of energising voice work. Prices remain the same: 400 NT$ for a single class, 1500 NT$ for four classes.

For the early birds: the Thursday morning class will still take place! So there will be two classes every Thursday.

From now on, please inform me that you wish to join the class: send an email to info-at-fusica-dot-nl or a text message to 09-10-38-27-49. Include the time you wish to come (10 AM or 19 PM).

Because of International Labor Day the schedule is as follows:

Thursday morning (10-12 AM) + Thursday evening (19-21 PM)
April 24
May 8, 15, 22, 29
June 5, 12, 19

June 20 starts my Summer break, first with an aroma tour I organised for Canjune in the wonderful island of Corsica, where we will immerse ourselves in the smells and sounds of this exquisite small island in the Mediterranean.

Voice Yoga classes will start again some time in the second half of August.

More details about Voice Yoga can be found here.

Playdead with Horse dance company

Horse/Shu-Yi & Dancers poster

2014年1+1雙舞作
驫舞劇場《裝死》+ 周先生與舞者們《看得見的城市，看不見的人》
1+1 Dance
HORSE《Playdead》+ Shu-Yi & Dancers《Visible and Invisible》

(Chinese info below)

Since autumn of 2013 Shih-Yang Lee, Yu-Long Chen and myself are working with the experimental dancers of Horse. The performance will be showing in the National Theater in Taipei beginning of May, together with another show by Shu-Yi and Dancers. There was a press event last week, and I just heard the first performance is already sold out, and there are less than 90 tickets for the second one. So don’t wait to order your tickets if you want to see something special!

May 9, 19:30 and May 10, 14:30

National Theatre, Taipei.

演出時間：5/10(六)19:30、5/11(日)14:30

Find all the information here.

See a preview here.

Horse on Facebook.

Buy your tickets here

演出地點：國家戲劇院

=====================================

驫舞劇場 陳武康
《裝死》

儀式的終了，人生直如一副微縮後的冷暖光影。

在《裝死》中，於紐約舞台設計師Mimi Lien所闢出的活且多變的空間裡，陳武康以其獨樹一幟的編舞風格，創作出調性詼諧的人生即景。現場，由音樂家李世揚帶領的樂團，引領出一幕幕繁複的視覺聲響畫面，舞蹈的脈動自節奏而生，止於儀式的終了，人生直如一副微縮後的冷暖光影。

人哪，彼此依靠，心跳和體溫是共同分享的撫慰；
在社會化的練習裡，符應你的腳本，裝扮，
兼演人群中的面孔，為我們舞台風景上的另一種現實。

別急著嘔出胃裡的罪惡，請在我的墳上款款，搖擺，
因為我們終將在長戴這副妝容的那一天，同歸於人間歡慶墮落的集合。

不為呼告而來，這場儀式我們用舞蹈謳歌。

編舞：陳武康
共同創作/表演：林文中、黃庭君、黃懷德、葉名樺、劉冠詳、劉奕伶、鄭皓、蘇威嘉
音樂總監：李世揚
音樂創作/現場樂手：李世揚、陳昱榮、Mark van Tongeren
技術總監/舞台監督：劉家明
舞台設計：Mimi Lien
服裝設計：吳依儒
燈光設計：陳昭郡
技術設計：楊金源

Upcoming events

Weekly Voice Yoga Returns to Canjune Training Centre

March 15: Underground Trip (performance)

March 29: Lacking Sound Festival (performance)

Voice workshop for spring 2014: coming up soon

This week Voice Yoga returns to Canjune’s Training Centre. Everyone is welcome to try out Voice Yoga on Thursdays between 10 and twelve. No registration necessary, but please be on time. Next week (March 20) the class will shift to the afternoon, between 14 and 16. Read the details about Voice Yoga in this blogpost.

Saturday March 15 you are invited to the performance Underground Trip with Serge Onnen, Erika Sprey (visuals), Tung Chao-Ming and myself (sounds) at Taipei Artist Village. There are two shows, at 19:30 and 21:30, please find the details in my previous blogpost.

Saturday March 29 I am invited to perform at the Lacking Sound Festival, which is one of the more interesting on-going sound events in Taipei. Serge Onnen will join me to provide visuals, and we will explore the theme of mirrors. More details in this post.

Soon I will announce some workshops for this spring season. Come check back here or subscribe to this blog. If you prefer to receive emails write to < info  at  fusica   dot   nl> and you will receive updates every once in a while.

Lacking Sound Festival: March 29

I am excited about this invitation for the Lacking Sound Festival, a mostly-monthly event currently held in the Digital Arts Centre in Taipei, to be precise in the Noise Kitchen. This meeting point for sound-art-buffs is a wonderful space with various ingenious instruments that can be played – reminding me more of a Museum of Musical Machines in the Netherlands than a 21st century Digital Arts site. Anyway, I have invited Serge Onnen to join me in creating something analog that sounds and feels digital  (and quite different from the Cloacinae sound-shadow-video performance we do/did the 15th of March). Both of us favor the kind of old-fashioned manual-vocal-labour forms of artistic expression, but then, we do use computers, digital recorders and the occasional effects apparatus to manipulate our creations. So here is the press-blurb:

Mirroring

Mark van Tongeren (sound) and Serge Onnen (image) dissect our everyday perception, enlarging our ordinary vision and audition to include the unseen and unheard. Mirrors, opposites and negatives of our everyday sense world.
Mark van Tongeren is currently fascinated by the voice as an instrument producing numbers, namely, the strict numerical ratios of overtones. When this is made audible through the technique of overtone singing, the voice almost loses its human identity: its sounds seem like pure sine waves. Digits, that is, whole numbers or whole-number ratios could be considered the DNA of our voice. In this installment of his theme The Digital & The Vocal, Mark offers an electro-acoustic performance where the distinctions between the digital and the vocal are blurred. Environmental recordings, extended vocal techniques, Jew’s harps and a Kaosspad further link the physical, everyday world with the digital, and the archaic with the hypermodern.
Artist Serge Onnen, currently holding a solo exhibition at MOCA Taipei, simultaneously provides a live visual performance. He will mainly use mirrors: echo’s of images, stretching the reflection, face reality,  double the sight and confront the audience with their image.