weaving Voices 01.04.2025 issuu - Flipbook - Page 19
“You’re using the codes.
I know the codes.
I’m not interested in the codes.”
Ritsaert ten Cate16
My dance becomes a kind of exorcism. I can feel myself
taking up space and others dodge intimidated, but I
keep going, because I can’t help it.
In a blink of an eye I understood exactly what he meant
and knew that I also wasn’t interested in the codes.
From then on I only filmed with a fixed camera, and
singing, my voice became the way of the search. My
voice became the enchantment of my actions, knowing
that the action itself also was never it.
“I realize that I am connected to the
music, in all the rage and all the despair. I
realize that these sounds are also music, if
I choose to hear them that way.”
Walli Höfinger
“[…] the work is what it does.”
Margaret Cameron 17
For about four years I was part of the Performance
group Magdalena Inc+, together with Walli Höfinger,
my sister Ruth and Christopher Dell. It was a deep
investigation into the principles of Improvisation.
The Caramel of one day finding it as a form was
cracked, and a painful but excitingly fun process of
un-doing it began. In this collaborative investigation
and questioning of form and performance we took an
experimental leap into the nothing.
“Why try to cram something back into
Pandora’s box that has broken free and is
inevitably going its way?”
Walli Höfinger
“We believe in Nothing and in Not Yet. In Nothing, Not Yet is
forming.”
Christopher Dell18
Third Caramel: In the first workshop I attended in the
Roy Hart Voice Centre in Malérargues, France, there
was a young woman, who had, what I at the time would
have called a small piping voice. She said she had the
wish to become an opera singer. My cynical self said:
“Good luck!” The teacher had her sing a micro opera to
an imaginary bird in her hand, and slowly increased the
“We believe in Nothing and in Not Yet. In
Nothing, Not Yet is forming.”
Christopher Dell
‘And whatever you follow, allow yourself to hear the
music and at the same time follow your own music,
wherever your voice wants to go.’ Now my voice is
getting louder. Sounds are coming, making their way
up from the depths, sounding less like a human and
more like a wild animal that wants to break free. And
yet at the same time I hear the piano, and I realize that
I am connected to the music, in all the rage and all the
despair. I realize that these sounds are also music, if I
choose to hear them that way.
I perceive everything around me as far away, like a
dream, my body trembling, my voice roaring, my legs
trampling on the wooden floor like a drumbeat, but
then I realize it’s probably time to stop. It’s hard to stop,
now that this rage has made its way and I’m able to
follow it. Why try to cram something back into Pandora’s
box that has broken free and is inevitably going its
way?”43
I often see in my classes that when the word ‘music’ is
used, the person I am working with immediately stiffens
the body and when improvising vocally, uses certain
intervals. It seems that unconscious patterns of what the
person thinks music is, immediately come into effect.
The intervals that come into the voice with the mention
of the word music are a third or a fifth.
16 Personal memory of Christiane Hommelsheim.
17 Cameron, M. (2016) I Shudder to Think: Performance as Philosophy. Brisbane: Lady昀椀ngerPersonal
Press, p. memory
12.
16
of Christiane Hommelsheim.
18 Cameron,
Dell, C. (2002)
Prinzip
Improvisation.
Cologne:
Walther
p. 94. Brisbane: Lady昀椀n17
M. (2016)
I Shudder
to Think:
Performance
as Konig,
Philosophy.
ger Press, p. 12.
43 Hö昀椀nger, W. – memoire writing from 2020, inspired by a voice workshop
held in Malérargues in 2007.
43 Hö昀椀nger, W. – memoire writing from 2020, inspired by a voice workshop
18 Dell, C. (2002) Prinzip Improvisation. Cologne: Walther Konig, p. 94.
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