weaving Voices 01.04.2025 issuu - Flipbook - Page 31
to the very special everyday rules of the community, so different from
our ordinary lives, so respectful and supportive, yet at the same time
immensely strict and hard, we came to know a very well-socialised group,
where everyone’s participation was already an ingrained norm, and where
honesty, acceptance and responsiveness were the baseline. One example
of the many strict rules was when one of the authors of this chapter,
Endre, took his sandals off just before our first workshop in the rehab.
Pazó (nickname of Zoltán Pataki), the leader of the institute asked him
whether the workshop would be held barefoot. He said “no”. Pazó then
asked Endre to put his sandals back on, because, as he explained, “either
everyone stays barefoot or no one”. This looked like a somewhat harsh
form of limiting our freedom but at the same time we understood at once
that these rules also serve for the community, to keep it together.
Either way, our worries vanished completely during our first session and
soon turned into enthusiasm and motivation. It was rather easy for us to
involve the members within all our activities and even singing was not a
problem. At the end of each session, we held a quick round of feedback
and were surprised to see the men opening up and easing into our
presence and activities so fast.
A therapeutic performance by the men of Komló
Each year the rehabilitation centre of Komló holds a drama performance,
created and performed by the men, who are at that time residents of the
centre, engaged in therapy. The theatre piece – directed by the leader
of the rehab – consists of several short scenes, each depicting one of
the men and his situation, based on their personal stories, using drama
therapy tools. The performances take place outside the institution in
several different locations.
This year, with our presence contributing to their ongoing therapy, it was
the request of the rehab workers to enrich their current performance with
musical and vocal features. We received the script and a rehearsal video
in advance with some suggestions, so when our international partners of
the Erasmus+ project joined us in Budapest in the autumn of 2023, we
were able to analyse the scenes and come up with musical ideas together,
some of which included atmospheric vocal presence, pre-composed chord
structures and verbal rhythm exercises. Our aim was to invent games
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based on our previous collective composition methods for the theme of
each scene, so instead of just adding our choir to their performance as
an outside element, we could play the games together with them. As a
result, the original performance in prose was enhanced with short vocal
compositions, some of which were performed by the choir of Soharóza
standing in the background, and some by the joint forces of the singers
and the men in therapy.
We are proud and happy to say that the outcome of this whole process was
of enormous value to the people in therapy, their leaders and therapists,
as well as ourselves. The use of the human voice in a musical and abstract
way added a great deal. Feedback from the residents of the rehab proves
that the power of these games and our presence far exceeded their
expectations. We hope to continue to work with this institution over the
long term.55
Musical improvisation is weaving in time
During the long months of our Erasmus+ project, as we grew familiar
with the expertise of each partner and indulged in endless philosophical
discussions of our practices and their confluence with one another, we
went through a slow, but steady eye-opening process. The breakthrough
moment came in Amsterdam in April 2023, when the textile artist partners,
Rosa Smits and Nina van Hartskamp, hosted us in their workshop space for
a week, and led us through a series of weaving and other textile-related
activities. As the ten of us worked incessantly on a communal weaving (we
could not even stop for the night) and taught songs to each other in the
meantime, the musical and the visual forms and patterns became one.
Music-making in an improvised manner or in the way Soharóza uses it to
create performances and work with different groups is analogous and
connected to weaving on two levels: a practical and a philosophical one.
Pragmatically speaking, the dimensions and components of a weave (warp,
weft, patterns, colours, material, etc.) can perfectly correspond to that of a
musical composition (pitch, melody, tempo, rhythm, volume, timbre, etc.)
and as such can be used as notation for music, either in an improvised, free
form or constrained by strict interpretation guidelines. The composition
55 For a video recording of the performance held in Budapest in November 2023, please contact us. We can
also share a detailed description of the musical games and short compositions that appear in the performance.
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