WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

Embodied Voice Flow
with Alessio Castellacci

>> Embodied Voice Flow is a vocal-physical process which invites you to re-discover an intimate and empowered relationship with the primal voice and its profound sensitivity, through a series of somatic investigations on deep listening, embodied vocality, musical instinct. Each session opens a space to connect with the pleasure of creating music with our breath, voice, mouth, body, and with our innate instinct for expression and connection through sound. We combine these practices to create different forms of vocal improvisation whilst grounding within presence and awareness, expressing our vital creativity through sound and movement, and listening with the whole body at the same time we start to cultivate the art of living in the present moment. The overall trajectory of each session follows a designed progression from the functional aspects of voice and body (breath anatomy, elements of acoustics and phonetics) to the realm of improvised musical flow - the ‘music of the now’. 

The core practices of the Embodied Voice Flow are:

> Deep listening: the meditative practice of receiving sound in its depths through the body, unconditional hearing as a gateway to our consciousness.
> Somatic experience: experiencing one’s voice and body as an integrated whole, dialoguing with the vibrational nature of your voice.
> Pulsing/tuning: working with spontaneous pulsations and melodies as a way to experiencing music in a playful, intimate, naked sense; connecting with your creative source by surrendering into the music of the moment.
> Collaborative Vocal Improvisation: organising emerging percussive-melodic patterns in a collective musical flow within improvised sound journeys.
> Songs as Teachers: in the last part of the session we open songs from different traditions and dive together in their melody, rhythm, circularity, surrendering to each song as a gateway to our consciousness and the full expansion of our voice being.

Tactile Voice
We start by approaching our voice through touch: with hands-on work we bring our attention to the sensations arising from the mouth cavity, the waves of breath, the impulses to move, and the musical imagination that comes with these. We invite the experience of sound as molecular vibration, as a tactile input from-within-and-to the body. We look at the anatomy of key structures (diaphragm, larynx, mouth cavity) and experience the dancing dialogues that exist between them, enjoying moving through these areas in a sound-inclusive way. 

Pulsing | Tuning
From this state of soft embodiment, we look at elements of phonetics to explore the ongoing choreography of vowels and consonants production, tuning- in to the dance of the articulators (tongue, lips, teeth, soft palate) that we experience subconsciously in our daily life. Regressing to this micro-level of coordination, we tune our listening to the complex rhythms that are present in our speech, breath, movement, and learn how to harness these micro-beats to create improvised percussive vocal music. We access the endless possibilities of pulsations, sound textures and melodies, organising them through real-time phrasing and instant compositions. 

Circle Songs
In the last part of the session we open the Circle Songs - improvised choral songs based on the repetition of simple vocal modules and collective rhythmical entrainment. This is a moment of celebration and togetherness, of witnessing together music taking shape through a circular process of repetition, layering, refinement, transformation, osmosis, friction, story telling, individuality and connectivity. Each Circle Song is a river which we float upon, following its flow all the way through to see where it leads us.

“We call for a shared space of trust, to nourish each other’s journey by letting our voices be heard, surrendering to what wants to be born in each moment.”

DATES : see homapage
SCHEDULE : Mon - Fri (10:00 - 14:00)
LIMITED NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS
For questions write to info@the-world-is-sound.com

Alessio Castellacci

>> Alessio Castellacci is a teacher of voice embodiment based in Berlin. He studied Developmental Psychology (La Sapienza University - Italy) and Choreography (Artez Institute – the Netherlands). He has worked since 2007 as a contemporary dancer and a sound composer for various choreographers in Europe, a.o. Maria F. Scaroni, Peter Pleyer, Dani Brown & Marta Navaridas, Morgan Nardi/Ludica, Piccoli Production, Eszter Gal, Jeremy Wade, Sasha Waltz Kinder Tanz Company/Gabriel Galindez Cruz, Tino Sehgal, Kareth Schaffer, Zwoisy Mears Clarke, Ru Chen/Cloud Gate Company (Taiwan), Hyoung Min Kim (Berlin/Seoul). 
Since 2008 he has been dedicated to exploring the expressive possibilities of the human voice, and has since developed a pedagogical approach for voice & movement improvisation. Seminal experiences in his understanding of the voice-movement-mind integration have been his studies with the extended vocal techniques pioneer Meredith Monk; with Vocal Dance originator Patricia Bardi; with ethnomusicologist Mark Van Tongeren; with sound healer Amit Carmeli (The Music School Of Life) whose work has a profound impact on his relationship to voice, breath, and consciousness.
For the last 17 years Alessio has been teaching regularly workshops in different venues in Europe (he has taught a.o. at Tanzhaus Zurich, Improspeckje Festival Zagreb, Altart Praha, Wasp Bucharest, Ials Rome, Kontakt Festival Budapest, Tanzfabrik Berlin, SMASH Berlin, NOW! Festival Berlin, ROAR Berlin, Dans Centrum Syd Malmö, Proda Oslo, Skolen for Samtidsdans Oslo, Dance Atelier Reykjavik, K3 Hamburg, Hzt Berlin, Choreography BA Rejkyavik, Dance BA Copenhagen, BARD College Berlin, University of Osnabrück and many others.
From 2012 to 2021 he has curated the educational program SMASH - now continued as ROAR Berlin - a yearly program for movement art. In 2017 he initiated with choreographer Jule Flierl the performance series From Breath to Matter, in which different artists are invited to share work around the topic of vocal dance and its political implications. Since 2017 Alessio runs with voice artist and teacher Irena Z. Tomazin The World is Sound (TWIS), a platform for sound and voice practices based in Berlin. Alessio is a certified Estill Figure Proficiency (EFP) practitioner of the Estill Voice Technique, and is currently studying the Level 1 of the Internal Family System (IFS) psychotherapy model.

THE STUDIO

(header photo ⓒ Florence Freitag)