(25.8 welcome date / 31.8 departure date)
For performance professionals and advanced students, this workshop offers a unique opportunity to examine how the body, voice, imagination and ensemble can be utilized to find new sources of creativity.
We all have within us hundreds of voices, characters, and possibilities of creative manifestation. The Polyphonic Body, is allowing all the elements of the performer’s inner life, vocal possibilities and physical expression to be channeled in a harmonious and contrapuntal way. This workshop is designed to open and integrate all aspects of the performer. Each exercise and experience will cultivate presence, reveal a voice and body that is open and free, expressive and capable of communicating emotional truth thus bringing to bear our most authentic, vulnerable and creatively powerful state; the path to become radiant storyteller.
Led by Rafał Habel and Julianna Bloodgood, formerly of Song of the Goat Theatre, this workshop is physical at its core and ensemble based. Through a physical approach to performance training, every aspect of the work creates a deep sense of listening and responsiveness to the impulses that arise within one’s own body and from the collective ensemble. We will deepen the body-voice connection and explore how sound is derived and physically experienced, creating a visceral understanding of the voice and enlivening new possibilities for song, text and vocal improvisation.
This workshop contributes to the classical actor’s technique, dance, physical and musical theatre by awakening a sense of internal and external rhythm, working with physical impulse, spatial awareness and focus. Each exercise will deepen the body’s connection to impulses and stimulus and gradually interconnect all aspects of the craft. The manifestation of the work is dynamic, contemplative and entirely musical.
Please CLICK HERE
download / fill out the form and send it to [email protected]
Dead Walk Love
https://vimeo.com/154159685
Songs of Lear
https://youtu.be/vqL2DDXYoG0
Portraits of the Cherry Orchard
https://youtu.be/YVmkt9NFl-o
Crazy God
https://youtu.be/CV-QIdMuwFg
Photo: Klaudia Szymura
Julianna Bloodgood
www.juliannabloodgood.com
Julianna Bloodgood, originally from California has resided in Poland since 2009. She is a vocalist, movement artist, performer and teacher whose work includes anthropological performance research and she has traveled the globe extensively in search of different cultural perspectives on the body, voice and the ritual of performance. Many of the performances she creates are made as rituals, meant to be shared experiences of transformation and healing. The core of her work is a detailed practice in the relationship between body and voice and how this can be brought to performance and composition. Her research with the body and voice has led to an in-depth and ongoing development of this connection which she calls Embodied Voice Practices. This practice utilizes integrative somatic trauma therapy techniques and focuses the output in vocal expression, which is a deeply healing and transformative process. Julianna specializes in the research and practice of vocal lamentation, giving shape and voice to our pain and loss, which has become a through line in all of her work. She continues to research the technical, historical and contemporary aspects of lamentation in different European countries, performing and teaching internationally.
Julianna was a performer with the award winning and critically acclaimed Polish theatre company Song of the Goat Theatre from 2009-2018. She was an integral part of the development, devising, premiers and world tours of seven productions; Songs of Lear; Portraits of the Cherry Orchard; Return to the Voice; Umilowanie: Dead Walk Love; Crazy God; Island and Hamlet: A Commentary. Her research and performance with Song of the Goat was focused around integrating movement, polyphonic singing and text through dynamic interpretations of classical plays and during her time with Song of the Goat the company won various awards for these ensemble devised pieces. With this company she has performed throughout Europe, Asia, South America and North America. In Wrocław she was also a founding member of the pedagogical and performance research company Odra Ensemble and developed the piece Eurydice: We Will Leave Only Bone, based in part on her research into Somali Buraanbur traditions as well as Bulgarian rituals and vocal traditions.
Julianna is an associate artist with Brú Theatre of Galway, Ireland. In 2021 she was the composer, music director and a performer for the piece Gol, which explored traditional Irish keening, or lamentation for the dead. She recorded her music with Brú and the ensemble of Gol to serve as the soundscape for the virtual reality piece Olagón, a lament for the land guiding spectators through wild landscapes of west Ireland through the perspective of a single woman.
Julianna is a resident artist with New York based Theater MITU and has collaborated with the company internationally since 2012. She is an associate artist with Slovakian theatre company Honey and Dust and collaborates with Greek company Alki and the Polish Warsaw Stage Society.
An important aspect of Julianna’s professional life is in community based projects and artistic outreach, using art as a vehicle for healing and change. Julianna is the co-founder of The Dadaab Theater Project, a youth based theater project in Dadaab, Kenya, formerly the world’s largest refugee camp and is a founding member and co-artistic director of The Great Globe Foundation, a non-profit organization utilizing the power of creativity to inspire and empower the individual voice and to help build bridges between people and communities.
Julianna holds an MA in Acting, Magna Cum Laude/ High Honors, from Manchester Metropolitan University and graduated in conjunction with Song of the Goat Theatre of Poland. She earned a BFA in Dramatic Performance from the College Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati; and is a graduate of the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts, California. In 2005, Julianna received the prestigious award and scholarship from the College Conservatory of Music “Sustained Excellence in Achievement and Performance during a College Conservatory of Music Career by a Graduating Senior”. In 2017 she was the recipient of the University of Cincinnati’s “Julia Winter Cohen Career Excellence Award” and in 2018 she was given a “Distinguished Alumnus Honor” also from the University of Cincinnati. Aside from performing, Julianna composes and records her own music and is a facilitator and director of original theatrical works.
Rafał Habel
www.rafalhabel.com
Rafał Habel, from Poland, is an actor, pedagog, teacher and musician who’s work is a culmination of 25 years of research, practice and performance in a unique genre of ensemble devised, music based- physical theatre. Rafał has developed a profound understanding of the ensemble and theatrical development and with that a deep understanding of the connection between movement, voice, music, text and rhythm.
Rafał was a member of the internationally renowned Polish theatre company, Song of the Goat Theatre, from its inception in 1996 to 2018. Rafał has been a key collaborator in the devising process of almost all of Song of the Goat’s performances which have won numerous awards and critical acclaim throughout the world including the Edinburg Festival "Fringe First" in 2006 and 2012. Performances include – Dithyramb; Chronicles- A Lamentation; Lacrimosa; Macbeth; Songs of Lear; Portraits of the Cherry Orchard; Return to the Voice; Umilowanie: Dead Walk Love; Hamlet A Commentary and The Grand Inquisitor. Rafał has performed and taught throughout Europe, North America, South America, Australia and Asia.
Rafał was a member of the award winning Polish chamber folk music group Lautari and his intuitive sense of musicianship and rhythm has led him to learn various instruments from around the world with which he has created original soundscapes and compositions for the theatre. He currently collaborates with the Slovakian theatre company Honey and Dust and has recently devised and premiered Uninteresting Scream which tours internationally. Rafał also collaborated with Bread in the Bone Theatre company in Poland and England, creating Unreal City and Don Quixote. Rafał taught on the MA in Acting course through Manchester Metropolitan University run by Song of the Goat Theatre in Poland from 2004-2012, the London School of Performance Practices, Rose Bruford College and was a teacher for Song of the Goat Theatre from 2004-2018. Rafał teaches workshops and masterclasses regularly throughout Europe.
Photo: Mateusz Bral
THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL! Please, contact the administration desk for waiting list or to explore other options.