Pillar 2
Acting and Movement
Acting and Movement courses help students to become professional stage performers. Singers and repetiteurs develop improvising skills and get to know different acting methods; they learn to express themselves through movement and dance. At the end of the programme, students possess a range of tools to embody characters and emotions, and to communicate these to audiences.
Movement Coaching
‘Movement Coaching’ aims to equip students with the tools and techniques needed to pursue a career in opera with the demands made by choreographers today.
The class provides different exercises to learn stage presence through movement and space. Students engage with movement as it relates to one’s own body and that of one’s partner on stage, and are encouraged to be aware of and responsive to one’s surroundings. Finally, the students learn different choreographies, in order not only to learn the movements, but also the technique of observing and analysing, which will enable them to adopt movements more quickly.
Spatial Awareness_Acting Styles
This course seeks to give opera singers acting tools to take into a rehearsal room. It focuses on different acting styles: grotesque/comedy; psychological/natural realism; and non-character based acting.
Students will work with the same material in these three different styles. In each style, they will be encouraged to explore different things.
The course material will be composed based on material the students know. The classes will include both singing and speaking. At all times, the emphasis will remain on acting.
Every day will start with a physical warm-up that focuses on body awareness and spatial awareness.
Workshop Movement
This workshop seeks to address the interaction between voice and movement. The students will explore the ways in which movement supports and interacts with breath and voice, and learn that voice and movement function in the same field.
Workshop Spatial and Body Awareness for Operatic Auditioning
This workshop aims to give opera singers spatial awareness, acting and body awareness tools to take into an audition room. It focuses on the entrance in the audition room, the presentation of the opera singers, their use of space, body as well as acting style during the audition.
Students will become aware of the wholeness of functioning needed for operatic auditioning in which the singer wants to be real yet transcending “everyday-ness”, accurate yet spontaneous, focussed on quality yet not “grey” and in service of both the drama as well as the music, will be trained.
The course material will be chosen by the students in preparation of their work with the agent two weeks later.
