The Body Speaks/Listens: the Voice and Performance

The Body Speaks/Listens: the Voice and Performance

January 18, Feb 1, and Feb 15, 2026

$20 Drop in, come to one, two, or all three.

The structure is as follows:

-class/lab exercises
-structured improvisation
-integration/sharing

Sources of the Work

The work moves between movement/dance based exercises and the voice - come with clothes you can roll around in. Bring water in a non-glass container or hot tea. And fishermen's friends or other cough drops to support voice.The work emerges from my (Kristen's) many years of experience and exploration in dance and experimental performance. About which, more here: www.kristenlewis.org

This work is rooted in performance art practice, in the approach to embodied anatomy I have learned from Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and deployed in my own performance-research, with attention to the anatomy of the vocal, auditory, and vestibular systems.

Participants are invited to come with a song with some sort of deep significance to them - something their late father played on the radio on road trips, a lullaby their grandma sang to them, the love song they danced to at their wedding (which later ended in a messy divorce), a hymn from childhood church days remembered long after the faith was left in the dust, etc.Being a "good singer" is NOT a pre-requisite. At all.

The purpose of this work is to explore ways to ground voice-work in the body, and to, likewise, ground and expand listening capacity in the body.

Who should Come

1. Dancers and performance artists, both professional and serious-amateur, who want to deepen their comfort level i) expressing vocally in a deeply embodied way as an extension of the dancing-expression; ii) listening deeply with an ear that is rooted in bodily attunement, also as an expression of the dancing-performing expression.
2. Actors/musicians/visual artists/writers interested in deepening their felt-sense of the voice and ear as an emanation of the body - for personal research, for deepening artistic work, for clearing creative blocks.
3. Non-artist others interested in the continuum between embodiment and the capacity for vocal expression and deep listening. A side effect of this work is the ability to use the voice well across a range of contexts - this work has helped me in my non-performance work as a lawyer, where speaking often happens in a high-stress, adrenaline saturated environment.
4. Anyone with the ability to focus on serious work who wants to learn to use the voice better, differently.

Open to ages 18 and up only.

All bodies/abilities/modes of gender expression welcome. The work adapts to the capacities you carry - virtuosity is in the delicacy with which expression reflects the vessel, not in a narrow definition of "strong," "good," etc.

Who should not come

1. Those interested only in expression and not in listening should not come - this is not a free for all chance to express in an unhindered way. It's a delicate, rigorous invitation to deepen sensitivity to expand both expressive range AND listening capacity.
2. Those wanting some sort of "spiritual" or "healing" experience, so-called, involving makeshift altars, sound baths, trance-work, and the like -also should not come. Those things are fine - but this is not what's happening here.(This workshop may well touch on aspects of the non-material, invoking deep states of non-normative consciousness and may well be therapeutic - but the intention is to cultivate voice and listening capacities without dissociation, without appeal to "spirituality" or "healing" as fixated goals or ego identities.)
3. Do not come if you are infectiously ill or in the middle of a mental health crisis.

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Host or Publisher Kristen Lewis