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[Q] What’s your name? I’m Cesar Figuero. I’m a singing student at UNAB, and more specifically of teacher Luz Helena.
[Q] And you came to our Baseworks workshop for music students. Can you describe how the experience was with movement with Baseworks principles? And can you compare the movement experience with how you normally move? Well. Really for me it wasn’t so new, the fact of consciously involving like the muscles and body movements when executing my instrument. Well, I’m a singer, so when singing… because before entering the university I’ve always been very connected with theater and music.
So those two areas always, more like through theater, the theater area always seeks like the artist does everything through, I mean that everything is born from the body. From body movements, from positions, tension, distension, parallelisms… All that.
So as the teacher just said, it was more like reaffirming certain things that we perhaps don’t use so consciously all the time. But the fact that you come to do a specific workshop about this helps us connect more the mind with the body. And to have much more awareness of the muscles and movements when doing an artistic action. And above all like when seeking tranquility and relaxation of the body to do the task.
[Q] And which aspects of movement, which exercises, which ideas were most interesting for you? Most interesting I’d say above all what we did at the beginning. Which was like activating the whole body. The awareness of knowing that the body might not be in movement or this muscle specifically might not be working at that moment, but yes like the fact that we’re conscious that all muscles are part of the action I’m doing at this moment.
Makes me be more conscious and like have more stability of the body when singing. What we did at the beginning, like accommodating the whole body and from there tensing it without needing to overstrain, that seems very cool to me.
I’ve given singing classes and I try to encourage students in that. To be conscious that everything is a body matter and that everything should start from the naturalness of the body. So what we did of accommodating the shoulders in a natural position and that from a natural position we started to generate tension, I hadn’t done that. And I feel yes I needed that yes, like to be conscious that from this position that I’m calm, I can “um” [excessively strains himself] activate my whole body and involve it when singing.
[Q] And do you normally have tension in some part of the body? Very little.
I think you have good body awareness. I see that. Do you think this is connected with your experience in theater? Is it connected with theater for you? Yes, yes. As I was telling you at the beginning, before entering the music career I studied musical theater for several years. Not professionally, but I was very involved in the topic. All the areas mix. Yes, mixing dance, theater, singing, music, like it makes the artist be like a bit more whole, integral, more complete.
And at the same time the fact of seeking beauty when dancing or when standing on stage to transmit something to the public, has made me be all the time in the search for these movements that help me be calmer, more relaxed, and thus and thus more present on stage.
Let’s say I stand on stage and I’m very conscious of what I was talking to you about. Of parallelism, that if I’m going to move to one side I first notify the other side and so on. Yes, so like yes thanks to theater, I feel that when you came to do the workshop I was in my element so to speak. I was in a very comfortable place and doing exercises I’d probably done before but in a different way.
[Q] Do you think some of the ideas we discussed or Baseworks techniques are relevant for your profession? Yes, of course. Yes, of course they’re very relevant because in fact, let’s say, if I compare the progress of other classmates who perhaps haven’t had closeness or awareness of all these principles we used in the Baseworks workshop, there are like certain shortcomings of what you were saying just now, body awareness.
There are many of us who still aren’t conscious, even of space itself, we’re not conscious of spatial dimensions of body masses, of movements. And I’ve lived it firsthand and I know it’s very important to know what I’m doing with my body when making music, when standing on a stage, or simply talking.
[Q] And do you think the exercises we did in Baseworks are simple to do for everyone? Or is it difficult? What do you think about the difficulty of movements? The ones I managed to do, I say however yes, they’re easy for everyone. I mean I’d say a person who’s in healthy physical shape can do any of the Baseworks exercises.
No, thank you. The workshop seemed very cool to me and I think it’s cool, the university hadn’t brought someone external for a while, an external entity that comes to settle those very specific bases.
Like yes the environment is good, “that we have to connect the body when playing music and seek relaxation…” But never here at the university, since I’ve been here, had we had a workshop with well-structured foundations and with a method in which we can support ourselves to be able to seek those sensations in the body.
So for you, thank you very much and I found it very cool. I really enjoyed it and I helped my classmates, those who did partner work with me. And I told them “hey, yes, totally! Wow bro, you have such good awareness!” Cool!