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[Q] What’s your name? Luz Elena Penaranda.
[Q] And are you a music teacher? Yes, I’m a teacher in the music program at UNAB. I’m a singing teacher. I’m a soprano and also a choral director.
I was in the workshop and it was truly a very beautiful experience of reconnecting with the body. How important Baseworks is at this moment for us.
[Q] And can you explain a bit about your experience moving with Baseworks principles? Yes, for me it was like I told you earlier, reconnecting with the body. There were very interesting things you were saying. “Let’s think we’re more like robots, more robotic movements, less fluid, with less impulse.” And that sensation I loved for having a body awareness especially of connection with muscles, which is something we forget, right?
So truly for me it was a very gratifying experience in that, in reconnecting with the body.
[Q] And could you feel if even though we move like robots, it helps improve movement awareness? Exactly. That’s one of the things I loved, yes. That awareness of connecting the body while I’m doing the exercises for me was something very important.
I think I was one of those who said, you remember I felt a cramp in my foot when I started doing it, and at the end of the exercises the plasticity was already normal. So how little by little you reconnect with the body and energy flows, I loved it.
[Q] Even though we only had two days, did you feel a change in your perception or sensitivity, or posture or way of singing or something like that? There were several specific things that stayed with me. One of them is that muscular awareness. If we have the muscles connected when we sing, when we live, if we think that the body ages over the years, it’s a way to keep us active and keep us healthy through the work we did with Baseworks.
And so I felt how continuing to work on that muscular connection is going to give me many tools, to me and my students, to continue singing.
Another thing I loved is when you Asia talked about stage fright. I mean how when I take air some nerves work, right, the sympathetic ones. And when I release the air, they’re the parasympathetic. And how I can lower the level of emotion and fear when I manage to maintain a longer exhalation.
Yes, so that stayed with me a lot for myself and to share with my students. If we’re capable of taking air and maintaining ourselves more in the time of exhalation, we’re going to start to lower a bit that anguish, that emotion that’s felt when we’re going to sing.
[Q] Among the ideas or our approach to movement, what was the most new or interesting for you? Let’s see, the most new and interesting is that sensation of being present. I remember when Patrick made us touch him in the first exercise we had, so that sensation of having the arms down. It’s not a tension but it is a tonification, I mean keeping the body totally active without reaching the moment of like [demonstrates strained expression], reaching the body’s stress.
So that capacity to maintain control connected the body while we do, while we sing, while we play, without needing to push or strain. This was something that really caught my attention.
And you could see it, I loved when Patrick made us be able to touch. Because you could feel the difference when he relaxed and when suddenly “pa!”, he connected without reaching tension. It’s something that caught my attention.
[Q] And was there something that changed in your students? In the way of playing or singing? Well my students, those who went to the workshop, some of us were talking, and more than change, reaffirm. Yes? We reaffirm. Let’s say when we talked about the sensation of connecting, when we stretch and all this sensation that this goes forward and the sensation of the squat that this goes backward. That exactly in singing is a very good body position. I mean that’s part of support.
So reaffirming that sensation, we were doing it through other exercises. But with your exercises we reaffirmed that that connection of the complete body when I’m going to sing is magnificent. So it was a reaffirmation.
[Q] Do you think some of the ideas we discussed are relevant for your profession? Yes. Not only some ideas. All of them. All the ideas you brought, also because they connect with other disciplines that I’ve also practiced. I mean there are many things I heard that come from yoga. I mean that sensation when Patrick made the sensation of “Haaaa” [loud exhalation], that releasing toxins so important for us, singing. The stimulating force for singing is air.
So many of the ideas you’re saying, I think Baseworks is something very complete. I didn’t know it. It’s the first time. And what joy that the program gave us this opportunity through Mukti, eh, to know this way of seeing music from body connection, because it’s something I’ve been looking for for a long time, and what joy to reaffirm it with Baseworks.