ELKE BEATRIZ RIEDEL

1ST ASSIGNMENT: POSTURE EXERCISE

VOICE PEDAGOGY I
FALL 2006-09-21

The exercise I explain below comes from a series of improvisation exercises that I practiced
at a time I took part in na inclusive dance group in Curitiba, Paraná, from 1992 to 1996.
The training in this dance group was based on body conscience, creation and improvisation
and the development of different movement qualities. Many of the exercises I practiced
there, I applied later with my voice students, approaching them in a different way, to suit
them to the typical challenges of the development of the singing skills.

I don’t have one exercise to the conscience of posture that I apply to all students. I
have several exercises of different origins and different approaches, and I apply them
according to the students I have. Since the singer will depend on the conscience of his/her
body to sing appropriately, it is always good to work as much as possible with this
fundamental skill.
Sometimes, to prepare the singer for further work, I start with an exercise that is
called “swallowing a little ball”. The student imagines that he or she is swallowing a little
ball and that this ball will roll inside of the body. So the student has to show to somebody
else, where this ball is going. The student has to pay attention on the movement of the ball,
it cannot roll in one direction and suddenly be at the opposite side, and it happens to be
only one ball, and not two different ones. This way, paying attention to the movement of
the ball inside his or her body, the student begins to pay attention to the various parts of the
body. Also, and what I consider very good in this exercise, is that, since the ball has to be
rolling on a constant movement, the body is in constant movement too, releasing and
contracting in a continuous flow, not letting the tensions arise. This exercise is also good,
because the focus of the student is on the ball and not directly on the body. The body is free
and flexible to move the ball, and can elongate and assume an aligned posture, through the
guidance of the teacher. The work of the teacher is to guide the student to arrive to an
elongated and aligned posture, always referring to the imaginary ball:
After a while, and after you feel that the student is comfortable with the exercise,
you can direct the student to work the ball on his spine. Since the exercise works only with
one “ball”, meaning that the movement is in only on one direction, here the teacher can ask
the student to work with two imaginary balls going in opposite directions, up and down the
spine. The elongation must always be the consequence of the movement of the ball; it has
not to be “done” directly by the student. This is very important, and is achieved by
maintaining the focus primarily on the ball, and not on the alignment of the body. It is
important that the achieved alignment has to be the consequence of the two opposite
vertical movements of the balls, and not of the direct intention of alignment of the student.
After this exercise it is much easier to call the attention of the student to the alignment of
his/her body when singing, since he/she already played with the imaginary ball, and has felt
the alignment as a natural consequence of this playing.
I also use many other exercises, depending on the student and also on the occasion, since
the imaginary ball exercise demands much more time to be accomplished in an efficient
way. Other exercises may be going down with the head, neck, shoulders and trunk in a slow
pace, paying attention on the elongation of each vertebra, imagining that the space between
each vertebra gets longer while the trunk bends to the floor. It has to be done very carefully,
and with much conscience of the movement, because if this exercise is done in a careless
way, there is the risk of contracting the shoulders and tensing the back muscles.
I think that the most important in all these exercises is the development of the body
conscience and its importance in the art of singing.