Somatic Voices in Performance Research and Beyond

This edited volume aims at suggesting a cohesive discussion on contemporary, emergent interactions between somatic discourses, voice studies and Practice as Research or praxical methodologies. Mainly drawing from performance and educational environments in the field of performing arts, this collection brings together various approaches to the diverse vocal soma as perceived through new directions to praxicality and voice studies. Stemming from direct dialogue with somatic lineages or various critical interrogations on somaticities within vocalities/vocalities within somaticities, this volume may primarily emerge from performance contexts but at the same time opens up broader multidisciplinary discussions on reflective writing and processes of theoretical criticism. Apart from interrelations within voice, dance and actor-training methodologies, themes include: embodied cognition, phenomenological perspectives, environmental studies, auto-ethnography, neuropsychology, ethnic/racial and cultural studies, materiality, feminism, queer theories, politics and reception studies. Practitioners-researchers and academics from North America and Europe were invited to focus on the dynamic integration between practice and theory (or praxis) in their professional work and research in order to communicate the contribution of somatic methodologies to their voice-oriented investigations. As a result, the authors generate various approaches to contemporary somatic research in voice studies, suggesting new modes of somatic narratives and critical writing on voices. Explicit praxical elements are also intended to be complemented with audiovisual material in resonance with the voice-sensitive tone of the proposed volume.