Tuesday - Harmony College - Vocal Motion

We did lots of physical warmups in this session with Gina.

We do vocal warmups to practise our vocal skills and we should do physical warmups to practise our physical skills. Physical warmups do several things:

• stress buster
• practise visual aspects of character (goes into, anchor, recovery) for a more energised look (exercise: being a backup singer)
• sharpens concentration to learn new moves quickly - rincluding some repetition is good to build confidence (exercise: split moves) - it's okay to have fun, don't worry about getting the moves right
• shortens learning time because they're doing more (Gina has people on her visual team who run the physical warmups, and also 'personal trainers' who encourage people to participate
• builds a repertoire of moves that can be used for choreo
• try out moves and find out what works for your chorus, also an opportunity for people who want to be on the visual team to practise and show what they can do

Gina says in her chorus all physical warmups are done on the risers because that's where choreo moves will be done in performance. She tells chorus 'adapt it to your space' if they complain they don't have enough room.

Gina doesn't have names for standard moves because the move will be differently expressed depending on the character - need to teach move plus intention.

(Exercise: robot dance) (Exercise: different moves for different sections of the class). Aussies rock! And we need more fun and controlled abandon in performance, we are too careful on stage, we need more freedom (but don't give up on good vocal production)

We can also do physical warmups to barbershop uptunes which gives the chorus the opportunity to hear good barbershop. (Execise: Orange Coloured Sky).