An educational method used to improve performance, the Alexander Technique teaches people to replace unnecessary muscular and mental effort with consciously coordinated responses, maximizing effectiveness while also relieving, if necessary, any chronic stiffness or stress. Integrative Alexander Technique Practice for Performing Artists presents the empirical research of Cathy Madden, a teacher and coach with more than thirty-five years of experience with the technique. She addresses common concerns, such as concentration, relaxation, discipline-specific techniques, warm-ups, performer/audience relationships, stage fright, and critical responses, and explores the role of the senses, emotions, learned behavior, human consciousness studies, and neuroscience in the application of the techniques.

The Alexander Technique is a specific form of mind/body practice that focusses on improving efficiency through learning and understanding movement and behavior. Galvanizing Performances applies the teachings of this practice to the performing arts. Through theatre, music, and dance, the contributors, all artists themselves, demonstrate how deliberate movement can improve an individual's art and benefit their general health and wellbeing. Using specific case examples and in-depth analysis over a range of performance arts, this book supports instruction of effective movement and the Alexander Technique within different artistic disciplines for students and teachers alike.

Thoughtful and accessible, this guidebook unpacks the teaching process of the Alexander Technique for new and more experienced practitioners. By demonstrating the pathway from learning the Alexander Technique for oneself to teaching it, Madden identifies the skill sets required for excellence in teaching the Alexander Technique, and shows readers how they can acquire and develop these skills themselves. Observation, communication and tactile skills are all covered, and particular attention is paid to group teaching, which is neglected in current literature. This is combined with discussion of current research on education and neuroscience, enabling the reader to build a truly informed and effective practice. Featuring a variety of examples and stories, it will prove a valuable resource to any teacher of the Alexander Technique, both active and prospective, and to practitioners of other modalities exploring ways to deepen their practice.

The Alexander Technique (AT) is a remarkably simple but powerful method for learning to skillfully control how your brain and body interact, allowing you to better coordinate your movements while increasing the accuracy of your mind's thoughts and perceptions. Now, in How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live, leading Alexander Technique master teacher Missy Vineyard sheds a completely fresh light on this revolutionary method and, in the process, offers path-breaking insight into the mind-body connection. Vineyard thoroughly explains and teaches the central skills of the AT through simple self-experiments, and she offers engaging stories of students in their lessons to show its effective application across a range of disciplines, including the performing arts, athletics, health, psychology, and education. How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live introduces us to a world within ourselves that we know surprisingly little about--and thereby helps us to understand why we often cannot do what we should be able to do, why we harm ourselves with chronic tension and anxiety, and why our thoughts often seem beyond our control. Vineyard is also the first AT teacher to draw on cutting-edge research in neuroscience and to synthesize those findings with AT theories and techniques. She fully illuminates the benefits to be reaped by mastery of the Alexander Technique, which include: Release from acute or chronic physical pain Enhanced mental attention and focus Reduced anxiety Improved balance and coordination Relief from tension and stress Increased ease and efficiency performing precise movement skills

Performing Arts Medicine (PAM) is a growing area of specialization within the performing arts field, which addresses the multi-faceted health and wellness of performing artists. This sub-discipline within performing arts is interdisciplinary in nature, involving the expertise of performing arts educators and researchers, physicians and other health professionals. This first of its kind text appeals to a very wide audience that includes performing arts clinical practitioners and health science researchers as well as performing arts pedagogues and performing arts students. The first part of the text gives the reader an overview of the field and discusses over-arching themes and issues in PAM. Part two presents an array of music and dance research involving primarily case studies that address significant issues of concern for performing artists and have implications for pedagogical practice. Part three provides research-based perspectives derived from professionals sharing their in-practice experiences. Finally, part four describes useful PAM models of implementation supporting the needs of performing artists in different settings. Written by experts in the field, Perspectives in Performing Arts Medicine Practice is a valuable resource for performing arts physicians, educators and researchers.

A Hatful of Rain pulls no punch, of horror, tension or heroics. And it is all to Gazzo's brimful credit that the characters remain believable and sympathetic. A young man's terrible war injuries have made him rely on dope. His wife is pregnant, and he is unable to keep jobs. His simple, devoted brother has alienated their adventurous father by giving his money in secret to the victim. Neither the wife nor the father knows what is happening. The young husband is backed to the wall by the peddlers, and they both find out. THey also learn the more terrifying evidence of what it means to be a deprived addict. -- from page 3.

What Every Singer Needs to Know About the Body, Fourth Edition gives singers and teachers a Body Mapping resource—from anatomy and physiology to body awareness—that helps them discover and correct misconceptions about how their bodies are designed and how they function. This book provides detailed descriptions of the structures and movements necessary for healthy and efficient body awareness, balance, breathing, phonation, resonance, articulation, and gesture. Many voice books focus on the anatomical facts, but leave singers asking, "How can I apply this to my singing?" What Every Singer Needs to Know About the Body helps to answer that question, providing practical exercises and detailed illustrations. New to This Edition: * Updated and revised content throughout the text * Bulleted review sections for each chapter * New and updated links to recommended videos * Information on Biotensegrity and how it pertains to Body Mapping, along with helpful links to resources on the subject * An expanded glossary What Every Singer Needs to Know About the Body includes audio and video recordings of the exploratory exercises. This book provides the technical foundation for singers of all styles. The authors do not espouse a single method or attempt to teach singing techniques or styles. Rather, they describe the movements of singing with accuracy and detail so that singers may experiment on their own and communicate with each other in a common language.

The Alexander Technique for Musicians is a unique guide for all musicians, providing a practical, informative approach to being a successful and comfortable performer. Perfect as an introduction to the Alexander Technique, or to supplement the reader's lessons, the book looks at daily and last-minute practice, breathing, performance and performance anxiety, teacher–pupil relationships, ensemble skills, and the application of the Alexander Technique to instrumental and vocal work. Complete with diagrams and photographs to aid the learning process, as well as step-by-step procedures and diary entries written by participating students, The Alexander Technique for Musicians gives tried-and-tested advice, drawn from the authors' twenty-plus years of experience working with musicians, providing an essential handbook for musicians seeking the most from themselves and their art.

Somatic Voices in Performance Research and Beyond brings together a community of international practitioner-researchers who explore voice through soma or soma through voice. Somatic methodologies offer research processes within a new area of vocal, somatic and performance praxis. Voice work and theoretical ideas emerge from dance, acting and performance training while they also move beyond commonly recognized somatics and performance processes. From philosophies and pedagogies to ethnic-racial and queer studies, this collection advances embodied aspects of voices, the multidisciplinary potentialities of somatic studies, vocal diversity and inclusion, somatic modes of sounding, listening and writing voice. Methodologies that can be found in this collection draw on: eastern traditions body psychotherapy-somatic psychology Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais Method Authentic Movement, Body-Mind Centering, Continuum Movement, Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy Fitzmaurice Voicework, Linklater Technique, Roy Hart Method post-Stanislavski and post-Grotowski actor-training traditions somaesthetics The volume also includes contributions by the founders of: Shin Somatics, Body and Earth, Voice Movement Integration SOMart, Somatic Acting Process This book is a polyphonic and multimodal compilation of experiential invitations to each reader’s own somatic voice. It culminates with the "voices" of contributing participants to a praxical symposium at East 15 Acting School in London (July 19–20, 2019). It fills a significant gap for scholars in the fields of voice studies, theatre studies, somatic studies, artistic research and pedagogy. It is also a vital read for graduate students, doctoral and postdoctoral researchers.