“How the hell do you do that?!” And the Process Behind Fusing Dance and Opera Together.

Above is one of my “pre-MANX” choreographed arias, “Il mio crudel martoro” from Handel’s Ariodante. This was a fun one to co-create with Lauriane Nabet, a choreographer/dancer and great friend!

As someone doing something new and different with opera and dance, I often get a lot of interesting feedback from audiences viewing my work. It’s actually something I look forward to, because when you’re an artist and your work generates strong responses, you’re at least saying something. After spending years doing “generically lovely” but totally forgettable auditions on the traditional opera young artist program circuit, being interesting is liberating.

Common responses include:

“Your breath control is insane.”

“I’ve never seen anyone do that before!”

“How the hell do you do that?!”

People can’t seem to fathom that an opera singer or dancer would WANT to do half the stuff I’m doing. Singing opera is hard. Dancing is hard. Both together? That’s nuts.

Truth be told, it is nuts. And, it’s also the most obvious thing. Of COURSE dance and opera can be fused together. Music and movement have been intertwined since…well, the beginnings of music and movement. How could they NOT go together?!

It’s through this “Of COURSE they can work together!” lens that I approach choreographing arias, including my latest one, “Ach, ich liebte,” from Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio. Below, I’ll break down the big steps in my creative process (i.e., how I combine dance and singing together), and then in the next blog post, dig into some of the challenges I experienced while creating the piece.

Start with the Music:

When I have a new piece in mind that I’d like to choreograph, I always start with the music. Perhaps this will change overtime, but rarely do I start with choreography. I like to get the music to a point where I have a handle on its technical demands first. If I can sing something well standing still in a voice lesson, I know I can start integrating movement into it, because the technical foundation is set. Ironically, successfully adding choreography has in its own way become another tool in building my vocal technique.

Dance Training and Conditioning:

I am an avid power walker and jogger. I jokingly say my best ideas come to me on my morning walks/jogs through Prospect Park. Training low impact cardio multiple times a week has been critical not only for building my overall stamina, it’s also helped me better formulate my ideas.

My dance training and conditioning is rooted in functional movement and Somatic techniques (think yoga or pilates). I’m less about big tricks, and more about stability, mobility, and building technique that will carry me into my later years. I’d love to be able to move and sing well for as long as I can. My weekly routine is based in regular yoga and pilates, with Bartenieff Fundamentals as an additional somatic tool that helps me better use momentum and flow for more efficient movement. In addition, I aim for at least 2 ballet classes a week, and as time and money allow, will add in a class in Gaga Movement Language or another contemporary technique, to challenge myself and try something different.

Choreographic Process:

I do a work exchange with The Floor, a movement studio/community space in Brooklyn, where I clean the studio once a week in exchange for a few hours of weekly rehearsal space. The Floor is owned by Jamie Dowd, a fantastic mentor and pillar of the dance community, known for creating opportunities for artists and for her own work as a dancer and teacher. I play around with choreographic ideas throughout the week in my own apartment (kitchen and living room choreography is a dancer’s life). But, the exchange with The Floor gives me a chance to polish choreography in a beautiful space, where I can film/document it, and also bring collaborators in as well.

When I’m choreographing a piece and I feel stuck/out of ideas, I often go back to improv prompts I’ve gotten from Bartenieff Fundamentals training, and the “less is more” approach. Instead of trying to add a bunch of new movement all at once, I’ll pair things down to one or two movements I really love and play around with them, letting them evolve into something else on their own time. Just like singing, I find dance is often about letting go of habits, stress, and tension that doesn’t serve you. I also find this serves me well vocally- as I physically let go of excess tension and stress, my body (and therefore, my voice) is much happier!

Vocal Hurdles:

When I feel like something has gone awry vocally in the choreographic process, and going back to those Bartenieff Fundamentals and improv ideas doesn’t help fix it, I’ll strip away the movement and go back to basics with my vocal technique.

First, I strip away the consonants and work just the vowels on staccatos, getting really clear about how clean my actual onsets are. If I start to sing a note and there’s air escaping through my vocal folds, I’ll get an aspirate onset (breathy onset). Aspirating an onset can be a cool effect in a lot of musical styles, but in an opera aria, fixing the initiation of the actual start of each note to be very clear without invoking excess muscle tension fixes about 98% of my problems. It’s arduous and takes time, but also game changing.

Getting a clear onset (i.e., bringing your vocal folds together without excess muscle tension and then being able to sustain tones and oscilate between pitches with that clarity) is key to solid classical vocal technique. With that base, I gain a lot of power to play with dynamics and phrasing, I can maximize the resonance and overtones that allow my voice to be heard without amplification, and, quite frankly, it allows me to sing hard rep without getting tired quickly. The better my vocal technique, the less quickly I fatigue. The less quickly I fatigue, the more movement I can incorporate.

Anywho: I wanted to give some context to my creative process, because it helps inform some of the challenges I faced while choreographing “Ach ich liebte,” which is the subject of the next blog post. Take a read, and let me know what you think!

-Melanie