VERSE PROJECT
With our poetry work, we are deeply focused on recitation and understanding how to express images using poetry and the sound of the voice being connected to breath and movement. I use Shakespeare’s works for this verse work, partly because they are easy to access but also because his writing follows a certain set of rules that make it easy to teach these principles. I love Shakespeare, and I love any opportunity to be able to teach people how to use Shakespeare's language to broaden their ability to express their feelings and emotions.
When we move into verse work, we follow the same pattern and principles that we did with our poem steps 1–12, except now we include intention because the voice needs expression but also intention. Intention is more deeply connected to character and story. And yes, of course, we are storytelling with poetry, but often, the story can be left somewhat incomplete if the poem lacks character and intention.
This is not always the case, but quite often, a poem can exist without there being a clearly defined character. Therefore, we are more easily able to try on the language of the poetry through our own voice when we start to use verse work, particularly verse work that uses Shakespearean sonnets.
I like to work with the sonnets because there is some sense of character, but it is not overwhelming. However, the intention of the language is quite clear, so it makes it much easier to speak it from your own point of view, even though it feels antiquated. But that is the point: it forces us to dive deeper into articulation. The concentration of different sounds and the consistency of the rhythm help support the breath work that we learned in the poetry section.
Shakespeare's verse is in iambic pentameter, which means that there are five stressed syllables in each standard line. It is often said that the iambic pentameter sounds like the natural heartbeat. An iamb has two parts: an unstressed syllable and a stressed syllable. Identifying these unstressed and stressed syllables in Shakespeare's work is easy to do once you understand how language fits with rhythm and how vowel sounds fit with expression.
I will highlight the caesuras/pauses in this example:
When in disgrace with fortune/ and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep/ my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven/ with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself/ and curse my fate,
Wishing me/ like to one more rich in hope,
Featur’d like him/ like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art/ and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy/ contented least;
Yet in these thoughts/ myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee/ and then my state,
Like to the lark/ at break of day arising
From sullen earth/ sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love/ remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn/ to change my state with kings.
What’s important to note about doing this first work is to use the caesuras to have a clear understanding of where the shift between subject and predicate occurs. Where is the natural break in each line? That is where you have a very slight pause to catch your breath and bring the thought into focus. Once those caesuras are in place, finding the operative word is quite simple. Within that thought, where is the word that is doing the work of the thought? What must be present in that thought in order to communicate the specificity of the line?
I will highlight the operative words in this example:
When in disgrace with fortune/ and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep/ my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven/ with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself/ and curse my fate,
Wishing me/ like to one more rich in hope,
Featur’d like him/ like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art/ and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy/ contented least;
Yet in these thoughts/ myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee/ and then my state,
Like to the lark/ at break of day arising
From sullen earth/ sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love/ remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn/ to change my state with kings.
Once we find the operative word and the cesura, we will often notice that the cesura comes directly after the operative word. The most important thing gets said, and we tend to naturally take a breath to begin the next thought. Once we start to understand the rhythm, not just within each syllable or syllable cluster, we also start to understand the overall rhythm of where the pertinent information lives within the thought, how to drive toward it, and how to release away from it to move into the next thought.
Shakespeare’s writing can be thought of as complex, but once you understand how to ride and read its rhythms, it becomes so much easier to understand. And the reason to learn to speak in rhythm with breath for your work or your life is the challenge. Can you employ your memory to such a degree that it is almost speaking another language, assuming that English is your native tongue? And if it isn't, the challenge remains. Can you allow yourself to go into the rhythms, the breath, the expression, the intention, and the point of view and communicate a story from beginning to end while using all the tools at hand?
Once we've identified the operative words, we'll put them into the body but this time allowing more connective tissue between each tableau. It should feel at this stage as though you are dancing your verse piece, that each line takes you somewhere, that each picture that is made with language is made within the body. All of this is done for the sole purpose of connecting physical expression to breath, movement, and sound so that when you go to express yourself, you are connected to the natural release that is meant to take place when you express because you will have a more refined system that can allow you to feel your way into what physically expresses your chosen language.
Up until that point, we use the verse work to help us understand more deeply how to express language through complex construction and thought. Making it plain and easy for people to understand is simply a matter of using pitch to allow thoughts to suspend when they are meant to be held in the mind and allowing for silence when the text demands silence. Otherwise, the rhythm marches forward and through and drives itself toward its end. The more we learn to get into that flow where we don’t have to create the language but are riding the flow and the energy of the verse, we can start to remove the impediments that stop us from speaking in our natural flow in our natural life.
It takes practice with a container that can actually hold rhythmic flow to learn what it can do for your connection to breath, language, and expression, to learn how not to stop yourself and allow your breath to stay connected to a rhythm. When we get to performing our verse work, this is the space where we start to balance out the full modern dance expression of our verse piece, balanced with a communicating reality. How does this person exist in the world, and do I believe them and the actions they are connecting to this language?
This is a space to stretch that reality because we are so often in our own lives made to be smaller and more hemmed in than our full expression actually demands. The verse work teaches your body to expand because the language requires expansion in its complexity. Learning to perform this verse piece, sonnet, Shakespearean monolog, or any other classical piece of text that speaks to your heart and soul re-teaches your body what is required to express complex thoughts and emotions. I'll include some other examples of works that this can be done with.
The next step is to share with community, to allow yourself to inhabit language that is not native to your tongue in front of others and make a clear, compelling story come to life in front of them and notice what happens to your body as a result of allowing other people's inter energy to interact with something that you have learned to put into your body, to memorize, to commit to heart, what happens to you emotionally that is different when you share it with others than when you were practicing it on your own. This is where the energy work lives, the transfer of energy, the energy it takes to give something away to someone and to receive back from them their reception, their understanding, their breath, their life, their voice in response.
Then we go away, and we journal and make notes about where we felt activated and what made us nervous. When did we get nervous? How did that shift our breath? How did it shift our coloring? How did it shift our posture? What habits remain when we go to express ourselves fully, even something that we have rehearsed? Then we go back once again after having done the warmup. We reconnect to those spaces through our warmups, through that practice, through the ritual, through the repeating to continue to build the foundation.
Then we return to the language once again, re-inhabiting it with deeper understanding, re-solidifying the understanding of the vowels and the consonants, working with them one by one, line by line, perfecting the movement that is connected to the language to help it better communicate the thought. Can it be simplified? Can it be made easier to understand by doing less with the body and more with the language, the thought, the breath, the support, or the emotional resonance that vibrates through the deep connection to the authentic voice? How long were you able to maintain your authentic voice when you were speaking to others? Then go back to the warmup and do that, repair, reconnect, and know deeper what it feels like to resonate in those spaces.
Then we return to our community and practice performance again. Once again, we take notes, and then we notice where we tensed and tightened and where we are sore the next day, how the health of our voice feels, whether or not we are hydrated, taking inventory of our experience in an inner, energetic interaction that we've created to practice repairing the energy of our communication, to better communicate what we intend through voice, thought, sound, and movement.
