Lessac Newsletter Winter 2018

Happy Holidays from LTRI!

It’s the time of year for celebration! A time for gathering with family and friends and most of all, a time for gratitude! The Lessac Institute is grateful for the support if its global “family!” What a wonderful year we have had!

So to our Lessac Family, near and far, may your holidays be filled with love, joy and good NRG (and at least a few cookies)!

In the picture, Master Teachers Crystal Robbins (Up Left), Barry Kur (Up Right), Marth Munro (down Left), Nancy Krebs (Down Right)

On Buoyancy Energy

Have you ever gotten a piece of wonderful news that left you feeling as if you were floating on air for the rest of the day? Most of us can recall the sensations we feel when we have the chance to float in a lake or pool, or even when you soak in an oversized, club-footed bathtub. All of these situations are familiar events or occurrences of the energy called Buoyancy. This anti-gravity body climate relaxes, centers, and calms the mind with sensations of weightlessness and effortlessness. In the middle of a hectic day, tuning into your body’s physical memories of Buoyancy can help to remove fatigue from any activity, as well as making any physical act just easier to perform. When connected with a deep breath (as if you are smelling something wonderful) and a sigh of pleasure, Buoyancy helps release tension, stress, and strain quickly and simply. Buoyancy Energy is often associated with feelings of calm, serenity, peace, and hope, and can make us more self-aware as our thoughts rest in quiet with the rise and fall of the breath. Buoyancy is one of three body energies that we re-discover and experience in Lessac Kinesensic training. Lessac work feels so good! For more inside discussion on these and other principles of kinesensics, become a member of the Institute and gain access to members-only content via email and Social Media.

Lessac Training Internationally

The global reach of Lessac Kinesensics continued to expand during the past few years with workshops and intensives in South Africa, the Philippines, Croatia, Australia, and Brazil. Master Teacher Deb Kinghorn finds that international students, like their domestic counterparts, come to the work seeking “vocal and physical empowerment so that they can be their strongest and healthiest in whatever their field of endeavor.” Students are attracted to the “simplicity and holistic nature of the training,” which makes Kinesensics an easy and organic road map to expressing ourselves effectively with one another.

Deb adds that teaching students for whom English is a second language has both joys and traps. “With regard to the joys, the most powerful work is achieved when the principles of the work are applied to the first language. That’s when you hear the true voice. As for traps, one has to have habitual awareness of cultural differences and the heavy baggage that comes with the English language (and by that, I mean colonialism). So many countries in which we teach have experienced the negative impacts of white colonialism, and a teacher may not know that they are even perpetuating those negative responses unless she employs habitual awareness that includes love energy at all times.” 

Deb’s favorite story from her South African experience involves a woman who attended the Capetown workshop: “She refused to speak at first, and then would only whisper. Yet she had a full-bodied laugh. As we progressed through the workshop, she gained confidence and empowerment.” Most exciting for Deb was a communication from this student’s work supervisor, who wrote that she “has had a complete turnaround and is now the chairperson of the local organizing committee! Total reversal from…before Lessac training—she HAS FOUND A VOICE!”

Robin Aronson, immediate past president of the Lessac Institute, and Lessac
Practitioner Rachael Swartz recently offered workshops in the Philippines, working with resident theatre artists in Manila associated with the Philippine Education Theatre Association. The work was conducted in both English and Filipino (Tagalog) languages to encourage participants to use their own unique voices optimally, both onstage and off. One of the participant actors, Rico Duran Del Rosario, declares that Lessac work “makes acting fun again. In the results-driven world that theatre can sometimes become, the actor is prone to injury in striving to deliver. Lessac brings you back to your center, where you operate freely and body-intelligently … like coming back to your body and freeing your voice to speak with honesty, ease, and power.”

Lessac trainers will return to South Africa, Indiana, Croatia and Australia in 2019. For more information on this and other training opportunities, see “Upcoming Events” in this newsletter.

Master Teacher Nancy Krebs at the 2018 Australian Summer Intensive

Certified Trainer Robin Aronson and Practitioner Rachael Swartz with workshop participants in Manila, Philippines

Featured Artist: Jen Diaz

Jen Diaz is an actor/singer who lives and works in the Orlando area. She was first introduced to Lessac Kinesensics at the University of Southern Mississippi, where she studied with Robin Aronson, immediate-past president of the Lessac Institute for Training and Research. Jen applies Lessac training regularly in her acting and singing work—she particularly enjoys the musical metaphor of the training, such as with the Consonant Orchestra. “I love to see what consonants I can tap; thanks, tympanic orchestra! Those consonants can really get the point across, especially in Shakespeare. They’re so passionate and versatile. I also do an entire Lessac warm-up before a play or a musical. It’s my go-to.”

Jen finds Lessac’s emphasis on tonal energy in vocal training to be especially effective in her work as a singer, “I modify certain words so my voice can easily access that note, especially when I am mixing or belting. For example, in the last phrase of “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid (musical version), I would sing ‘…some day I’ll be part of your woahhhhld.’ Hearing ‘part of your worrrrrrrlllddd’ sounds closed and strained. Lessac work showed me exactly where certain sounds ‘live’ in the mouth and how to form them.” Much of Jen’s acting work has been with productions designated as Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA). Jen learned that Lessac work helps her to “pay even closer attention to how I can make my voice more vocally dynamic, so that [young people] don’t lose interest quickly.”

Jen is currently in the developmental premiere of Dike, a new play by Hannah Benitez, directed by Eugene O’Neill National Directing Fellow Tatiana Pandiani. Dike is currently playing at Urbanite Theatre in Sarasota after development/reading with The New York Theatre Workshop. 

Readers can follow Jen’s journey on instagram: @jenperforms or please visit https://www.jenperforms.com

Jen Diaz in White Fang

Membership Drive!

Whether it’s because of the wonderful benefits you get or because you want to support the Institute, now is the time to create or renew your membership. This year there are several new developments in membership as we continue striving to connect and align our members and our pedagogy. A closed Facebook group for members where discussions and questions can be aired, online content from Master Teachers and regular updates from the President of the LTRI and Master Teacher Council are some of the biggest changes to membership benefits. 
Membership is crucial to the Institute, and allows the organization to promote the Lessac
Institute globally as well as underwriting several costs associated with training to ensure that Certification and workshops remain affordable. Increasing our membership will enable the LTRI to boost visibility, training and research even more, expanding kinesensics further and keeping the organizational profile strong—a huge benefit to everyone who uses the work, anywhere in the world.

For more information on Membership and the current benefits,
visit https://lessacinstitute.org/membership/membership-benefit/
or contact Aimee Blesing, Membership Director aimee.blesing@lessacinstitute.org

Wisdom from Arthur Lessac

What is Lessac Kinesensic Training? 

A comprehensive, creative, and holistic work aimed at the development of voice and body strength, agility, and expressiveness.

Where may I apply the principles of Kinesensics? We find applications in all of life’s endeavors. But the following areas represent ways the work is being used today:

  - Communication (speech, public speaking, speech language pathology)
  - Socio-Culture and Language (ESL, second language acquisition, accent acquisition, multi-lingualism)
  - Education (applied theatre, theatre education, voice and movement development for all ages)
  - Performance (singing, acting, movement/dance)
  - Health and wellness (fitness, aging, vitality, self-realization, optimal health)

“So let me invite you into a comprehensive and most accessible theatre lab, where voice and body training are really communication and language training; where development and exercise, feeling and perception become ‘body wisdom’; and where you learn to deal uniquely with the exploration of originality, not as the discovery of another novelty but as the re-discovery of origin itself…within yourself.”

Arthur Lessac, The Use and Training of the Human Voice

Upcoming Events

This coming year Lessac trainers will return to South Africa in January with a 20-day intensive at the University of Pretoria.

Three regional conferences (held in Los Angeles, CA, Durham, NH, and Fredericksburg, VA) will offer a wide range of training experiences for participants. The next regular Conference of the Lessac Institute for Training and Research will be in January 2020 at Kent State.

Hope you'll join the fun!