May 1, 2012 Dear Brian Quirt, Rupal Shah, and the Nightswimming gang, I’m very exciting to be making this application for the Nightswimming Pure Research program. Though my background is in theatre and in classical music/opera, these two worlds have largely remained confined in themselves until the past year. I have noticed an increased interest among all artists to collaborate across disciplines and this has sparked my own interest in the intersection of physical theatre, opera and dance. In the past little while, I have helped workshop a Viewpoints/movement-based piece with vocal and opera components (Tapestry/Bound2Create), and performed in an artist’s installation that involved me lifting a ’68 Mustang coupe while singing Roy Orbison’s ‘Only the Lonely’ in German. One question that has consistently come to mind during these endeavors is “What are the physical limitations of operatic singing?” As someone who is interested in extreme physicality in classical singing/opera, I’m very much interested in exploring the outer boundaries of maintaining an ‘acceptable’ tone while going physically ‘all out’. I know that certain singers are asked to do some taxing things (I once saw Susan Graham run across the stage and jump on someone’s back, all the while holding one long note), however there are also many singers who can’t or won’t move. With the current trend of integrating physicality into opera, what exactly is feasible? Are there boundaries that haven’t been tested yet? I am proposing a Pure Research workshop to explore the physical limitations of classical singing. My collaborators are Michael Mori and Teiya Kasahara. Michael is a director, choreographer and singer and is currently Associate Artistic Director at Tapestry New Opera. He will serve as the ‘director’/outside eye and will oversee the conducting of these experiments. Teiya is an accomplished singer and a very physical performer in her own right. She and I will both be collaborative subjects in the experiments. Over three full days, or 5 half days, we hope to put ourselves through our paces and discover some new possibilities for physical opera performance. We know that singing opera is already a physically taxing activity, however we are interested in finding out how much further we can push opera performance before it is no longer sustainable (or recognizable). We will be testing ourselves through a series of cardiovascular, movement and positioning exercises that will hopefully generate new staging possibilities for the future. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity for pure exploration. It is indeed seldom that we get the opportunity to investigate what we do from a perspective of curiosity. Please let me know if you need any other documents or information from me. You can reach me at kwanzoku@gmail.com or at 647 669 4080.
Best Regards,
Derek Kwan