When discussing the four key musical elements that most of my movements relate to, Vocal Technique professor and classical vocalist Manon Heijne expressed she doesn't like when singers move their hands along to the pitch as “that is sort of technical help [...] I always say don’t do this because also when you’re improvising, you’re telling a story, you're still busy with the narrative” and “that doesn’t work because then you're not in the music, you’re not in the moment”. Her comment brought up the important point that keeping an internal focus can be detrimental to performance, as discussed by the research of Williams and Brand. Additionally, as seen in Example 2, movements focused on just one element while ignoring the rest can have an incomplete / unconvincing effect on the expressiveness of the performer, which may be another reason why she doesn't like when singers move their hand along to the pitches.

When discussing my idea for the set of exercises based on using movement connected to musical elements, Heijne shared an exercise she uses with her students. She instructs them to imagine they’re speaking to someone who is deaf, so they must use their body as much as possible to communicate and then “think, is this nice?, is this opening myself?, and then leave some movements away in case it’s too much” (Heijne). At first, students worry about where to start, and then they realize it’s not as difficult as they thought; “it’s very helpful to exaggerate a little bit, then you can laugh a little bit, sometimes we record”. Speech therapist Martine Straesser also shared a similar exercise she learnt from a theater professor, where the singer is told to “mickey mouse” the whole song, consciously over exaggerating the movements to fit with what is being said in the song. In Nafisi’s survey, as mentioned in the literature review, she found that about 86.2% of the pedagogists she surveyed encouraged “”Moving about the room whilst singing, letting the body language „paint‟ the mood of the song or aria” and “Acting out a sung scene as if it were a spoken monologue””(Nafisi 27). Notably, all these exercises focus on the key element of lyrics/mood, which is only one of the four key elements that can be explored through my set of exercises.

When observing Example 3, stage presentation teacher Erik Willems noted “I don’t see a lot of connection to the music. I think we’re always connected to something, could be that we’re connected to our thoughts or our worries or to our fears (oh somebody is in the audience looking at their phones, what are they thinking? Or maybe they’re bored, or maybe I’m not doing well) or we could be connected to the music, to the emotion or to the lyrics, or we could be in flow. Of course ideally, if we’re connected to flow then everything almost happens by itself and we’re very connected in the moment”. I believe this insight underscores the power of our thoughts and our focus while we sing, as it can clearly impact our connection to the music, our vocal freedom or expressiveness. For the professional’s feedback on the examples mentioned above, please refer to the Appendix.

Additionally, Willems expresses that “students in conservatory tend to be more not taking the whole space, making themselves smaller than what they really are, it doesn't benefit them, the song nor the audience”. This sentiment is also echoed by Heijne who shares “it’s always good to experiment [with movement] because a lot of students are afraid to move”. These observations confirm the need of my research, as it could result in a helpful tool for future conservatory students.

As a trained actor, director and therapist, Willems also notes that these fields are all about “being congruent - am I congruent in what I say? Am I congruent in what I feel internally and what I communicate externally? Most of the times, we’re not, and we’re not even aware we’re not congruent.”. I find these questions to be wholly relevant to singers investigating their movements made on stage. Further, he states “when there is an incongruity between what we say and what we non verbally communicate, we will always believe the non verbal communication”, which would explain the unconvincing or even distracting effect of movements that are not in line with musical elements. This same concept is discussed by Alexander Technique teacher Annika Weismann, who stated “the more authentic you are, the more you leave yourself alone, the less you have to act. Of course we’re acting because we’re performing, but the more you do that out of integrity, the movement would be more logical”. I believe this concept is at the core of the aims of my set of exercises, which are in turn deeply inspired by Alexander Technique, defined by Weismann as a “psychophysical method for the improvement of the use of the self. We’re looking at making the use of our bodies more efficient by directing our
thoughts in a certain direction”.

Hence, the data collected from my analysis and the interviews seems to suggest that singing whilst moving along to one or more key musical elements can result in more expressive and vocally free moments. If the previous hypothesis is true, a sub hypothesis could be that the most expressive and vocally free moments occur when a movement done whilst singing is connected to two or more of the key musical elements. A prime example of this can be seen in this performance of “Touch in Mine” by Esperanza Spalding. From minute 1.42 to 2.20, Spalding seems to be doing semi-improvised, yet non-artificial movements connected to lyrics/mood, rhythm, pitch and dynamics, resulting in what I find to be a very expressive and touching moment. If this sub hypothesis is true, then it implies that the opposite is also true: movements unrelated to any musical elements hinder the expressiveness of the singer, as supported by the analysis made regarding Examples 1 and 4. Additionally, examples of such movements I found in my performance include fidgeting by adjusting glasses, hair, clothes, which are unrelated to any musical elements.