My encounter with these non-ordinary songs

 Par Eva Kreikenbaum 

The act of singing, what is it, and where can it take us?

Before giving some possible answers to that question, let me first talk about what this act is not, and in which ways the act of singing these non ordinary songs radically inverses our habitual perspectives – perspectives here meaning ways of perceiving the whole world, including ourselves. These habitual perspectives are so very ‚real‘ for us that we do not even know how to put them into question, how to see them for what they are: they are perspectives of perception, not ultimate realities.

Of what kind are these perspectives in which many human beings find themselves locked up for the most part of their lives, if it‘s not for the totality of their lives?

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Ma

Robart’s work emphasizes the exploration of dancing and singing as a window into a deeper and larger view of the human being and creativity. Her approach to form, in both dance and chant, widens the experience of the body by going beyond the inherited cultural viewpoints that consider it as a tool of the mind to create patterns. In the context of her research, the body is an entity of relatedness, an interface that connects our consciousness to the external world perceived through the senses, as well as to the inner, subjective world— what we feel within our body and psyche. In Robart’s work, the body is an open door to the present, past, and future, to all beings, to the most mundane and to the most sacred in the human being.

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Rhythmic circularity and organic unity in Maud Robart’ Singing

Par Angelo Tripodo

INTERVIEW BY "BIBLIOTECA TEATRALE"
THE ITALIAN ORIGINAL VERSION, WAS PUBLISHED IN « BIBLIOTECA TEATRALE », ROMA, BULZONI EDITORE, N. 77, JANUARY-MARCH 2006. 

PART I

As an artist, percussionist and educator, what do you consider essential in Maud Robart's approach to afro-haitian ritual singing, and what is this work’s most unique contribution to modern culture?

     Through her approach, Maud Robart gives her students the possibility to perceive the relationship between rhythm and melody, restoring this natural unity within the space-time dimension of the experience. To me, the essential contribution of this approach lies in the rare opportunity it offers to experience how separating rhythm from melody is, in fact, artificial.

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Oïda

Par Laura Casinelli

Oida is a word from ancient Greece.

It’s generally translated to:

“I know because I have seen”.

It’s a “perfect” tense, which in Greek indicates an action that was accomplished in the past but still manifests consequences in the present.

Greek words like idea « idea », eidema « knowledge », eidesis «science», istoría «personal investigation » come from the same indo-european[1] root: vid (veid, void)[2], and maintain the double meaning of seeing (as in being present, possessing sight, perceiving) and knowing.
Vid is also the root of the word video (Latin), from which descend vedere (Italian) and voir (French). In modern languages, these words have lost their connection of meaning with “knowledge” and simply describe the perceptual experience of the visual organ [3] but for occasional, metaphorical uses.

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