What next?

Thanks for all your responses to my e mail about what you would like to do next. There is range of response, all of it positive. I will be talking to Peter next week when we meet in Oxford and we will see what we can come up with. I know we will both be over in England in May, which might be soon enough but not too soon, and allow us to piggy back this on work we are doing in Oxford. I am still wondering about how we finance this though, anyone got any ideas about what you would be prepared to pay, or how we might ensure we can actually hire a venue and some singers?

Leading in darkness and lying dowm

Thanks for the suggestions "going wild" on a quite formalised concept. I think that the lying down conducting and the darkness exercise gave a few new aspects of search for "clarity" opposed to "information overload" in a communication context.

Lying down - reversed the vertical communication idiom - decision making merged with the common ground of gravity can normally only function vertically. The gestures became ambiguous and the singers had to interpret more. Allowed another type of freedom or outsourced responsibility.

Working together - silently - in darkness gave some aspect of "filtering" away the imprecision and yet give the ensemble a "big picture" idea of what sort of communication the leader is performing. Here is something to pursue as the phenomenology of leadership also contains some aspects of exaggeration.
You remember me criticising one of the conductors "shouting" with pretty big and heavy gestures. Perhaps this deliberate "sordino for conductors" can filter out the pressure in some way?

Hard work in a knowledgebased economy

We had some nice demonstrations on the new concept of hard work - not muscular tension defeating gravity, but nurturing a flow of energy and keeping the aesthetic tension around the whole environment.

Uncomfortable, yet confident

A part of the inspirational mindset is to dare stay uncomfortable, as the role of the conductor with lesser knowledge than the singers, clearly marks.
- and at the same time raise the confidence in this situation.
You become a true spokesperson for the inspiration by constantly having something at stake and never really lean back and relax.

From a first impression this appears like a completely stressed out situation, but the clue is to find where to include the singers - the organisation - and make the vulnerability become an exploratory and honest place to be for all.
The conductor becomes a living role-model for daring experiments and courageous steps into the unknown.

Pairing up

The gestures combined with a mutual embodiment of communication creates an opportunity to pair up two by two and scrutinize the dialogue between human beings.

1. Create something meaningful together
- results in a symetric or even synchronized set of movements. We like cohesion and want to relate to a norm

2. Appoint a leader and a follower
- lead as if nobody from the outside can detect who is the appointed leader

3. Swap roles and raise the game
- who is in power? the most satisfying situation is the mutual agreement where formal leadership more or less evaporates

Gestures as the language

Conductors have to express themselves bodily, communicating with the singers only through gesture and movement, so the act of conducting provides a medium through which to observe oneself. How we express ourselves in this unfamiliar situation, untainted by rational thoughts, knowledge or words reveals insights about aspects of our selves and how we communicate that are hard to come by with conventional methods.

The aim is to use the arts to learn about ourselves, not to learn about music per se. It is relevant for anyone interesting in communication and personal growth and leaders from any walk of life.

Intentions and Expression

One of the most significant aspects of today came from more conductors: In what way are your intentions exposed and in to what extend can they be converted to personal expression?
This is more than implementing a thought from a communicationperspective.