Intro
Intro
First Iteration
The Vision
First Iteration
The Vision
Performance Arts Lab, a registered UK charity, is designed to become an International Centre for Advanced Training in the Arts.
Inspired by previous experience of intensive retreat programmes at the Banff Centre in the Canadian Rockies, the dream of a “Banff Europe” was born amongst the leadership team. Having started with opera, the most multi-disciplinary of the performing arts, we are progressing to invite and enable leading arts institutions and conservatoires from the worlds of opera, chamber music, theatre, dance, and production arts, to work together to exchange ideas, share training, and develop new works through the facility of our Composers Studio.
The Lab is founded on a core principle that training in the arts is best understood and designed to develop artistic practice, which is a life-long learning for artists of all disciplines. We believe that the best arts training happens vertically through age and experience, and horizontally, by example, across arts disciplines.
Accordingly, Performance Arts Lab seeks to bring together emerging artists with established artists from various disciplines in a multi-disciplinary setting. Here we can develop and exchange knowledge, experience and craft within holistic, clear and manageable sets of strategies, while offering an atmosphere of acceptance and inclusion which we feel is so important today. The result is focused, powerful work that is affecting, communicative and convincing, and is notable for its clarity and richness of purpose.
We desire to use the arts as a unique and wide ranging means to bring understanding and acceptance across cultures and race. We aim to learn from the creators and histories of the past, while looking forward with open and receptive minds to what is possible, to newness and refreshment, to innovation and creativity. Our vision is to make this available, not only within artistic communities, but also in support of the business and health sectors.
Who Are We
The Story So Far
Who Are We
The Story So Far
PERFORMANCE ARTS LAB was initially conceived between 2014 and 2016, supported by the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Based in Fontainebleau, France, a four-week programme was developed, centred around intensive vocal, language and stage training for students from GSMD, the Liszt Akademie, Budapest, and the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin.
This was the beginning of a journey which has been both exciting and challenging and has taken us from lovely Fontainebleau to inspiring English countryside and beyond.
The aim is to provide emerging artists a bridge into the profession from full time training, without the pressures of high profile public performance. This allows these young people space for experimentation in a safe place, while providing an informal, supportive platform to present their work at the end of the programme.
We have enjoyed working with students from various different countries on our courses, including participants from the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Royal Conservatoire Scotland, Royal Irish Academy of Music, Cambridge University, Liszt Akademie, Budapest, and NWU Potchefstroom in South Africa.
Our dream, in time, is to establish a centre which could house an entire arts programme, including opera, orchestral training, chamber music, dance, composition, production arts and graphic arts programmes.
Until this dream becomes a reality, and as the programme expands, we are pursuing a model whereby different partner institutions host our summer courses, increasing the sense of collaboration, and of learning and developing together.
In light of the present pandemic, we are also exploring the facility of online work which allows for collaboration beyond the constraints of physical locality and offers the potential to involve participants who are unable to travel to a residential programme. To this end, our 2020 and 2021 summer courses were held online and involved participants in Dubai, the USA, Singapore, South Africa, Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, and all over the UK.
One composer even managed to join a class at 35,000 feet while flying to the USA!
This summer we also delivered and series of very successful online classes in partnership with KUNST+ in Japan.
Inspired Singing
A Day in the Life
Inspired Singing
A Day in the Life
Below is the pattern for an in person residential course. Online courses work to a similar pattern though we are careful to ensure that no participants spend more than four hours on Zoom in any one day.
9.30am Movement class / physical warm up for the singers / drama session.
During this time the repetiteurs are free to practice.
The timings for the day continue as below. They are however, subject to change in order to best support the most appropriate creative process.
12 noon - Rehearsal
1-2 pm - LUNCH
2 pm - Rehearsal
4 pm - AFTERNOON BREAK
4.30 pm - Rehearsal
7 pm - FINISH and DINNER at local restaurant.
From around midday, until 7pm, with breaks for lunch and mid-afternoon, rehearsals take place on the selected repertoire in the main rehearsal space. Around these sessions are constellated one-to-one vocal coachings, and individual or group language coachings.
A number of rehearsal rooms are also available for private practice. Some of these sessions are allocated specifically by the Music Director, but many are operated on a sign-up system, for which students may work either on the course’s selected repertoire or other repertoire they are studying. This is in order to create a culture in which a high level of self-motivated work between rehearsals and a mature sense of taking responsibility for their own work becomes the students’ normal modus operandi.
The Composers Studio runs its own schedule throughout the course, joining the main opera programme on a daily basis once their material has been written. Composers take time to get to know the singers for whom they are writing and initially develop the material together. The material is then worked on in collaboration with the course leaders and revisited every day or two, with space between sessions for the composers and librettists to refine the material.
Our public performances are always free of charge and audiences are made very aware that the purpose of the concerts is to enable the performers to continue to investigate the ideas they have been experimenting with on the course, rather than the focus being on the presentation of a finished article. It is about the continuation of a process, without pressure, in front of a supportive audience.
Our audiences in Fontainebleau and elsewhere have embraced this role with wonderful generosity. It helps that the performances have always been, nonetheless, fabulous occasions!