Abstract:
Through my work as a singer in opera, and in my teaching of singing to opera singers and singing actors, I have become increasingly aware of the need for training in an area that might be termed 'core performance skills', those skills relating to how the performer uses the body, the mind, the imagination - the self - in expressive enactment. These skills are not separate from vocal skills, or from acting skills, or from movement skills. Nor are they separate from the language or musical skills with which the vocal, acting and movement skills are so often associated. They do, however, form a distinct core of skills necessary to competent performance in any or all of these areas.