When you’ve based your practice on not being pinned down and not allowing people to define your work, that is a bit of an existential crisis that you’re going to face.
I recently took in a performance of In & Of Itself, master illusionist Derek DelGaudio’s mesmerizing one-man show. It’s playing at the Daryl Roth Theatre on Union Square, and if you’ll be in New York between now and the end of December I really encourage you to go experience it.
The tagline for DelGaudio’s show is “Identity is an Illusion,” and he invites audience members to meditate on their own identities and contemplate what it means to assign labels to oneself and others. I spend a lot of time pondering identity and how the sense of self arises and evolves, more so lately because my current projects require me to embody a number of roles simultaneously – roles that I have at times felt to be at odds with one another.
As I shared in my most recent post, I’m immersed in writing two books, so now I’m an Author. Vocal Fitness: A Singer’s Guide to Physical Training, Anatomy, and Biomechanics draws primarily on my expertise as a Fitness Trainer. The material in The Singer’s Audition & Career Handbook stems directly from my role as a Teaching Artist for Carnegie Hall. My primary job description remains Voice Teacher. And as a Singer, my project for the summer is learning the role of Elettra in Idomeneo, the sole Mozart role I never got around to infecting with bad habits in my student days.
I’ve never really felt at ease juggling my various roles. When I was more active as a performer, I found it highly disorienting to resume teaching right after spilling my guts in an audition. When I trained for Equinox, the uniform and work environment felt completely at odds with the privacy and decorum of a voice studio. There have been times when I have become so immersed in a writing project (usually covering a fitness topic) that I have neglected to eat properly or exercise for a few days in a row!
I’ve also been concerned at times about the way I might be perceived by the voice community due to the many professional hats I wear. Nowadays it is increasingly common to hear singers discuss the ways their exercise habits support their artistry, but fifteen years ago when I first became a fitness trainer, people looked at me as though I was from another planet when I attempted to explain my reasons. I had already earned my doctorate and wanted to be taken seriously as a voice teacher – I was afraid that an opera singer who ran into me on the gym floor would be unlikely to assume I had much prowess in the studio. I was also afraid that those who knew how much teaching and writing meant to me might not take me seriously as a singer.
I’ve learned that this is a concern many of you share. In her post “The Secret Lives of Singers,” Cindy Sadler – mezzo-soprano, writer, business consultant and arts administrator (among many other things) writes about how singers often feel a need to downplay their non-singing activities in order to be taken seriously. But so many of us wear a variety of hats, and surely even those who perform full-time have passions and interests that extend beyond the opera house. When you consider that this is an art form that demands that we reveal ourselves as authentically as possible, it is ironic that so many feel like we’ve got something to hide!
Anyway, I am finally in a situation where I don’t have the luxury of transition time. In order to fulfill all of my commitments this summer, I have to be a writer, a trainer, a teaching artist, a voice teacher, and a singer, every day.
Fortunately, as it turns out, I am in fact one person!
Who I am as a voice teacher is who I am as a trainer, which is kind of the whole point of my fitness book and the practice upon which it is based. I offer techniques for developing physical and mental strength and coordination to facilitate the free flow of vocal expression; my tools include a piano as well as resistance bands, and my level of expertise remains constant whether I’m wearing pumps or sneakers. Who I am as an author and a teaching artist is a natural extension of the work I do in the gym and the studio because my writing and my collaborations with Carnegie Hall make it possible to create materials that will benefit a wider audience than I could hope to reach via one-on-one sessions. And I am all of these things because I am a singer. The pursuit that best defines my identity has been cultivating my voice, as both a singer as well as in a much broader sense.
Is identity an illusion, as Derek DelGaudio may or may not be suggesting? I think that our identities are in a continual state of evolution and flux. My sense of self arises in one particular way in relation to the demands of teaching a voice lesson, in another way in response to social scenarios, yet another in reaction to political commentary, and so on.
One of the more magical and surprising ways the sense of self can fluctuate is in response to art. When you take in an opera, a play or a film, you are invited to identify with characters and scenarios that may be very far removed from what you are likely to experience in your day to day life, and find yourself transformed as a result.
Our identities comprise so many things, offering, infinite mysteries and connections to be discovered and celebrated.
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