Vocal Tai Chi was founded by Jenni Roditi in 2012. In 2023 Jenni ran the first apprenticeship. The work invites a listening stillness from which a full spectrum of expressive free-voice arises. Through formless forms such as drone, scale, and pulse, woven in with ‘the four floors of the vocal house’, realisation of each person’s solo voice is emphasised. We work in micro detail, modular expansion, and macro encompassing levels. The Apprenticeship links parallel journeys as your own voice development goes along with leading practice clients in one to ones. As you learn you then lead. Improvisation with the voice, through Vocal Tai Chi, opens a channel between self-awareness, felt-sense, and sung-sound. Tai Chi offers a stable ground for voicework through its wisdom and knowledge of the body and mind, breathing, movement, flow, and staying in balance. This keeps the widest perspective on what is happening. Vocal Tai Chi invites and honours the whole human being as a singing vessel to improvise freely and openly, while providing musical anchors a map of timbres from ‘basement’ to ‘attic’ and other guiding maps. If there is a quivering voice it is invited not to be rejected as unintended. There may be a deeper expression that is trying to get your attention. Wobbles are the foundation of a musical trill or other decorative phrase, sighs are the foundation of glissandi or fine tuning shifts between pitches and self-propelling melodic narratives point to composition. All are welcomed as part of the origins of music, coming up in you. The singer learns patience while finding hidden links between herself and her whole voice so a quiet sense of deeper connection may arise.
The apprenticeship is 3 modules of 5 days each (one day on one day off – 10 days total), 6 hours per day, over 4 months: April – August 2025. There are several one third part-grants of £800 available to apply for. There is one two-thirds grant of £1600 available to apply for. Total cost is £2400 which is £800 per module. A certificate is given after completion of all three modules, an essay of approx 6000 words, private practice client reports and videos, and your own recording of yourself singing Vocal Tai Chi.
The 2023 apprenticeship passed 5 people who are now qualified to run workshops, one to ones, and integrate the work into their own performance practice and other settings they work within.
Jenni Roditi, September 13 2023.