I don't dance, don't ask me
I can't dance, don't ask me
I won't dance, Madame, with you
My ears won't let my feet do things that they should do
Can deaf people enjoy dance performance without hearing the music? Sign language interpreter Dr Paul Whitaker OBE explains to MIA VIGAR the tricks of the trade including how signing can bring back the beat.
Dr Paul Whitaker OBE is the artistic director of Music and the Deaf, an organisation bringing music and performing arts to deaf people. He works with the prestigious Rambert Dance Company to enable deaf people to experience dance and music through signed interpretations. Whitaker is deaf himself but this hasn't stopped him obtaining a degree in music from Wadham College, Oxford, and a post-graduate diploma from the esteemed Royal Northern College of Music. He started signing theatre performances in 1992, beginning with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the London Palladium.
Since then he has worked on over 60 productions both in the West End and on tour. As well as working with Rambert, Paul signs concerts on a regular basis for 'The Sixteen' choir. Whitaker (pictured) and the Rambert Dance Company will be visiting Norwich Theatre Royal in October as part of the Eternal Light Tour 2008. What can a signed performance bring to a deaf person's experience of dance?
People often ask, 'but dance is visual already - why do you need an interpreter?' Music plays such a big part. I explain the tone, quality and shape of the music. I'm not much of a dancer but my fingers are quite nimble!” If you can't hear the music, how can the deaf people be sure they are getting an authentic retelling of the pieces? When you interpret there is always an element of your own experience in it. We have a pre-performance talk to explain how it is done and give some background. The best response I had was in Stoke on Trent when two ladies who didn't know each other, independently had the same experience of the performance.
They had both lost their hearing very young and had some idea of what it was to hear, but couldn't access it. After the performance they said they had remembered sound for the first time in 30 or 40 years. I must be doing something right. Why isn't 'musicality' related to the ability to hear? Your ears are useful when it comes to music, but music is something that emanates from within - your heart and soul. How much can you actually hear?
Nothing. I have never heard a piano or a bird sing. I've never heard my own voice, but do a lot of public speaking. Very few people do know what they really sound like. Do you think your perception of music is more imaginative because you can't hear sound? I was told at school, 'you have a very good musical imagination'. Being deaf doesn't mean you can't be a musician - I have a music degree, play keyboard and read scores. We have put together a deaf orchestra. What is the response of people who can hear to the orchestra?
Excellent. They have been absolutely gob-smacked. The first time they performed, I cried buckets. Ten months earlier, not one person could play an instrument. What advice would you give to deaf people who are trying to decide whether a signed performance of dance is for them? If you've never been to a dance performance, here is a chance to see a brilliant company. People are scared of dance, but the more I work with Rambert, the more I understand it. One of the great things is that there is no right or wrong interpretation. People who can hear have also commented that seeing the signed performance is a bit like seeing a ballet in itself.
Can deaf people REALLY appreciate music ? surely they are only going with vibrations and visuals, and not SOUND, which is everything in music ? Singing is not available to them is it ? neither is the 'tone' of that music or singing, so the field of appreciation must be very small by comparison. Surely re-called hearing memories, is something most deaf can't do ?
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6 comments:
Hi! I'm hearing; I found your post because I read deafread just because deaf people always share such interesting ideas, like this. :)
I think that people imagine this false world where everyone is the same. Some music plays and everyone's supposed to hear the same thing. Really no one hears the same thing: Each ear is a different instrument, and more importantly each mind has a different perspective and training. Deaf people are just one extreme of difference, that calls our attention to this more basic fact: That everyone is perceiving something entirely different.
Every deaf person pays attention to feeling the vibrations of music when they experience it, for instance, and only some hearing people do-- those hearing people who do pay attention to the vibrations of music in their body have a very different experience than those who are tuned into some other aspect of the sound. Experience with a particular genre of music tunes you in to distinctions and details in that music that someone who's not familiar with that genre wouldn't notice. And musicians have a tremendously altered perception of music; they can train themselves to hear distinct intervals and chords where most listeners just hear textures.
So whenever you are making music for someone else to hear, there is a divide to bridge. Playing music for a hearing person when you're deaf is a great divide, but I think that the divide between a trained musician and an untrained ear can be a similarly great divide. Many musicians fail to speak to their audience because they can't reach beyond their own perception of the sound to understand how someone else is going to perceive it. Taking your audience seriously, realizing that they have a different experience of your creation, is one of the hardest and most essential parts of performance, and there I think deaf musicians might have an advantage.
My husband (we're both men) once went to a noise music concert by a deaf man and he always recalls it as one of his favorite ever. :)
<3,
mungojelly
Isn't this generalizing to some degree about deaf people? Of course there are deaf/hh who can hear the notes and the beat that comes with it. I've been a pianist since age 7 and play Ragtime for the most part. You can check out my blog called Ragtime Piano!
Music is mainly audio so that must to a fair degree severly limit the appreciation of it by the deaf, it's a simple fact really. Where a person has gone deaf after formative years then there are ways they maybe can recall what was e.g. I can mentallky recall ALL the music and melody to a tune via captioning, my brain fills in the blanks.
It only works to tunes up until I lost my hearing, I cannot make sense at all of tunes or songs after that,when I went deaf that was it, no more music, I won't follow vibrations, it isn't enough.. A lot of what deaf follow is vibration. So I suspect drums/percussion and bass rule for the deaf.
I think singing is intrinsic to much of the songs (ballet apart), then again the nuances of music there convey emotion via the music, the blog suggest a terp can convey that emotion, for me, the jury is out... I don't think the issue is very relevant to those stillwith residual hearing.
We know Beethoven banged away despite being deaf, but I am willing to bet he missed not hearing it !
I have been trianing my daughter to listen to music.And I feel if you start early on to help them to distinguish between the notes they do learn to feel the differance.Prisha listens to rhymes in school and sings along the same intonation like other kids.
rouchi
impemp.blogspot.com
It doesn't matter if you are deaf,
it's entirely up to a deaf person if she/he wants to enjoy music.
i'm profoundly deaf since birth, i still find an interest in music. i read lyrics. i watch music videos. sometime i sing the words i "heard" to myself.
They just do it a different way. I think it is much harder for someone who has lost all hearing to recover that love of music. Always you would know something is missing. To avoid total frustaration and depression, I removed evrey vestiage of it from my home.
I had to totally abandon all music when my hearing went, I never really recovered from that loss. Music was the alternative and real thing when everything else was so shallow, you could sit back and listen and feel calm relaxed, or go out to a show and feel alive and involved.
I could put up with less speech hearing, but losing the music, that was really really hard to take. The deaf have no alternative to it. Not that I can see anyway :(
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