LAYLA VINSON
Staff Writer
Since 1991, Jamestown, New York, native and alumna of Chautauqua Opera Conservatory’s Apprentice Program Maxine Davis has been coming to Chautauqua Institution to teach the Feldenkrais Method to Chautauqua Opera Conservatory. At 10 a.m. today in McKnight Hall, she’ll return to teach a new group of artists once again.
Created by Israeli engineer, physicist and martial artist Moshé Feldenkrais, the Feldenkrais Method is a guide of how we learn and continue to make new connections in the brain. Utilizing her background as an experienced musician, Davis cites her work with singers and the theater as a source of great fun in accordance with her personal understanding of the demands of their careers.
“So much of what singers have to refine, you can’t see; you can barely feel it. Half of the time, they think they’re using their palate in a way that’s useful, but they aren’t,” Davis explained. “And so, Feldenkrais is oriented towards having an internal relationship with the sensations that you have and realizing learning is not what you think it is.”
Davis highlighted a frequent disconnect from bodily feedback as we grow further into adulthood as one of the largest obstacles to overcome.
“I work a lot on people’s learned habits and how they interpret words that somebody’s using into their own body, because a lot of people skip that step,” Davis said. “For a singer, … the ability to widen your focus in order to be clear and coherent is kind of crucial. If you aren’t, and somebody says, ‘Well, add this,’ underneath is basically confusion or contradictory impulses.”
With such a distinct and perhaps unconventional teaching style, Davis has faced some skepticism in the past in her pursuit to integrate the Feldenkrais Method, but has noticed a shift in more recent years.
“When I first came here, there might have been about half of the students that didn’t want anything to do with it. Now as time has gone on, the word has spread. And so, by and large, people trade me like baseball cards,” Davis laughed. “It’s become apparent, I think, in the last few years, the value of what I do.”
Though her master class is catered towards Conservatory students and their educational enhancement, Davis ensured that all members of the Chautauqua community can take something out of her lecture.
“The Feldenkrais Method is not inherently about singing; it’s about learning,” Davis said. “Feldenkrais used to say this: ‘We notice as people what we lose; we don’t pay as much attention to what we can now do that we couldn’t do. But we don’t pay as much attention to, if we let ourselves dream, what could our life be like?’”
