THE PROSODIC BODY for The Commons Choir

THE COMMONS CHOIR, a core and variable cast of roughly 30 international and diverse singers, actors, composers and people, is the performative aspect of the Prosodic Body, a new field of research founded by Daria Fain and Robert Kocik, that explores language as sound, embodiment and utmost expression. Tone, intention, rhythm, gesture, the tacit, hesitation, interaction evocation and even cosmogenesis are all acts of prosody. The Prosodic Body is a practice that manifests in various areas: principally performance, architecture, health, education and socioeconomic justice. We are at once deeply committed to the cultural cruciality of poets and performers. We call this social aspect of our work 'commoning'. One branch of our communing work is our COMMONS CHOIR, started in 2008. The choir draws upon the breadth of our prosody research to create performances that carry socially-charged issues. Typically, surrounding our choir events, we organize symposiums, talks and teach-ins covering matters such as economic justice, income distribution, biochemistry as endogenous alchemy, universal entitlement, usury laws, plebiscite, artificial scarcity, gratitude, levity, accumulation, the history of privatization and choreoprosodia (the full fusion of poetry and movement).
 
The Commons Choir has been presented by New York Live Arts, Dixon Place, Movement Research, The Movement Research Spring Festival co-presented with LMCC, The Poetry Project copresented with Danspace, The New Museum Festival of Ideas, and the Harlem Stage (America Project produced by MAPP International).
 
Our funding includes support from: The Mertz Gilmore Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts (BUILD), The New York State Council on the Arts, the HipUp Foundation (Belgium), The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the American Music Center: Live Music for Dance Program, the James E. Robison Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Rubin Museum.
 
 
 
 
the Prosodic Body /  The Commons Choir
Founded by 
choreographer/human behavior explorer Daria Fain and Architect-Poet Robert Kocik
 
A LIFE PROJECT
 
PROSODY IS POETRY
FAIN IS THE BODY AND WHAT MAKES IT ALIVE OR DEAD
KOCIK  FINDS HOW IT IS CONTAINED WITHIN THE VIBRATION THAT EMANATES AND UTTER FROM ALL MATTERS 
 
We are about the body INSIDE OUT.
A BODY that listen and utter : A PROSODIC BODY
 
Our experience as artists as lead us to realize that VISION needs 
  • a deep investigation
  • individual commitment 
  • a collective endeavor.
 
Our vision is to reflects, creates on the basis of understanding the movement of life force and activates the incredible potential of transformation that lies in it. 
 
Yes, it is a vast project and it could be perceived as very abstract or vague.
The reality is that we are working on this in a very specific way, rigorously and relentlessly.
We have devoted our entire life to this research: What affects us and how? How one needs to be present? What and Where are our resources?
 
We have made acute research, in language, sound, architecture, energetic, politics, environment, economy and spirituality —and this is what has shaped our works in performance, poetry, architecture and healing practices.
 
We have a need to be proactive in grounding this vision to be able to share in a conducive and beneficial way with the people around us. 
Joining arts, science and medicine we can address the need of individuals in our society.
 
Invention, healing, imagination, possibilities to change happen by reaching a state of the unknown. To access this raw potential, a time is needed to let this unknown  be so the creative dynamic can take a spin that is not reactive but inventive.
 
To deeply make senses of it we want to create a common ground with the Prosody Building to also localize and create a real synergy between ourselves and and other researchers in domains that implement and can be nourished by inter-dynamics.
 
Fields includes arts, science, medicine, poetry, philosophy, spiritual practices, linguistics and economy.
 
The Prosody Building is conceived on the basis that one needs to be able to be still and not knowing in order to know again. the place a tool to restore oneself and to envision the collective.
 
The Prosody Building  is conceived on the basis that ones needs others to realizes ones dream.
 
The Prosody Building  is conceived on the basis that every day life can be reinvented if we give it a chance.
 
The Prosody Building  is conceived on the basis that poetry is at the core of the experience of reality and invention and that it was a foundation for abundance  in societies and liberation for individuals.
 
Find out more at www.dariafain.net