ABSTRACT
This chapter picks up that thread and examines in detail relationships between "energy" and the voice in both traditions, embedded specifically within a comparison of two techniques: "Centering" adapted from the "natural/free" voice approach and "dahnjeon breathing" adapted from Korean p'ansori for training actors' voices. Using Rodenburg's fifth book, Presence, as a departure point, and in comparison with the experiences teaching in Seoul and London, one aim is to reframe a discussion of "energy" and "presence" in contemporary voice training by displacing "universalism" as a primary explanatory position and offering instead an alternative paradigm to understand the interior/inner processes and potential of the voice as an embodied phenomenon and process. Presence has offered the field of training actors' voices a way of conceptualizing "energy" as "Three Circles of Energy," the basis for training towards "presence." The chapter investigates what can/should a voice do and how can/should it do "it" when working with "energy.".
