Thoughts From a Dialect Coach in London: Happy New Year!
Hello and a very Happy New Year!
All the excesses and focus on the end of the year can often be so stressful.
It is good, now, to have a clear [hopefully!] head and a very strong purpose in how we might shape these coming months. Not to be overwhelmed by ‘must do’, but to look positively and openly ahead.
I have always found this time of the year to be filled with an excitement of what I might focus my energies on for the coming year and it seems I’m not the only one!
There may have been months of scrolling through websites looking to find the right dialect coaching course, and the right teacher to guide us towards something that has been niggling away [but nicely!].
I thought this would be a good time to introduce the way we could work together on accent coaching and voice coaching, and how that would begin.
Knowing what you want is paramount.
Do you wish to speak like Carey Mulligan? Or Charles Dance? Have you always wished to be a bolder and warmer speaker, able to engage your audience and look them in the eye?
It might be that you are needing to study a particular accent or dialect for a coming production, and some dialect coaching guidance would be a real help.
Together we would work on your particular areas of concern, and with regular and diligent practise these new sounds will most certainly ‘bed in’ and become a natural, new and exciting habit.
We would begin with finding what your personal needs and focus are — this work and study is bespoke and individually built for each speaker.
Each new accent sound is explained with lively and informal instruction so that you will be clear as to how to find them and maintain them in daily discourse.
We might use poetry; we might use prose and any text that will feed an enjoyment in using your newly acquired accent sounds.
As a teacher and dialect coach I love to watch clients grow in confidence and awareness of how their voices can be used. It is so encouraging to be party to how these vocal changes can make huge strides in confidence for the speaker.
So, take a leap for this new year! Find what you want to learn!
I will look forward to meeting and working with you!
Ros
New Year Exhilaration by Ted Hughes
On the third day
Finds its proper weather. Pressure
Climbing and the hard blue sky
Scoured by gales. The world’s being
Swept clean. Twigs that can’t cling
Go flying, last leaves ripped off
Bowl along roads like daring mice. Imagine
The new moon hightide sea under this
Rolling of air-weights. Exhilaration
Lashes everything. Windows flash,
White houses dazzle, fields glow red.
Seas pour in over the land, invisible maelstroms
Set the house-joints creaking. Every twig-end
Writes its circles and the earth
Is massaged with roots. The powers of hills
Hold their bright faces in the wind-shine.
The hills are being honed. The river
Thunders like a factory, its weirs
Are tremendous engines. People
Walk precariously, the whole landscape
Is imperilled, like a tarpaulin
With the wind under it. ‘It nearly
Blew me up the chymbley!’ And a laugh
Blows away like a hat.
