“Beautiful, Powerful,
Absolutely Spot On, Profound.”
Elenna Rubin Goodman, Founder Oakland Dare
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Tribal Dance & Healing Chants:
Short for “The Kinetic Voice,” KiVo® is a movement form that includes the voice. It is music therapy and dance instruction rolled into one.
With the aim of recalibrating and purifying the body, mind, emotions & spirit, KiVo Body Chants is an ecstatic ceremony where song and dance are both spiritual practice and celebration. For millennia, births, marriages, deaths, the harvest, the hunt, the seasons and the cycles of life or rites of passage, have been celebrated through sound & movement. KiVo provides a forum in our contemporary, technological world to do this.
Ms. Addison writes music for KiVo which incorporates the specific chants and tones used with the dance, like Vocal Chakra Healing Tones (VoCHeT®) and Body Chants.
Dance forms include African, Indigenous, Latin, Yoga, Classical Western Dance, Shaking Medicine & Improvisation, often done in a circle.
The voice is used as an instrument of expression, healing, musicality and community building. Vocal percussion, toning, clapping and laughter are part of KiVo. We raise our voices together sharing beats and off beats. We resonate as a single unit or as an integrated unit.
The WHOLE being participates!
History: The Vocal Chakra Healing Tones (VoCHeT®) came to Lis in an inspiration in 1993 and she worked with these for many years with clients and students before recording them. She later began to move these in a dance form and developed KiVo from this practice.
One day, while reading This is Your Brain on Music, by Daniel J. Levitin, something piqued her interest and began to explain her own process. Levitin described a relatively recent occurrence in our culture, one in which music performers became separate from listeners. Five hundred years ago, there had not been this distinction. This was an observation that Lis had shared.
She describes a pivotal moment in her discovery: “I was reading his description of the Basotho people of Lesotho, a country in Southern Africa. Levitin explained how a visiting anthropologist baffled the villagers because he told them he couldn’t sing. It was as bizarre to them as being unable to walk or dance though having two legs. When I read the following, I nearly fell off my chair: To them, “Singing and dancing were a natural activity in everybody’s lives, seamlessly integrated and involving everyone. The Sesotho verb for singing (ho bina), as in many of the world’s languages, also means to dance; there is no distinction, since it is assumed that singing involves bodily movement.
This was something she understood in her bones and this is what KiVo explores: The impulse that causes us to move, also causes us to sing. She immediately contacted the anthropologist in question, Jim Ferguson at Stanford because she wanted to tag along with him on a trip to Lesotho. He had no plans to return to Lesotho. She kept looking and found Dr. David B. Coplan, a social anthropologist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, an American who lives and teaches in S. Africa and who has written a number of books on the music and theatre of S. Africa. Professor Coplan happens to be married to a woman from Lesotho.
Lis and Dr. Coplan communicated by email and he encouraged her to visit Lesotho. She read his book In the Time of Cannibals in which he discusses the various ways the people of Lesotho experience singing, speech & movement. For example: “the domain of sounding (ho luma) matches and overlaps the domain of acting or doing (ho etsa), which includes dance…The highest category consists of dance-songs, based upon the agreement (tumellano, from ho luma) of sounding and doing, of text, tune, physical movement, and rhythm…Next is ho bua, ‘speaking’…followed by ho bina ‘singing’…lifela are identified, along with likoma and mangae initiation songs, as lipina tse binoang ho nngoe, ‘songs which are sung standing [still],’ in contrast to dance-songs, which are lipina tse binoang ka maoto, ‘songs sung with the feet.’
The tradition of sound/movement is strong in African cultures and sub cultures and Ms. Addison continues to research other tribes and languages that support this understanding. For example, “Ayatta” is an Aruba word that means “to make dance, to make music.” Ironically, the attorney at the US Patent and Trademark Office who handled her KiVo trademark, was of Nigerian decent. He said his people, the Igbo of Nigeria, were likely to have a similar concept in their language. He told her to “Shout about KiVo® from the rooftops as she was among a handful of people doing something healing and positive for the world” and he invited her to teach KiVo at the US Patent and Trademark Office in D.C.
Bradford Keeney has also offered insights into her journey through his work with the Bushmen of the Kalihari. In his book Shaking Medicine he describes how the Bushmen climb a thread to the Ancestral Village above, often receiving songs and healing. While studying with him in Pacifica he activated a vertical pulse up her spine and instructed her to take her “sweetness,” her work, to villages around the world. This is what she is doing now. Lis is very drawn to the work of the Kalihari Bushmen, particularly since they incorporate birdcalls into their practice and receive sacred songs, much the way the American Indians do. Her kinship with these “Songcatchers” began at age 11 when she composed her first piece of music.
KiVo, is a contemporary version of an ancient form. The process is initiatory and transformative for the participants.
Please join us. Below are descriptions of events:
Diamond Gathering
Sacred Vibration:
KiVo®, VoCHeT®, BodyChantsTM
The intention of this process is to use and experience the cleansing effect of sound combined with movement. Practicing Vocal Chakra Healing Tones, Body Chants and KiVo to cleanse the physical and energy channels of the body, we will share a joyful circle that leaves us refreshed, invigorated and more available to grace. With clear channels and as clear channels, we can receive, access, conduct, transmit and radiate the light of love more fully to all beings.
Medicine Drum Kirtan:
Vocal Chakra Healing Tones
In Call & Response Healing Circle
In this gathering, we explore a healing circle by stating healing tones which are repeated by the group in a Tribal Kirtan. Bring your drums, rattles & voices.
Sapphire Gathering
KiVo Yoga: Sound & Silence
In Your Yoga Practice
We will focus on the breath and the use of chanting and toning to effect deep relaxation and focus the mind. Nada Yoga, the Yoga of Sound Vibration, allows us to move from the gross reality to the subtle realm until reaching the Source, absorbed in Divine Vibration, the essence of all creation. Through asana, chanting and toning of VoCheT, you will learn tools for deepening your yoga or meditation practice and will learn to listen to your own body’s voice.
Emerald Gathering (Also Private) Shamanic Journeying:
Dance, Sing & Visualize
This gathering is designed to bring up images from your intuition, pictures you may disregard or deny and dance them awake! We will tone and chant, practice VoCHeT & KiVo to open the energy centers of the body, take a Shamanic Journey to find an animal helper and then give that helper a voice and dance our stories. We will explore the expression of cellular memory through sound and movement and do some journaling to anchor the experience.
Ruby Gathering (Also Private)
Ruby Throated Sparrows:
Vocalizing & Visualizing for Professional Musicians
Transform breath control, technique and delivery by redefining them and giving them new names. Singing through the Chakra System and using VoCheT and Body Chants, we will bring prana and life force into the muladhara, vissudha and ajna doors and access their power.
