Workshop Description

This workshop offers a vibrant approach to traditional French polyphony through voice, body awareness, improvisation, and oral transmission. Through a variety of vocal practices, listening games, movement exercises, and moments of collective creation, participants are invited to discover the richness of these repertoires and the way they come alive within the group.

Open to everyone, regardless of musical background or experience, the workshop encourages each participant to develop a personal and embodied connection to their voice. It provides a supportive environment where participants can explore, experiment, listen, be surprised, and create together. More than a learning experience, it is a shared musical journey shaped by encounters, emotion, and the joy of singing together.

Programme

• Physical and vocal warm-up
• Breath work
• Sensory and playful exploration of vocal gesture
• Singing in motion: stability and pitch while moving
• Body percussion and rhythmic grounding
• Collective improvisation (circle songs)
• Learning 4 to 5 songs from the traditions of Central France, Corsica, the Basque Country, and Occitania
• Polyphonic work, vocal balance, and expressiveness
• Small-group and ensemble practice

Biography

Marine Pelletreau-Duris is a singer and multi-instrumentalist active on the Geneva music scene. She moves between a wide range of artistic worlds, combining contemporary creation with the reinvention of traditions: from the psychedelic rock of Iguane to the improvised explorations of the Miracle Quartet Experimentation, as well as her solo projects Zou Züzka — a feminist reinterpretation of traditional French music — and an original repertoire of vocal polyphonies.

A singing teacher for more than twelve years, she shares a sensitive and living approach to the voice, rooted in orality and nourished by collective practices. Her work is based on listening, gesture, and breath, with particular attention to the embodied dimension of sound and the energy of the group.

A specialist in traditional French singing and dance, she has led numerous parent-child initiation workshops and directed the Polyglottes choir, dedicated to world polyphonies, at both the Arcade des Grottes and ADEM (Ateliers d’ethnomusicologie de Genève).

Trained in soundpainting and circle singing, she incorporates improvisation, instant composition, and collective expression into her teaching practice.