There is a timeless calm to his modest and measured delivery as he sits comfortably in his study at Lansdowne Road. He starts describing meeting the “dapper” F.M. Alexander at the end of 1935, reflecting on how youthful he seemed though he was in his 60s at the time. He then goes on to touch briefly on a wide variety of aspects of the technique from asking the big question of “what are we trying to teach?” to working with children, via learning how to stop, arriving at the self and the concept of wholeness.

At this point we cut to Glynn asking him about the difficulty of communicating what the Alexander Technique is. Walter’s pause before his considered reply lasts for quite an amazing amount of time - 10 seconds! It is quite an audacious bit of editing (or should I say a bit of “non” editing!).

He is not to be hurried, and surely gives us a perfect example of stopping and saying no. His response when it comes covers another wide area including, touchingly, dealing with old age. Then he comes to the subject of breathing and Glynn makes a point about two meanings of inspiration, medical and creative. Walter responds by saying, “don’t forget the word expiration, which is equally important and significant” and here poignantly and with comic timing continues, “Because we shall all expire one of these days”.

Throughout the interviews the camera stays predominantly on Walter, occasionally panning away from him to travel fondly across an elegant mantelpiece passing old photos and an array of objects on its way to rest on his interviewer. There, while the focus is on Glynn we never lose sight of Walter and by means of a perfectly placed mirror we see his reflection. Sometimes the focus changes from one to the other then returns again to quietly pan back to our main subject and sometimes the camera gently zooms in on his capacious hands as they accompany his words in minute gestures. This is as exciting as the camerawork gets though of course no one would watch this for excitement. The text of this footage could be contained in a slim pamphlet, so we are not watching just to listen to his words, though they contain much wisdom that pays repeated viewing. We are here to breathe in his avuncular presence, his full-expanded person belying his years, the stillness and continuous freedom of his head-neck-back relationship. In short, we are witness to his embodiment of the Alexander technique.

The second DVD; “On breathing and revealing his Larynx” begins with Walter working on Glynn with his hands while explaining practical aspects of postural function in a rich mixture of anatomical and imaginative language. There’s a sense here of him teaching in obviously long and well practiced ways, such as when he talks with a twinkle in his eyes of “the cranial globe resting on the atlas” or “15 degrees of arc between atlas and axis”, brandishing his thumb to represent the dens around which the atlas rotates or describing the body being made up of pipes and tubes carrying fluids around the body. This surely is redolent of what it would have been like when he demonstrated hands-on to rooms full of students at his training course at Lansdowne Road.

After 12 minutes we are again back to talking about the out breath, coming to the whispered “Ah” (he is quite specific about the quality of “Ah” he wants) and Walter describes in the fewest of words the classic essentials of his hands on teaching style. He details his pupil’s progress as he goes along though I found it quite hard to see for myself all he comments on as there is little definition in the dark clothes Glynn is wearing to make out, for instance, the movement of her ribs, her widening back or her lengthening spine.

Then we arrive at the most startling and fascinating part of the DVD’s so far; images of Walter’s larynx during a series of whispered “ah’s”. I first saw this footage in the early nineties during a series of lessons with Glynn and frankly, didn’t really understand what I was looking at. For most people looking at this for the first time I imagine it must be the same. Even though we are given a 2-minute anatomy lesson it is still pretty bewildering stuff. We are shown the route the fibre optic laryngoscope camera takes through a plastic model of the nasal passages followed by a model illustrating the movements of the vocal chords. Then the image in the film is of the anatomical structures we’ve just seen but upside down! Once you’ve worked out what you are looking it is quite extraordinary footage and with digital technology you can rewind and pause to your heart’s content to compare one whispered “ah” with another or study the changes as Walter goes from a whispered to a hummed “ah”. My favourite is him going from an “ng” sound to an “ee”. With a remote in your hand you can make the five minutes of Walter revealing his larynx last hours. And that brings me to a question I’ve been wondering about. At timings of 38:49 and 31:05 respectively (other DVDs have come out recently in the AT world that last only 20 minutes so we are getting quite a good deal here!) couldn’t these two DVD’s have been made onto one? That apart it is wonderful to have this footage of Walter Carrington and our thanks must go to Glynn MacDonald for bringing it to us. For the teacher interested in voice and for every training course this footage of the workings of the larynx is a must.

© Patrick Gundry-White. Reproduced with permission.