Categories
Dance and Social Media

Rule #1

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a gut punch every time someone unsubscribes from my email list. Oh no! They don’t like me anymore!

If you head over to the Dance Teacher Network on Facebook, you read about a lot of disappointment having to do with students leaving, many times on unfriendly terms with mean-spirited texts and emails.

Even if the aforementioned unsubscribers came to my studio only once or twice, or came to my festival 4 years ago, it doesn’t change the gut punch factor.

Sometimes people do just need to move on. This place wasn’t the place for them. Rule number 1 if this is you: be cool. This means leave respectfully. Frame complaints as a solutions. Frame negatives as positives. Act with integrity without sugarcoating or euphemizing.

It’s questionable etiquette to post about how amazing the new studio is or to air grievances about a studio with which there was a falling out. Moreover, it’s not relevant to most people reading it. Read: we don’t care.

Dance studios are not AT&T. We run our small businesses with a fervent passion. Everything we do comes personally from us. The AT&T rep on the line isn’t really “sorry for your frustration.” We can’t all get along all the time, but no matter what, be cool.

Categories
Artists Careers

This one time

There’s nothing like live theatre. A play may be performed 8 times a week, but the time you see it can never be exactly replicated. When things go wrong, those are extra special performances to witness, seeing performers in all their humanity and vulnerability. Here are some of my finest [insert sarcastic tone] once-in-a-lifetime moments:

Stumbled in front of 5000 people in the opening number on opening night of my first season as a Radio City Rockette.

Got my fishnets caught in the trombone during one of the many shows at Casino Windsor. Only 250 in the audience that time.

Popped out of my costume during the opening number of Elvis To the Max at Casino Windsor. Guess where the audience is looking now!

Parade Of the Wooden Soldier pants split in the, um, crack during the opening night performance of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, once again, in front of 5000 people.

Got dragged off stage by my sheep in the Living Nativity during, you guessed it, opening night of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. This time there were only about 2000 people in the audience.

Got called the “low point of the show” in a review by some local weekly paper in St. Louis, thankfully not the New York Times.

Still here.

Categories
Dance and Social Media Educators Technology

It’s not what you say…

Want to know if a new play, movie or book or tv show is any good? There used to be a select group of critics and gatekeepers that were the arbiters of what was and was not worth our time.

It’s now really easy to be a critic. The world can read what you thought about Sondheim’s 90th birthday concert or “Hollywood” on Netflix. Facebook and other platforms have taken away the gatekeepers. Anyone can speak up.

It’s important that those who educate choose to engage people over alienating them. Yelling at those who we feel ‘disrespect the art form’ or whose values and points of view don’t align with ours pushes more people away and diminishes the potential to reach others and make a difference, which is what most all of us who are educators set out to do.

The louder the critics are, the less they are worth listening to.

Categories
Musical Theatre

Your call

Guest post by David Alpert http://www.david-alpert.com/welcome

One of the best things musical theatre performers can do in their continual quest to expand their knowledge is to discover and listen to cast recordings from the history of Broadway and Off-Broadway.  Finding those gems of musicals that you may not be familiar with can be an incredible exercise in training your ear to understand different styles of music and singing, and also lead to new rep choices for your book.


Just as I would expect my doctor to have studied the history of medicines, landmark discoveries, and important scientific findings (as well as studying current trends), I expect performers to know the history, landmarks, and trends of our business.


Is there a revival you love?  Have you gone back and listened to the original recording?  What’s different?  What’s changed? 


Is there a musical from the 1960’s you’ve never heard of, but you connect to a certain song?  Does it wrap around your voice nicely?  Perhaps it can go in your book?  Are there covers of the song to open your mind to new interpretations?


Use this time to listen.  Find the sheet music.  How do the lyrics apply to you, in this moment?


You can also do what I do: listen to the music with no further agenda–just enjoy the showtunes.  Your call.

Categories
Artists Careers Trends

Kick it old school, also don’t

It’s convenient to shrug off current trends and say, “I’m old school”. That way, it’s easy to stay comfortable, not worry about what’s new and stick to what feels good.

Then we get disconnected. Then we feel obsolete. Then all this time passes by and shoot, we need to catch up. The other choice is sitting around grumbling about how it’s not like it used to be. Full disclosure: that’s still going to happen sometimes.

If there’s an upside to the increased time on my hands, it’s that I have gotten to stop and look around. I actually know songs that are current now. I get Tik Tok! I get it! I understand why people love it. I want to be better at it. It helps me work on skills that I can apply elsewhere like ideal camera angles, good lighting and comedic timing.

What is driving the culture right now will never supersede what is classic and timeless. But if we insulate ourselves from the constantly changing, hyperconnected world, it will be much harder to continue thriving.

Categories
Artists creating

Be simple

The most memorable pieces of art are those with one simple concept that is brought to vivid life.

No matter our differences, we feel the same emotions. Love, loss, joy, anger…

I remember a piece titled “What Was Left”, because at the end there was one dancer left on stage.

Members of a Dutch ballet company performed a duet about the painful, awkward, uncomfortable moments before the end of a relationship. She brushed against his body as they exited opposite sides of the stage. That was 14 years ago but it seems like yesterday.

In simplicity we find the relatable, and in the relatable we capture our audience.

Categories
collaboration teamwork

We all fall down

In Parade Of the Wooden Soldiers, the iconic piece performed by the Radio City Rockettes, we end the piece with the famous fall.

It’s not really a fall. It requires laser focus and immense upper body strength. If one person does not do her job, it fails 100%. When the fall fails, people get hurt. If you do less than 100% and someone gets hurt, that’s on you.

It was one of the best ways to learn that no matter how well I do, it doesn’t mean anything if every single other person isn’t just as strong.

It goes both ways. If I’m the weak link and the rest of the line is fully engaged, the whole thing will still collapse. Every single person matters.

What happens next?

It’s human nature. At the end of every year we make resolutions. “This is the year”, we tell ourselves. It’s going to be the best year. We are going to get it right this time. Gyms are packed for the first half of January, then they aren’t.

The tendency is to wait for benchmarks of life like graduations, specific dates or other life events. It helps alleviate the pressure to start right now. The big day comes and bam, the master plan can commence.

So what happens when we go back to regular life? There are two choices. We can wait until that day to implement all of the things we think we should have been doing in the first place, before the pandemic. Or, little by little, day by day, we can make small efforts that will create a continuous ripple and add up to where we would like to be.

Categories
Careers Dance and Social Media

My door is open

Notable figures in any industry have a responsibility to be approachable and accessible. In the arts, this means anyone who travels to educate, who is known as a performer and/or is a director or leader of any kind.

What we say and do stays with those we interact with for years. The moments that teachers at festivals, conventions or professional studios (Steps, Broadway Dance Center, Edge) take to talk to students before or after class matter as much as the education they get during the class. The time that performers take to say ‘hi’ to fans and sign autographs at the stage door makes them impactful beyond the character they play on stage.

What we say on social media matters, and more so, how we say it. Most of us won’t get to hang out with the very famous, but don’t you feel like you could just sit and have a cup of coffee with Tom Hanks? Lin Manuel Miranda’s ‘Gmorning, Gnight’ tweets lifted people’s spirits so much he put them in a book. They make their followers feel important, even though there are millions of them.

When people look to us for training, guidance or insight, it is our responsibility, to them as individuals and to our art form as a whole, to be approachable and accessible. Twenty years later, they will remember what we said.

Categories
Artists Careers rejection

Go out there and be terrible

Have you been laughed at, ridiculed or given a bad review? No? Well then, try harder.

Seriously though, you have to be terrible before you are good. If you are always good at everything, are you reaching enough?

The faculty hated that Pink Floyd piece I choreographed in college and reluctantly put it in the concert. I sang and tap danced in a showcase and got completely laughed at. There are many other instances. I learned so much from all of them.

Being formulaic is a comfortable place to be. If you do A, B and C, it will look like this and conform to expectations, like #1 songs on the Billboard charts. Check all the boxes.

The path to being remarkable is full of trying things that fail, being wrong, being rejected and being criticized. The sweet reward of this path is looking back and knowing that when you wanted to try something, you did.