Performing in Class: Part and Parcel of Good Technique

“Eyeballs!”

This is something that a favourite teacher often yells at groups doing combinations from the corner.

“Where are your eyeballs looking?” he says genially after the combination.

Then he stares at the floor, back hunched, brow furrowed, a slightly (but only slightly) exaggerated example of how we look to him.

“Once more from the right, and please look up! Your feet are still attached, I promise.”

Luke Skydancer* (*names have been changed to protect the innocent) is an excellent teacher not only in technical ability, but also in that he truly engages with his students. When we succeed in a step we find difficult, or we look up and really perform a combination for him, he is truly happy about it.

And for the last couple of terms he has been focusing a lot on the latter—performing, looking at what our faces are saying compared to what our bodies are trying to convey. According to him, quite often our faces are saying “Ouch!” or “Whoa, I messed that part up!” or “What shall I have more my dinner?” None of which are what he means by ‘performing’. None of which are what he would like to see.

In this post, when I write ‘perform’, I mean the complete package of dancing, with one’s limbs and one’s face and one’s heart. Performing does not simply mean obediently going through the steps, getting them absolutely right, the line perfect, the rhythm spot on. It means seeing the joy of the motion on the face of the dancer. It means presenting oneself as a dancer, head high, eyes up, focused and present.

So why should Luke be focusing on ‘the performance’ in a weekly ballet class, you might wonder? Class is, after all, about teaching your body to move in a certain way. Surely performing in the studio is not really that necessary?  

I used to think like that, but after eight years of furrowing my brow and hunching my back, I’ve finally started to appreciate why Luke, and all the wonderful teachers before him, talk about the performance aspect so much. A few major points come to mind:

It’s not a gym class

Whilst dance is, in these modern times, touted as a good calorie burner and excellent for toning those thighs, it is, at its soul, a performance art. Whilst we are training our bodies to move in a certain way (and finding those skinny jeans less offensive as well), the music should be eliciting the expression of emotions from us, of rapture, of tragedy, and not because “Yes! My leg is over 90 degrees!” or “Good grief, these shoes hurt.” Performance means making it look easy, as if it’s totally natural to move and convey joy this way.

So, whilst you are admiring the height of your leg in the mirror and adjusting the turn out, adjust your shoulders as well, straighten your neck and smile at the figure in the glass. That person is your audience. Your audience doesn’t need to know that your muscles are on fire.

Remember that Margot Fonteyn, Prima Ballerina Assoluta, is held in such high esteem not for the height of her extension but for her artistry, the way every aspect of her being showed the music and conveyed the emotion of the piece.

Margot Fonteyn dancing with Rudolf Nureyov. Here, dancing the role of a teenage Juliet, she is actually in her forties. But do you see that in her expression? No. You see a young girl falling in love for the first time.

The more you do it, the more natural it is

It’s a relatively safe bet that if you were to flick through any show photographs of me my expressions range from “Oh crap, what’s the next step?!” to “Why the hell am I doing this?” Yes, the main reason is The Terror of Dancing in front of People—something many of you will be familiar with—but another reason is that smiling in front of large groups of strangers who are all looking my way is not something that comes naturally. And in the studio, during rehearsal, I am in Quasimodo-stare-at-the-floor mode, trying to get my brain to learn the steps.

Heaven forbid I should be practising performing as well.

Logically speaking, if we can train our limbs to do certain things in a certain order to a certain rhythm, surely we can also train our faces to express certain things too? This, after all, is part and parcel of a performance art. And if this is so, surely it makes sense to practice this too?

I know that sometimes it feels a bit ridiculous to be plastering a smile on your face when it’s just a combination from the corner and ‘no one is looking at me’, but your teacher is looking at you (see my last point below) and the more you practise smiling, the sooner it will happen without you having to think about it.

Adult dancers are more emotive

One of the advantages of learning dance as an adult is that we already have that emotional maturity to really convey the feeling intended in the choreography. There are many astonishing young dancers in the world—they perform tricks that truly amaze, and at breath-taking speeds. But ask them to perform something relatively simple and to convey, for instance, the loss of a loved one, it’s more difficult for most, and less convincing. A mature dancer, however, might have experience to draw from or has a more developed empathy, both of which can be called on to really emote, to really draw the audience into the emotion of the work.

To truly dance is not simply getting the choreography right, it’s using that movement, that musicality to convey something that words cannot. Sometimes the most emotional moment is a movement so subtle, so nuanced that a younger, more gymnastic dancer might not take the time to show it, or might not recognise its significance.

I am reminded of my first to the Royal Ballet. I went to see Swan Lake. Now, I had seen a performance of Swan Lake previously, by a small touring Russian company, and I had left thinking, “It was alright, but it wasn’t what I thought it would be.” The excursion to Covent Garden, however, was a defining moment: this was ballet at the highest calibre. The role of Odette was danced by the astonishing Marianela Nuñez. Just before the intermission, Odette and Siegfried (danced by Marianela’s future husband, Thiago Soares) danced a pas de deux, falling in love, and then, with the dawn, Odette transformed back into a swan. Arms rising and falling like wings, she drifted, seemingly weightless, off stage. As the curtains went down I found myself in tears. There was a moment, so subtle, but so perfect, where we, the audience, knew she was no longer human, she had transformed. And it was absolutely beautiful.

Marianela Nuñez as Odette. Yes, your eyes are drawn to her magnificent arabesque. But look at her expression as well. What do you see?

It shows appreciation for your teacher

A couple of the classes I go to have a relatively high turn over. There are a few of us who appear term after term, but others come and go and no one really gets to know each other. Consequently, when the teachers talk or ask questions no one feels confident enough to answer.

“Please, somebody speak!?” one teacher said once.

Imagine being in her shoes. She’s spent hours working on the lesson, finding the right music, choreographing the right exercises, thinking about new things to try and what other aspects can be worked on. She walks in smiling and is met with a line of blank faces.

How utterly demotivating.

First of all, dance teachers have trained for years and odds are good there is a retired professional standing in front of you. People used to pay to see them dance. Appreciate that. Appreciate the wealth of experience ready and willing to teach you.

Second of all, responding is motivational and means a happier class environment for everyone. And one very good way of responding is by performing for your teacher. Yes, you might be in the studio, and yes, you might be there to burn off the pizza you had yesterday, but your teacher is watching and would very much like to see that you are enjoying yourself and that you appreciate the effort gone into teaching you that variation.

Here’s a visual of what your teacher (and definitely my teachers) might see. Which looks better, performing?

Or not performing?

And which would you say is technically better?

We adult dancers have the capacity to really engage. So even when you’re ‘just at class’, connect your facial features to the music and the choreography as well. Let every part of your being be present in the serenity of dancing.