...Tips continued

Good afternoon all

Continuing my research into what makes a better performance, I came across this page giving good advice and food for thought, we should all try to install this into our practice and performance. Enhancing our performance will create better shows, this is my line of inquiry. I'm investigating into what makes a great performance for an audience...

Working on performance

I was also looking on a public speaking page and ideas and advice on how to 'wow' your audience, although all the pointers didn't associate with shows, I managed to pick out some key points that could transfer into my profession:

1.Know your audience, I believe this is important to your performance, not knowing what an audience is wanting could result in a failure of performance, in order to create successful shows we must provide for our audience.

3. Keep your eyes focused on your audience. 

7. Stay focused on what is happening in the moment. Humorous situations are much more humorous when they evolve. Similarly, you will be a much better speaker if you truly focus on what you are saying and how your audience is reacting. You will also be less nervous if you dig down into the content of what you're presenting rather than thinking about how nervous you are or how much you'd like to get out of there. Experts advise people with performance anxiety in music or sports to get into the "flow" and the same is true of public speaking. It's also helpful to find your maximum level of arousal so that you're not too scared, but not too laid-back either. Similarly, don't allow yourself to suffer from "imposter syndrome" in which you convince yourself that you don't know enough to be up there talking. No one would have asked you to speak if they didn't think you had something worthwhile to say.

10. Practice, practice, practice. If you're not a natural entertainer and feel overwhelmed at the thought of public speaking, you can buy yourself a great deal of extra confidence by going over your talk in front of a sympathetic audience of people who you trust.  Allow yourself to accept their feedback, which I'm sure they will do very gently if they truly care about you. If you want to go the extra distance, make a video of yourself, and then force yourself to watch the video. If you don't like the first attempt, do it over. You don't want to make yourself too self-conscious, so I wouldn't advise obsessing over every imperfection. However, you might find yourself pleasantly surprised when you realize you did a pretty darn good job.

Public speaking isn't so much an art as a science, yet there is some art to being able to win over an audience. Following these rules is a great start to becoming a great speaker in any situation, but it's your unique personal qualities that will ultimately make it all come together and have your audience coming back for more!

A few other pointers I would like to present are some thoughts I've had from reading some other sources and piecing some things together...

-You should never dance alone, even in a solo, you should always engage your audience.
-Make eye contact, direct your energy to one person, respond to the energy that others give you.
-Truly see, look and take in the world through your eyes as you dance.
-Dance outside your kinesphere, break the fourth wall and push through your bubble.

After reading these various pages and articles, I think it is very important to understand who you are, discovering yourself may not have already happened and we are continually learning and growing, but becoming mature and demonstrating this in performance takes you to a whole other level. Dance just isn't about the steps.