Today we also worked on another variation of our baseline/forward placement) - Musical Theater character! With this placement, we take parts of our baseline placement to extremes in order to sound more musical theater, and to cater our sound and performance to that of a musical theater song with a strong or subtle character performing it. We use acting techniques with this placement as we treat the song more like a monologue - mapping out how our character would act and/or react to words they are singing (if they're supposed to be happy, spastic, excited, sad, angry). We analyze the way the character should be played - adjust our talking voice accordingly - mapping out our song the same way we would a scene or monologue, with high points and low points.
We then, start to incorporate this new character-like speaking into our song by first, completely talking it out - making sure the energy and voice inflections are what they need to be in order for the character to shine through while we're singing. Then, we slowly elongate certain words and give our song a slightly more melodic feel.
Performance choreography:
Today we also worked on our baseline performance choreography - or our performance choreography that we will be able to use regardless of song tempo or genre. These basic rules and moves of performing help us look natural, feel comfortable, and remove the stress of “what the heck do I do with my body or hands or feet” while performing. The way that we approach performance technique is we are de-mystifying something that very few people in the entertainment world address - and that is, how do I practice performing so that it looks natural? How do I learn to move my body so that I don’t look awkward on stage? A lot of people assume that when someone is a “natural performer” that they are born with the ability to choreograph a song on the spot and move their bodies in such a way as to get the audience involved and show their passion and enjoyment of the song their singing with arm movements and foot placements. This is not the case. Any professional singer/performer has had a choreographer tell them exactly what to do, how to not look awkward, and then they practice that exact combination of movements and gestures that they have assigned that specific time every single time they sing it. Performing and stage presence is something that you can learn!
When mapping out our choreography, we start with different sections of the body and map out 3 or 4 things that we can cycle through for each section.
Reset/ base performance position: our confident stance with our shoulders down, our feet shoulder width apart, knees straight and feet facing forward is what we use to reset out technique. Every time we move into a different position with our feet or our hands - we will always come back to this position. The reason for this, is it keeps us from slouching, or looking nervous (even if we are), it shows command of a stage, helps us feel more steady, and gives us something easy to do that looks powerful and strong!
Arms: For our arm movement, we keep it simple as well. We have 5 different positions that we rotate through - doing slight variations of each of them as we move through our song. They are: Forward, Side, In, Up and both hands on the microphone. As we move through these positions, it's important to have strong, powerful arms so that our movement doesn't look sloppy. Practicing each of these moves and the transitions between them will help our performance look and feel natural - while allowing us to not have to think about what the heck we're supposed to do with our arms, and keeping us from doing the same one arm movement over and over again.
Legs/ Feet: For our leg and feet movement, we rotate our angles slightly and reset into our base performance position. The slight shuffle of our feet - our "quarter back shuffle" - helps us perform for a larger group of people by addressing different areas of the stage and audience with our bodies without having to travel the length of the stage to keep all areas of the crowd engaged. We also use these slight angles to make it look like we're moving a lot more than we really are (saving energy for singing rather than focusing on how much of the stage we have to cover). Once we get to these different angles, we can re-step our feet or use our heels for rhythmic movement, and shift our weight from foot to foot to add movement in general.
From there, to open up our stage presents even further - we mapped out a 2 step area, where the most you travel from one side of the stage to the other (or really the most you travel from exactly where you're standing at all times) is 2 steps and a reset right - or 2 steps and a reset left. Even though you're traveling very little distance, this makes the performance twice as big with minimal effort!
This re-step, angle our feet, and reset movement that we add to our legs and feet not only help open up our performance to look and feel like we're performing for a larger audience, but helps us look more in tune with our audience - and more natural in front of a crowd.