Because we only have 4 lessons left until our Fall concert we are deep in our performance prep mode and getting ready to rock! Today we started our song checklist - going through every aspect of one song at a time until we feel like all of our questions are answered, all of our reminders set, and the song is 100% ready to go - before moving on to our next song. We need to make sure we know what we're doing vocally (with our placement), what we're doing with our hands, feet, body and microphone to feel ready to perform. We started with "Empty Chairs". Placement: For our placement for this song, we are using our musical theater ballad placement - coming from a talked and forward place, making sure to tell a story like a monologue with our pauses, intonation, and volume. We make our vowels nice and wide, pushing the sound through our teeth and adding an "ah" vowel in the middle of our words to give it a big open feeling. Choreography: For our performance choreography we went over performing basics (below).
Jake's placement was fantastic today!! Our forward placement is a very natural thing for him now - we were both blown away watching his before/after!!
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.