Yesterday Shira posted this great advice:
DANCE TIP: Whatever you practice, that’s how you’ll perform. If you practice with a blank face, then you’ll perform with a blank face. So, when you practice, DO bring emotional expression into your practicing! I’m not saying you should practice with a pasted-on faked smile. I mean you should try to bring genuine emotion into your practicing.
Connecting to the emotions in the music is a good place to start.
This isn’t new advice to me, I feel like I connect really well with my music and I make a point to put on my game face in class and practice. Sometimes I even emote during drills.
But this post stuck in my head, and it made me think about my history with dancing and emoting and being vulnerable on the stage.
My introduction to belly dance was in ITS. We had two basic modes in performance: big happy smiles for fast, and the “dirty little smirk” for slow. I never could find my dirty little smirk. I think that’s just not my personality and my face isn’t built for it. But boy did I try. And as for the big smile, I would smile so hard that my face would hurt, and in pictures it always looked like I was snarling. Less “Yay, I’m happy to be dancing!” and more “I will EAT YOUR SOUL but first, Egyptian Half-Turn!”
In my early solos, I’m sure my face was somewhere between “Yay I’m happy!” and “Oh my god, please like me, I hope I’m not boring you” with a side of “soul eater.”
So when I started dancing with Jolie and developing solo material to perform at Fire & Gold Belly Dance performances, she wanted me to start showing more emotions at stage. I was hesitant. I was pretty sure the audience just wanted to be entertained by the happy smiling belly dancer and not have to deal with any feelings. But she was the pro and the teacher, so I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and take the challenge.
It’s possible she created a monster, because the truth is, I like slow, broody, moody music. I like sad music and I like angry music. I like mournful music. I like contemplative music. It’s not that I don’t like happy music, I promise I do, but when left to my own devices I’ll pick something wistful or melancholic over something joyful about 9 times out of 10. I surprised myself last night by getting all cutesy and playful to some Caravan Palace. I had almost forgotten that I had that side to me, that I could be cheery outside of a troupe choreography.
Anyway, the point of this is, once I allowed myself to actually connect to music that made me feel something other than “I am so happy to dance for you my lovely audience!” it opened a whole new world for me. I was able to be more open on stage, and people responded well to it. Audiences really do enjoy genuine emotion.
Just remember to still make sure you’re bringing the right emotion to the right venue. Most restaurant audiences don’t want to cry into their hummus.