Thread: Confidence building exercises?

Does anyone have any ideas or exercises they use to help students build confidence? I am working with students in a level 2 group who are comfortable with the basics, but have no prior dance or performance experience and are still feeling a lack of confidence in regards to performing and just in general. I try to keep a very positive and encourag atmosphere in classes, and I am working with them on developing a "stage presence", but confidence is a big part of that and I am having trouble figuring out how to cultivate it.

There are different ways that a student can be lacking in confidence, and each way might require a slightly different approach.

If students are unsure that they know their performance material competently, then much of that falls to the teacher. Are you giving them enough time to learn the routine? Are you teaching it in a way that is conducive to being able to do a good job on it (i.e., not the "I spent four weeks teaching the first minute of the choreography and half an hour on the last minute," poor-time-management approach)? Are you encouraging them to rehearse at home? Do they practice in class without your participation while not facing the mirrors in the studio?

Are students unsure that they know what they're doing? Do they have a mental block about figuring out what moves to put to music? Do they go deer-in-the-headlights when asked to dance off the tops of their heads or to come up with short combinations or choreographies? Do they have reasonable expectations about their choreographic abilities? (Not everybody is naturally great at choreographing, and even people who are rarely do spectacular work when they're just starting out. This is a skill that also requires practice to get good at.) Some of this anxiety can be fixed by encouraging them to push their own envelopes in class. You could do improv exercises or assign homework to think up combinations and demonstrate them. Bhuz has some old threads on this, and there are some good DVDs on the market to help build improv skills. Also, you might consider holding a video night to watch famous dancers and then discuss how they dance. Sometimes students watch videos and don't really think about what they're seeing beyond whether they like it or not, and being able to talk about how moves are used can turn a light bulb on.

If students have simple stage fright, this is probably best approached with the sort of exercises that one would use for other types of social anxiety--gradual exposure, scenarios and visualization, etc. Improv exercise may also help here. Some of overcoming this lack of confidence can only be fixed with performing experience.

Levels can mean different things in different programs. My level 2 students are beginning to perform in student environments as a group, but are still a year or more away from soloing. I find the two most important factors at this point are A) Knowing the choreography REALLY well so they don't have to worry that they'll forget and B) Having some experience dancing in front of other people.

Here's what I do with them:

1) Start teaching the material 3 months before the performance

2) Start early having them do it without me, and facing away from the mirror

3) *require* that they practice regularly at home, starting well before the show date. I tell them they need 4 weeks before the show to *polish* and *rehearse* the dance and that's a process we can't even begin until everyone is done *learning* the choreo! Nothing wrecks your confidence more than trying to perform a dance you don't know well!

3) Tell them they need to know the material well enough to do it in class ALONE at least one month before the show (sometimes I let them dance in pairs in class, but I don't tell them that until the day of the 'audition.') It's been very rare that I've had to actually cut someone from a show because they couldn't do it, but knowing the date of their in-class 'audition' lights the practice fire under them!

4) I divide the class in half and have half the class dance for the other half. At first I have to remind them pretty much continually to make eye contact with their 'audience' but eventually they get it. I'm often on the sideline yelling 'your face will be with you onstage the WHOLE time, make sure you know what it's doing!'

5) Videotape the group & let them watch it. Do this several weeks before the show so there's time to correct whatever comes up.

6) A week or two before the show, I stop correcting anything that isn't egregious. If they haven't perfected something in 3 months of practice, they're not going to fix it at this point. I become more cheerleader than teacher & try to build their impression that they're going to knock the audience's socks off!

Originally Posted by Lauren_

4) I divide the class in half and have half the class dance for the other half. At first I have to remind them pretty much continually to make eye contact with their 'audience' but eventually they get it. I'm often on the sideline yelling 'your face will be with you onstage the WHOLE time, make sure you know what it's doing!'



6) A week or two before the show, I stop correcting anything that isn't egregious. If they haven't perfected something in 3 months of practice, they're not going to fix it at this point. I become more cheerleader than teacher & try to build their impression that they're going to knock the audience's socks off!

My teacher does this and it really helped me. I do practice at home, a lot, but I don't feel confident unless I have had plenty of practice dancing with the people I will be on stage with and I need to know how we will react as a group if there is a problem.

Originally Posted by Lauren_

'your face will be with you onstage the WHOLE time, make sure you know what it's doing!'

LIKE! :)

I also wanted to add that just bustin' a groove on the dance floor at Hafla (not performing, just improv dancing club-style) can help confidence. Seeing the floor as a place to -have fun- while ddancing with people watching can help a lot by making the floor/stage seem a more friendly place.

Originally Posted by Bijoux

My teacher does this and it really helped me. I do practice at home, a lot, but I don't feel confident unless I have had plenty of practice dancing with the people I will be on stage with and I need to know how we will react as a group if there is a problem.

Something about this remark bothers me. It sounds like rehearsals should be disaster-preparedness drills. Not that learning how to recover from mishaps isn't important (because it is), but practicing it should be a natural outgrowth of taking rehearsals seriously. I'm also not sure that all student personalities are conducive to emphasizing mistake recovery. I worry that it just makes some people more likely to think about the possibility of mistakes when they're onstage, which in turn, makes them more likely to make one.

I've never been fortunate enough to dance in a seriously professional troupe, and the groups I've been with have always been very cavalier about making mistakes in rehearsal. "Sue screwed up and turned the wrong way!" "We're going to call that the 'Sue Turn' from now on!" This isn't preparing anyone for being on stage. The idea that someone in the group can "know" how everyone will react to a mistake on stage based on this sort of behavior is an illusion, especially when people are laughing and joking around, which is presumably not how they'll be behaving during the actual show. You can't possibly anticipate what can go wrong during a performance, which is why good rehearsing involves rehearsing mental focus, not just steps, and it needs to be something you rehearse all along, not just the practices right before the event.

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

Something about this remark bothers me.

Tourbeau, you often give alot of insightful comments here that I agree with and greatly appreciate, but you also often seem to pick everything apart just for the sake of argument.

I think she was just trying to explain the development of a group dynamic. This development comes from practicing as a group, not so much from each group member practicing individually. You DO need to get used to dancing with certain people, to feeling their presence, to being aware of the group formation, to sensing the energy coming from your troupemates. This dynamic makes the difference between a true group performance vs. a bunch of dancers who just happen to be standing on the same stage doing the same choreography at the same time.

If you have never been in a serious group, perhaps you have never experienced this process.

As in the other thread, I can only go by my experience, and my experience in two different states with two different "professional" troupes (i.e., non-beginners who did whatever paying gigs they could get) was that nobody took rehearsals very seriously. There was always a lot of socializing, horsing around, and half paying attention. Each of these troupe directors lived by the philosophy "Everything always magically comes together in the end!" Well, actually it didn't. Usually it was a miracle if we made it through the performance without someone making a major mistake, and I'm not denying that I contributed my share. I think the overall structure of our practice "system" was very conducive to putting half-baked, ill-rehearsed stuff on stage. It was almost always a mad scramble to get the material ready for the stage, sometimes to the point that we were learning the routine the week before the show (which is fine if the individuals are highly committed and working diligently, not so fine for hobbyists who put in an hour a week as a group). We usually only practiced "for realsies" at the rehearsal before the show, and only twice (spanning years) was it a full dress rehearsal. I never felt confident that I was ready to perform, only frustrated by the carefree attitude of other dancers who didn't seem to think it was an embarrassment to call this "professional" performing. It's one of the reasons I don't do troupe work anymore.

Obviously there are a lot of factors involved in talking about performance preparation. What level are these students at? What is the audience's expectation of their ability? Are they doing interdependent staging or ATS, where interaction matters on stage, or each-person-doing-the-same-thing-individually-at-once style, where it is less important?

How does the teacher prepare students to feel ready, knowing that there is no "completely ready" here? No matter how much you practice, you cannot anticipate every possible thing that can happen on stage. You can know a routine so thoroughly and have danced it so much that you momentarily shift your concentration on stage and lose your place in the song. Wardrobe malfunctions happen to even the most careful dancers. Sometimes there are physical hazards on the stage that appear unexpectedly. But do you train to be perfect (knowing that's nearly impossible) or do you train to make mistakes (because that sets the bar pretty low)? What message do our practices send: "Always strive for your best" or "Try not to be awful, but it's not a big deal if you are"? Sincere confidence comes from knowing you're doing a good job, but you can't get there if you're doing a slapdash job with a lot of mistakes and nobody particularly cares about quality. Don't we need to discuss when a student's "lack of confidence" is really "niggling suspicion of truth that they don't deserve the audience's time"?

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

Don't we need to discuss when a student's "lack of confidence" is really "niggling suspicion of truth that they don't deserve the audience's time"?

Yes, but what does this have to do with Bijoux stating she doesn't feel confident unless the entire group rehearses together? You still haven't explained why you are "bothered" by this concept. Except, I guess, that Bijoux didn't write a 50,000 word treatise on the subject detailing each and every element of what she meant by

"I do practice at home, a lot, but I don't feel confident unless I have had plenty of practice dancing with the people I will be on stage with and I need to know how we will react as a group if there is a problem."

so that you wouldn't assume that what she meant was that group rehearsals function only in disaster-prevention.

Thanks everyone for the help!
For my group, level 2 students are those who have taken at least 3 beginner's sessions - so they have about 6 months to a year of basics behind them. The sense that I am getting from them is that they just don't feel very confident in general - like maybe they still feel kind of awkward and uncoordinated while dancing (and we're talking about people with no previous dance or movement training). They don't look awkward though, so aside from reassuring them, I am not sure how to get them feeling more comfortable. Maybe working on some loose improv would be helpful here.
Any other suggestions?

They have all expressed hesitation about performing, and I certainly don't push anyone to perform, but I think they are interested, but also scared. At this point no one has been working toward performing, so I don't think that is their main concern. However, after reading some of your responses, I realized I don't really know what their specific concerns are, so we are going to have a conversation about that in class.
Maybe after that I can check back in and provide some more details.
Thanks again!

Sedonia, the part that bothers me is "...I need to know how we will react as a group if there is a problem." Unless you are doing ATS or some other improv presentation, what does this mean? We should have a group strategy in case Betsy steps on a bead? We need a contingency plan if Martha forgets and turns counterclockwise instead of clockwise during the second verse? We should practice having a fire drill midway through the piece?

The choreography is the choreography. You either commit to rehearsing it with the intention you're going to do it correctly in front of the audience or you don't (and the latter is only acceptable in a limited number of low-pressure circumstances). The director should make sure performers understand it is mandatory to rehearse the piece at least a couple of times before the show while simulating the performance conditions as closely as possible: everybody there at a minimum, preferably with blocking that reflects the actual stage dimensions (assuming the real stage is unavailable), and probably at least once in costume. If there are issues you can't control (e.g., no access to the venue before day of show, someone took ill at the last minute), then get there early enough to work through adjustments. When your music starts is not the time to figure out how many steps you need to take to keep your formation in line or how wide you can swing your veil without smacking Sue in the face. Abandoning beginning performers to this kind of scrambling on the fly is one of the easiest ways for a teacher to make sure they feel anxious and tentative! Students shouldn't be in front of an audience if they don't have a solid idea of how, where, and when to move as individuals. There shouldn't be anything about "reacting as a group" on stage unless you're improvising.

And as I said upthread, you can't really "know" how you'll react if there is a problem, because you can't anticipate what problems might arise on stage. All you can do is practice not losing focus when you do rehearse. Aren't we teaching students to adhere to the basic principle of stagecraft, namely, if a calamity occurs (the stage becomes physically unsafe or someone gets grievously injured), stop the show and take the appropriate emergency action; otherwise, when something goes wrong, carry on as best you can to minimize the error and pretend it didn't happen?

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

Sedonia, the part that bothers me is "...I need to know how we will react as a group if there is a problem." Unless you are doing ATS or some other improv presentation, what does this mean? We should have a group strategy in case Betsy steps on a bead? We need a contingency plan if Martha forgets and turns counterclockwise instead of clockwise during the second verse? We should practice having a fire drill midway through the piece?

It doesn't have to be that specific. It can be as general as training yourself to keep doing the choreography with a smile on your face even if you see via your peripheral vision that the person next to you messes up. How can you train yourself to have this kind of focus except by going through rehearsals WITH YOUR GROUP and dealing with the mistakes as they happen???

There shouldn't be anything about "reacting as a group" on stage unless you're improvising.

How would you know this for certain, since of your own admission, your only group experiences have been rather negative, unserious, and half-baked?

Originally Posted by ssipes

It doesn't have to be that specific. It can be as general as training yourself to keep doing the choreography with a smile on your face even if you see via your peripheral vision that the person next to you messes up. How can you train yourself to have this kind of focus except by going through rehearsals WITH YOUR GROUP and dealing with the mistakes as they happen???

Hence my previous statements, "You can't possibly anticipate what can go wrong during a performance, which is why good rehearsing involves rehearsing mental focus, not just steps, and it needs to be something you rehearse all along, not just the practices right before the event" and "All you can do is practice not losing focus when you do rehearse."

How would you know this for certain, since of your own admission, your only group experiences have been rather negative, unserious, and half-baked?

Because this is how "rehearsing" is defined in theatrical disciplines. Rehearsing isn't just memorizing moves when you dance, or music for a concert, or words when you act. You also have to practice the delivery of that material for the stage. If you only practice the material without ever practicing the delivery, you're not doing the full job. It would be like an actor thinking it is sufficient to mumble his lines in rehearsal and then trying to figure out how to project his voice while the play's going on.

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

Hence my previous statements, "You can't possibly anticipate what can go wrong during a performance, which is why good rehearsing involves rehearsing mental focus, not just steps, and it needs to be something you rehearse all along, not just the practices right before the event" and "All you can do is practice not losing focus when you do rehearse."

You are the only one who has said anything about anticipating specific problems. You are not addressing my comments at all, nor those of the poster you were originally replying to. As another example, who said anything about this being limited to the rehearsals just right before event? Indeed, Bijoux's exact words were "plenty of practice with the group". What about this suggests that she was speaking only about some insufficient number of rehearsals right before the event? What in my posts suggests that I was ever talking only about rehearsals right before the event? It's like you are going out of your way to put words in people's mouths and create strawman arguments.

I'm saying that the mental focus to which you refer is best practiced with the group you are going to be rehearsing with. Nothing anyone has said has in any way implied that group rehearsals confer psychic abilities to predict specific errors.

Moreover, there is a subtle improvisational element to performing group choreographies. Good groups can recover from small or large errors more skillfully than half-baked groups. This is due to 1) the skill of the individuals dancers, AND ALSO 2) the group dynamic that develops as the dancers gain experience working together.

Because this is how "rehearsing" is defined in theatrical disciplines. Rehearsing isn't just memorizing moves when you dance, or music for a concert, or words when you act. You also have to practice the delivery of that material for the stage. If you only practice the material without ever practicing the delivery, you're not doing the full job. It would be like an actor thinking it is sufficient to mumble his lines in rehearsal and then trying to figure out how to project his voice while the play's going on.

Again, I'm confused. Who are you replying to here? Who are you disagreeing with here? A critical part of rehearsing delivery would be rehearsing with the group. Right? In any theatrical discipline, the group of artists that will be performing together must also rehearse together. What am I missing here?

Wow, didn't mean to cause such a ruckus.

I just meant that my teacher allows us plenty of time to practice as a group while she watches, not tells us what to do (unless it is a quick correction of technique).
This is at a stage where we already know the choreo and are polishing the performance.

Sometimes during these rehearsals, mistakes happen and we just deal with them as they come up. We don't have a contingency plan for everything that could possibly go wrong, but knowing that as a group we trust each other and will do what we can to smooth over any mistakes makes me feel confident.

This does not replace knowing the choreo or practicing alone at home.

It was also a very personal comment, only from my perspective. I am not a seasoned performer and still struggle a bit with stage fright. I was just sharing something that was helpful to me in the hope it may be helpful for someone else.

Sedonia, I'm afraid you and I have reached an impasse here. You write that I am evading your comments. I feel that you are misinterpreting my responses. I'll be happy to spend as much time as anyone wants discussing this further (here or by PM), but perhaps we should just agree to drop the matter.

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

Sedonia, I'm afraid you and I have reached an impasse here. You write that I am evading your comments. I feel that you are misinterpreting my responses. I'll be happy to spend as much time as anyone wants discussing this further (here or by PM), but perhaps we should just agree to drop the matter.

Yes, I'll agree to that. I don't want to derail the thread.

Originally Posted by Bijoux

Wow, didn't mean to cause such a ruckus.

I just meant that my teacher allows us plenty of time to practice as a group while she watches, not tells us what to do (unless it is a quick correction of technique).
This is at a stage where we already know the choreo and are polishing the performance.

Sometimes during these rehearsals, mistakes happen and we just deal with them as they come up. We don't have a contingency plan for everything that could possibly go wrong, but knowing that as a group we trust each other and will do what we can to smooth over any mistakes makes me feel confident.

This does not replace knowing the choreo or practicing alone at home.

It was also a very personal comment, only from my perspective. I am not a seasoned performer and still struggle a bit with stage fright. I was just sharing something that was helpful to me in the hope it may be helpful for someone else.

I understand exactly what you're talking about.

When you're new to performing, your mind can conjure up all sorts of terrifying and humiliating scenarios. Knowing that, if you make a mistake, the other dancers won't stop moving and sneer at you or storm offstage is calming. Knowing that they will not only continue to dance but help to hide that mistake, and *still want to be friendly to you* helps calm the imagination of the nervous beast.

Taken to another level -- I know that the members of my pro troupe are all aware of each other onstage. I know they can all improvise if necessary. If I were to completely forget the choreography onstage and start randomly improvising to the music (as I recently did during a duet), the other dancers will roll with that, improvise with me, make it all look good, and laugh with me about it afterward. Our onstage communication is so easy now that we can restage dances on the fly when necessary, even when a key dancer is missing or the stage is half the size we anticipated.

At any level, it's a wonderful (and comforting) feeling to know the other dancers onstage are 'on your side' and going to help you out rather than throw you under the bus if you misstep.

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

Sedonia, the part that bothers me is "...I need to know how we will react as a group if there is a problem." Unless you are doing ATS or some other improv presentation, what does this mean? We should have a group strategy in case Betsy steps on a bead? We need a contingency plan if Martha forgets and turns counterclockwise instead of clockwise during the second verse? We should practice having a fire drill midway through the piece?

...... when something goes wrong, carry on as best you can to minimize the error and pretend it didn't happen?

Learning how to minimize errors is something that needs some drilling and troubleshooting.

Practicing in a group can help the individuals in the group learn how to return to the fold when they make mistakes (like being able to quickly find where you should be in a formation without making a big deal about it if you mess up) and to see if those around them can stay poised while they work-around a potential formation/step obstacle. Group practice can help leaders troubleshoot who needs to be aware of how they drop face/composure if they make a mistake or if there is a section of the choreography that isn't clear/everyone is interpreting slightly differently.

Overall practice in group can help troupes learn the balance between being aware of group formation/what is going on around them (as missteps can send one dancer into the path of the other) and how to also maintain the inward focus needed to do their parts as individuals.

Originally Posted by snowmeow7

Thanks everyone for the help!
For my group, level 2 students are those who have taken at least 3 beginner's sessions - so they have about 6 months to a year of basics behind them. The sense that I am getting from them is that they just don't feel very confident in general - like maybe they still feel kind of awkward and uncoordinated while dancing (and we're talking about people with no previous dance or movement training). They don't look awkward though, so aside from reassuring them, I am not sure how to get them feeling more comfortable. Maybe working on some loose improv would be helpful here.
Any other suggestions?

They have all expressed hesitation about performing, and I certainly don't push anyone to perform, but I think they are interested, but also scared. At this point no one has been working toward performing, so I don't think that is their main concern. However, after reading some of your responses, I realized I don't really know what their specific concerns are, so we are going to have a conversation about that in class.
Maybe after that I can check back in and provide some more details.
Thanks again!

Hi Snow-Meow- Coming into this late-

99% of my adult students WON"T perform and have no intention of performing. They just want to go to class. Occasionally there will be one student who wants to go farther than classroom and I work with her privately. I really feel that performance is a choice and not the purpose of attending a class. For that matter for me as an instructor it is not my goal teaching a class to have my studnets perform. I must be clear with my own motivations for teaching- am I teaching for my own ego- does having my students perform make me a better teacher?- a more visible teacher?

Performance is a skill set to teach and really should be taught after a certain level of mastery of content and only if desired. Most students take belly dance classes for personal reasons- exercise, growth what ever. So perhaps it is OK they are not comfortable with performing.

It sounds as if your students are far enough along in their training to know there is a whole lot they don't know and that means they are self-aware. Not everyone needs to perform or should. I wouldn't push them, enjoy teaching and sharing.

Just my 2 cents worth, late and all.

Susi