Performance Anxiety

How do you feel about performance? Many people have performance anxiety. Some studies put it as the number one fear of Americans. I remember seeing one of the last competitions one of my coaches did and the absolute fear and horror on his face. I personally never really had a problem with it, I’m kind of a ham. It wasn’t until I had a couple of students that had a big fear of performance that I started researching it a bit more. What is it? Why do people have it? What can you do about it?

I often try to find someone who has dealt with this issue before to learn from. Who deals with this the best? Dancers and dance teachers as a whole tend to ignore the situation. Although this has some merit in that by shrugging it off, as if it’s no big deal, that people will just relax about it. But that doesn’t work. Actors deal with performance anxiety the most, they’ve done the most research about it, they’re written about it the most, they talk about it the most. I remember reading an actress’s account of starting to learn to dance, and she was amazed at the total lack of dealing with the issue. That dancer’s just tried to ignore the problem.

What can we learn from theater? What makes it different?

Teaching Focus

When I first started taking acting lessons, it was a shock as to the completely different focus they had from dance lessons. In dance lessons there is perhaps an over concern and value placed on technique. And on a very extreme end taught very much in a right wrong perspective on technique. In acting classes the focus is on a different set of things. It’s on the individuality of the person, and on feedback, positive feedback about how the person is presenting themselves.

Now if you are worried about everything being right or wrong, where is your concern directed? What are the consequences of doing something wrong? Of course you’re going to get tense performing with that kind of focus. Of course you get tense and since a large part of good dance technique is about being able to relax muscles, well there goes half your technique out the window. You’ll probably even feel worse then!

Uniqueness

What if your focus and goal is on something else? What if it’s about showing your uniqueness, your individuality? Then perhaps making mistakes just shows humanity. It shows willingness taking risks. It shows courage.

Think about why you go to watch other people perform, whether it’s dance, music, comedy, or theater. Do you really go to see them to see how perfectly they can do it? Do you go to dance competitions to say, “Oh they did that Natural Turn so perfectly!” (If you do you’re probably fooling yourself). Aren’t you actually more paying attention to HOW they did their Natural Turn? Aren’t you actually fascinated that all of the top couples do it slightly differently? That the best couples do it differently every single time they do it.

When you watch performers aren’t you actually fascinated by the fact that they are all at different levels? Doesn’t it make it more valuable to actually watch one performer at one level and another performer at a different level? I personally love going to the comedy club. A popular format is having 3 different performers. One local, one regional, one national, each at different levels and abilities, all in one night, one after the other. You can really learn about what is comedy, what are the components about it, what makes the good stuff good.

Don’t you want to see people at different levels? I can’t tell you how many times after doing a showcase that the people that inspire others to dance the most are the beginners? “Oh! I think I could do that.”

Extraordinary

People have ordinary lives. They get up they go to work, they come home, they eat food, they sleep. It’s practical. We have to do that. We train our children not to be way overly emotional or crazy – and that’s healthy. We need that to deal with the world as it is now. If the building is burning, we don’t have time to worry about how we feel about it right now, we need to get out of the building.

But we are emotional beings. We have feelings, we feel sad, happy, angry, disgusted, surprised, have contempt, and have fear. These things are hardwired into us (check out the book Emotions Revealed by Paul Ekman). When we go to see people perform we go to see something out of the ordinary – something extra ordinary – people expressing themselves. Allowing us as audience members for a moment to dance with the dancer on stage, be in the position of the actor in the play, be connected to the comedian. To live vicariously through them. To allow all the emotions that we want to express so badly to be expressed through them.

When we perform, if we’re not concerned and distracted by getting it right or wrong, we can express. We can be a vehicle for people to be expressed. In a way we can allow the audience a small amount of healing the pain of not being able to express in our overly practical world. Performance can actually be one of the best gifts we can give to our fellow human being.

I find that perspective, that performance is a gift and not a fear of judgement, is the key to dissolving performance anxiety. But it takes practice and an approach to teaching to make it happen.