Dance Training Journal 2: 1/24/15

Dance Training Journal 2: 1/24/15

Senior Dance Project auditions

Advice from Don Mandigo

-always audition-

Stage one - pre audition warm-ups-

The dancers, while participating in idle banter/chatter about how hard/scary auditions were, seemed mostly laid back. I saw a few doing basic stretches but with only a few exceptions most of them did not take advantage of the open movement studios for personal warm-ups.

Stage two -Actual warm-ups-

Once we started the auditions we were guided through a series of "warm ups" It was mostly basic cardio/flexibility stuff. Lots of jumping jacks, hopping, stretching that sort of thing. It was very legwork focused, and I was able to keep up QUITE well at this stage of the auditions. There wasn't much that required any upper body strength, other than 10 pushups.

Stage three -Dance routines-

Our choreographer's ran us through three dance routines. We learned one or two moves, then practiced them, then added 2-3 more and repeated until they thought we were ready to go through whole routine as a group. After that we did it as a full group to music, before going in small groups, twice each to gauge how well we had learned as individuals.

I noticed that some of the types/styles "fitted" me better than others. It also had a rather SEVERE learning curve, many of the moves at this point I had never seen before, and I did not know the most basic of terms.

There was a lot of emotional pressure to do things right, that interfered with performance. Once you start making mistakes it's hard to regain/maintain composure.

required lots of breath control, pacing, timing and morale control to keep up.

almost no males there, as long as I can learn the basics better I should be able to be cast by doing similar auditions in the future.

I also noted that many of the other dancers had similar troubles to myself, and that many of them were so mired in technical limitations, that they were unable to be expressive simultaneously.