Dancers often have to do challenging things. We have to lift and hold our legs up by our faces, jump eight feet in the air, and turn around 20 times. However, sometimes the hardest thing for a dancer to do is not these physical feats, but having to go out on stage and look ridiculous.
I’ve mentioned before that a dancer’s character is important when putting on a ballet. You need to be able to portray any character through movement, and I mean any character. There are lots of characters in ballets, and lots of different types of characters. There’s serious characters, mean characters, innocent characters and so much more, but the one character that shows up in practically every single ballet is the ridiculous comic relief.
Being this character is difficult for a couple of reasons. First off, there’s usually only one “funny” character, so the responsibility of putting humor into a serious, tragic ballet falls entirely on you. Getting jokes across becomes much harder when the audience isn’t expecting it, and it’s already difficult when you can’t make any noise.
However, the real reason that this role is so challenging is that it makes many young dancers self conscious. Often, the dancers put into these roles aren’t excessively outgoing in real life, and aren’t used to the idea of people laughing at them. It’s hard to remember that the audience is laughing at the character, so we often try to not make a big deal out of the jokes we’re supposed to be making, and then they end up being lost in the rest of the movement.
The best way to get past this common form of stage fright is to really try remember that the audience isn’t laughing at you, they’re laughing with you. You want the audience to laugh- it means you’re doing a good job, and that you’re doing enough. Being able to do this well definitely puts you in good standing with directors and choreographers. It took me years to realize this, but now that I have, I love just going out and being ridiculous for the audience. And it’s always nice to hear that they love it too.
