Get Out There and Dance

From faculty member Alison Turner:

I admit with no shame that I love DANCING WITH THE STARS. I was watching an episode and they had a new thing called “Instant Dance” that they have never done before on the show. The contestants are given a type of dance (Tango, Jive, etc.) and work on the routine all week, but they aren’t given the song until the night of the show after they perform their first dance, so they only have about 30 minutes to work the routine with the music. Everyone thought it would be a disaster, but something really fascinating happened… everyone did the best they’ve ever done and got the highest scores they’ve ever gotten!

Kurt Warner’s note was that he finally found musicality and hit the beats of the song for the first time. But how is that possible, he had never heard the song before? Could it be because he was listening??? One judge said that he had been using the song as a safety net for counting the steps rather than hearing the music and responding to it organically. I feel like that’s what we do with our scripts. We focus on memorizing and being off book so that we can know which line we need to hit a certain beat on, rather than listening and responding to whatever just happened. We memorize our beats just as much as we memorize our words, which doesn’t leave any room for surprise or musicality.

The other magical ingredient that night was that the entire cast went into the show with the expectation that they were going to suck and felt at peace with it, because if they did suck they would have a valid excuse as to why. They worked on their dance all week, they found the nuances of the genre, and then they went in on Monday night and said “FUCK IT!” and just listened and had fun. They let go of all of the technicals and made room for dance.

Mark Ballas said that this is all they ever do in professional competitions. They know the genre and they choreograph a dance, but they don’t know the song until they step out on the dance floor. For a pro, there is no such thing as a cold read. Actors and dancers alike don’t need to know the song or the words on the page, they just need to know the genre and be so comfortable with their skill that no song or lines can throw them off. All they have to do is go out there and dance.