We are finishing up our series on all of the components of our tutorial website. In October, we talked about “teaching sequences” which are sequences that aren’t intended to be performed in front of an audience. Rather, they are primarily used to teach a concept or technique. Now, we are jumping into “performance sequences”. It is certainly possible that one sequence can be both a teaching sequence and a performance sequence.
“Teaching Sequences” and “Performance Sequences” may be similar or very different from each other, but there is always one thing that separates them. “Performance Sequences” are meant to be seen by an audience and have a primary goal of communicating or connecting with the audience.
We have a strong performance culture and philosophy that we teach to our performers. We do acknowledge to them that there are many approaches to performing and our way is not the only right way to do it. Our approach to performing always comes back to one idea: How does this movement, technique or choice impact the audience or viewer?
That’s because when we perform in front of an audience, we’re showcasing something for that audience. Perhaps we’re trying to get across a mood, an emotion, a feeling, a point, or something that we want to convey to the audience through our movement. If we are just practicing our skills, that is not performing. If we are using our skills and our sequence and our body to say something, then we are performing.
When we teach students to perform, and when we perform ourselves, we drill our sequences so thoroughly that by the time we’re in front of an audience, we no longer have to think about any of the technique, or the steps of the sequence.
If the audience doesn’t come first, then you are just training in public.
We have a lot of fun and memorable messages that we try to convey to our performers. These ideas aren’t intended to restrict a performer, but rather help them focus on what will make their performance look the best. Got a new skill you love, but can’t do it consistently? Then save it for the next performance and choose a skill that you can do and emote and connect with the audience. Once you start thinking about how to do the skill you aren’t thinking about the audience.
Here is another one.
No one enjoys watching aerial diarrhea.
We call aerial diarrhea what happens when a performer tries to fit all of the skills they know into a sequence and does each of them frantically with little regard for the purpose of the performance. Instead we have our performers focus on fully exploring much, much fewer skills and finding their own interpretation and expression of each movement within the skill. We encourage them to make the skills their own.
Have you ever noticed that an audience will almost always clap for easy skills, especially if they involve splits? But an audience won’t always clap for some sneaky transition that you spent months training. We think there are a few reasons for this:
A tricky transition or subtle strength move that you worked hard on could be lost on your audience for a few reasons.
There’s nothing right or wrong about clapping. Depending on the setting and the act, sometimes clapping mid-act is greatly inspiring and at others times it can be disruptive and annoying. But it’s good to know why people may be drawn to a certain movement, or not. Because if we can figure out what we are saying to our audience, then we’ll be able to say it better and get our point across!
When presenting performance sequences, we have a huge assortment of different exercises and projects for students to work on. Here are the key concepts on how we approach performance sequences.
This is one of the most important concepts we teach our performers. At first it may feel overly strict, but we expect our performers to be doing so much when they are in front of an audience that it becomes completely necessary. There are exceptions, like new skills that are really easy for a performer. And putting in one more challenging skill into your sequence can keep you inspired and improving! But we do expect our performers to practice until they can’t get it wrong, and building your sequence primarily out of skills that aren’t the hardest skills you know makes this so much easier and fun.
We don’t want our performers to move like they do in class. We want them to be emotive, expressive, creative, unique, stylish… we want them to be extra! It really helps narrow down the feel and energy of a performance sequence to always keep in mind one or two adjectives that describe the performance. We usually encourage students to use relatively simple adjectives. Adjectives like sad, happy, athletic, graceful, monstrous, sultry all work great.
Then, of course, each movement, each wrap or transition, each arm extension and hand grab should support the adjectives.
This means find all of the pausing moments, all of the places to experimentally move limbs without drastically changing supports, find out how to make the shape bigger and smaller, find all of the things the skill has to offer. This can be super challenging for students. Students are often told what to do and teachers always try to be clear and concise and now we are telling them to take the time and see what they can find on their own. Some students take to this right away and some get frustrated. Fully exploring a skill takes initiative. There is no one telling you exactly what to do and that can be daunting. But the big reason students sometimes get frustrated is exploring a skill is time consuming and takes a lot of energy.
This is groundbreaking for so many students! When you can teach your students where they can “rest”, they’ll suddenly have so much more endurance. And, a better understanding of how their supports work and how to best use their supports.
There is a fine balance between awakening students’ creative impulses and still keeping them safe. When working with more advanced aerialists we want them to learn which steps of a skill can be modified or eliminated without losing track of their supports and endangering their safety by asking them lots of open ended questions. When working with more beginner students, we will offer less leeway by asking less open-ended questions. Instead of “Where would you go from here?” we may ask something like “How could you create more support on your leg from here?”
Here are some other quick ideas to incorporate into performance sequences:
There is so much we cover when we teach our students to perform, we couldn’t possible cover it in a blog post. So keep your eye out for a future Choreo and Performance course.
Check out all of the articles we have on making aerial more fun and faster to learn. All of these concepts are a part of how we approach aerial and how we present our tutorials.
All of the tutorials in our Aerial Fit Online resource include these cross-references. Our website isn’t just a list of skills, rather it is set up exactly like our teachers’ brain. Everything is interconnected in a vast web of options and paths to help guide aerialists toward easier success with their goals.
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