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Greater focus for performancesDate: March 17, 2013 by Bruce Rockwell  Views: 753
One area of improvement for my program - and my own skill set as director - is in getting a better performance mindset instilled in the kids. I've made major strides in this area in a short time, at least now all of the kids are showing up because they're excited about the programs and the music they are performing. When I got there, a good 10-20% of the students wouldn't even show up for concerts! The kids now are obviously having a lot of fun, and that much is good. But the choir room and practice rooms just before and during the concerts are still awfully chaotic and loud. A lot of kids are texting, goofing off, laughing, etc. In my effort to amp up their excitement level about performing I haven't wanted to come down on them about being more focused and serious.
My questions, then:
What should my expectations be for high school students with respect to the collective mood backstage during concerts? How would you describe what the mood is with the best choirs when they are about to perform? What sorts of things do you do with your choirs to get them into a focused mindset conducive to bringing out the best performance they are capable of? Do you do any special activities beyond warm-ups (pep talks, group traditions, rituals, circle activities, etc.) the evening of a performance?
Cairril Adaire on March 18, 2013 8:06am
When I was in school, we always did a prayer circle, but that doesn't fly nowadays (and rightly so)!
With my current ensemble, we do a "golden thread" visualization where the bright gold thread starts in the earth, comes up our bodies, and then flows out of our hearts and our mouths, linking us together in a circle. We visualize singing with that thread always there so we are connected to each other.
I suspect that's too woo-woo for your kids. ;-)
The other thing we do is the Kaia cheer -- we put our hands down in the circle and then as we raise them we yell, "Goooo, Kaia!" It's a fun way to take the serious focus of Golden Thread and psyche us up for the performance.
We always start our warm-ups in a circle in a unison. "Take a breath before you need to" I always say, so the tone stays good and pure and we maintain a true unison. It's an opportunity to get fully present and put aside the jangling thoughts about errands or laundry or family arguments. We then move into some simple chord progressions before doing scales. Then back to chords to remind ourselves of how good we sound when we're fully engaged and singing our parts together.
Oh, another thought -- one of my voice teachers walked me through a visualization where I thought of a time where I was really enjoying singing. I remembered a time where I really felt at one with the world. He had me make it very vivid in my mind, and then had me associate a word with it. My memory was from a time when I was walking towards a huge white horse carved into a chalk hill in England, so my phrase was "white horse." Now whenever I perform I just say, "white horse" before I go on and it reminds me to feel good and loose. Something like that, but more playful, might work with your kids. Good luck!
on March 19, 2013 4:41am
The boistrousness could well be a sign that the adrenaline is starting to flow and in that sense indicates a readiness for action. As you say, though, the problem is that it is chaotic - the energy is splashing around in all directions rather than being focused for use in performance. There is a certain tone of voice I hear in my adult women's choir just before performance that signals a similar state - they 'goof off' a little less than your kids do, but there's still an excitement in there that left uncontrolled can prove distracting rather than helpful.
I've written a bit about adrenaline and the voice, which might be helpful:
But I think the key thing will be starting the preparation well in advance, getting the students primed to know that performance day is special, that they will feel an amazing level of energy just before, but that as a choir you get the best performances by harnessing and using that energy to perform rather than being noisy in advance. You can then develop a set of exercises (both vocal/warm-up types and visualisation ones) that everyone learns in advance to use as their pre-performance rituals. It's good for the confidence too, as everyone has a common idea that if we do these things together in this way, we will produce the best performance possible.
Prayer circles don't work so much in terms of content in school contexts these days, but they do provide a good model for performance preparation: quiet, focused, dedicated attention to something held in common and believed to be of the utmost importance.
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