Me? Performer? - Thursday, April 2, 2009

It's not natural for me to be a performer. That's what is holding back some of my belly dance skills and performances. I'm learning... and I'm getting better at it...

I have more intensity when I dance, especially if I dance darkly. But, as my lovely belly dance critique (aka the hubby) pointed out, I need to practice having intensity in ALL that I do, whether it's dark or not. When he said that, I started saying that I should practice having intensity even for nice emotions like joy and all but he firmly said that it should be in EVERYTHING... I see his point: being too precise put me in that conundrum in the first place. lol

But I'm still holding back...

One thing that has me puzzled is that I can be very extremist when I teach. I put on a show, a kind of performance in a way. I am myself but exaggerated for my students. And it works, of course. But I'm struggling to even do that type of intensity on stage. I realized today that part of the fear is b/c, in teaching, it's easy to re-adjust if you something flopped... I mean, if I make a joke and it's a total dud, I can quickly change the topic or modify the approach or whatnot. When I perform, it's harder to adjust b/c, once it starts, it's going... and it's hard to re-adjust. Mind you, I've never had to re-adjust... I've never had a 'dud'... so I don't know what I'm afraid of...

Heck, I was about to write that I should go nuts on stage or something to get the jitters out but, in one of the last dark fusion performances, I actually portrayed being scared and I have pics to prove that I did manage to get the emotion across.

I think that part of the issue, as I’ve stated earlier, is that I’m just not a natural performer. Thankfully, that’s getting better with time. I’m also naturally very shy. Most people wouldn’t guess it now but, for a looooooooong time, I would be the quiet wallflower, observing everything. For the past 10+ years, I’ve been increasingly less shy and more vocal about opinions and thoughts. I guess that, after observing carefully, I can now have my own voice. And I guess that’s the area where my shyness is still around: performances. It’s mostly performances on stage, actually. Dancing at the restaurant is fine.

All I have to do is continue working on it, stop worrying about the 20million things that pop in my head, and just dance! ;)