ARE YOU JUST ANIMATED WALLPAPER?

The DANCER enters the audition room and having committed a ridiculous amount of hours each week refining their art form, learns the choreography for the audition and executes it with technical precision, demonstrating exactly what they are capable of.
The ACTOR enters a dance audition and having spent years training in the art of expressing themselves, has a jab at the choreography (maybe makes a few mistakes) but ultimately aims to show the audition panel who they are.
So who gets cast?… The DANCER who shows WHAT they are capable of, or the ACTOR who shows WHO they are?
The answer? Neither.
We’ve all heard of the term, TRIPLE THREAT; the person who is capable of being a great actor, singer and dancer all in one dynamite package. It sounds great, is quite an unrealistic standard for the majority of the industry who aren’t blessed with triple the talent.
Well, I have a theory. I think that separating acting from dance and singing is too limiting. Acting should be the foundational quality of a dancer and a singer, thus merging the triple abilities into two abilities – DANCER / SINGER – and acting is expected of both the dancer and the singer.
My main reason for coming to this conclusion is because I see so many talented dancers and singers who’s talent is deemed useless because they have no idea how to portray emotion or tell a story or, ACT!
We get told our whole dance-school lives to plaster on the eisteddfod smile… but where is the heart in that? Plastering on a smile does not create atmosphere, character or story – it merely develops sore cheek-bones and deeper motivation for despising eisteddfods.
The same goes for singers. You can be the greatest singer or dancer to ever have lived, but if you have no ability to act, you might as well give up. As BOB FOSSE once said, “Dancing without acting is nothing more than animated wallpaper.”
He was so right. So, take some FOSSE advice and go and get some acting lessons, and transform your ability from 2d wallpaper into the amazing art of dance.
Logging off.
Callum