The stage dancer does not have this difficulty with her voice, and if trained right while acquiring her art should never be subjected to the bugaboo of fear. But I am going to lay down some general rules here for the prevention and control of stage fright that will give you confidence and also serve to instruct you how to act if the worst does happen and nervousness gets the best of you. In chorus work, of course, there is little danger. Your mates will carry you along if you miss a step or break your routine, and you'll soon get back all right. In solo work, don't try to look at your audience nor single out any individuals. Don't glue your gaze on the orchestra leader, though he alone is the audience of which you have any right to be at all conscious. He and his baton are your friends and are giving you your tempo. Be aware of them incidentally but not conspicuously, and forget the rest of the folks in front entirely. Forget yourself, forget everything but the music that fills your ears, and let your dancing absorb you completely. Radiate an air of conscious certainty in all you do. Smile. Look happy. Your dance is a good one and you know how to do it Well. You know you do. Pretty soon a ripple of applause starts. It grows and fills that big half-dark place down there before you. That is a tonic. Your stage fright or your fear of it is gone for good. Your audience has accepted you. Now you glow with the happiness that is yours by every right. Applause is to you and your art as the shower and the sun are to the flowers. You live on it. Without it you are a failure.
Suppose you had let your fear master you. Suppose you had quit cold, got cold feet, let yourself be scared out of your wits, and not braved the thing you feared. That would have been a calamity. Your promising career would have ended before it began, after all your expenditure of time and money for lessons. Don't let anything scare you. Go on when your turn comes. Keep going. No matter what happens, don't give up—keep right on till you get your nerve back.
I saw a young singer come out in front of a large audience once, get her cue from the orchestra, and stop dead. She looked out over the crowded auditorium. The leader held his baton suspended in air. "Wait," she said. "I've forgotten it." The audience was dead silent, understanding just what had happened, and very sympathetic. The orchestra leader spoke a single word to her.
"Oh, yes!" she smiled, and her voice swelled out into the song she had so nearly forgotten.
Did she get a hand? I'll say she did, and a couple of encores and a press notice next morning that told all about it, and her career was launched. She had presence of mind and control of herself. Cultivate this by first gaining perfect control of every muscle in your body, by persistent practice of all of your dancing exercises, technique and dance routines; great confidence in your ability will come with this.
I am going to advise you to do as I have always done, and that is, write your routines down and keep them. Each has a name. Ask your instructor, he can tell you the name for every step. Write these routines in sequence, and remember each one. Go through each one every day, no matter how many you collect. The more of them you have the richer you are, for they are valuable. You will be a solo dancer one of these days and with this list you have you can make up your own routines,—take a step from this one and that one and build a new dance for yourself. After a year or two you'll find this easy to do, and it gives you a chance to work in your own personality. In writing down the routines in the first place, while still in the courses, as I have advised, you are helping yourself become fit, so fit and so familiar with your work that you couldn't get stage fright if you wanted to. So in doing this you are really accomplishing two very important things, enlarging your dance vocabulary and making yourself stage-fright proof.
Always go on the stage with the firm conviction that you are going to do well and make a hit. Say to yourself with deep feeling, "I shall do well tonight. I shall have a big success. Everything will go just as I want it to."
CLEO MAYFIELD