©2022 Alicia Dara
After high school I got accepted to a New York conservatory with a program that trained young singers, dancers and actors for Broadway. But although it was an honor to be there, I truly loved pop music and secretly started writing my own songs. Working on musical theater pieces made me feel like an impostor, but I was determined to finish the entire program. I loved learning from our teachers, most of whom were veteran Broadway performers. The best ones knew things about life that I couldn’t get from movies, books, or anyone else I knew.
Of all the teachers I encountered in school, the one who stands out most in my mind is a red-headed dance teacher named Claudia*. By the time she came to work with us she was almost 40, and had already had a fantastic career. She’d been in countless shows as a featured performer, but she was primarily known for being one of Liza Minelli’s regular back-up dancers. Claudia was tall and thin, almost wiry, but she had an explosive grace that she would unleash when you least expected it, lunging and pirouetting like a powerful swan. As a teacher, she wasn’t big on compliments. She was more focused on making sure that each of us learned the choreography correctly, and could perform it convincingly without injuring ourselves. Yet we adored her, because she was infinitely patient and wise.
For someone with such a distinguished Broadway pedigree, Claudia didn’t talk much about her background, or the things she learned during her time onstage with Liza. But one afternoon during Jazz class, I made a huge mistake in front of the entire class that prompted her to drop a powerful life lesson that I still use every day with my clients.
We were working on a complicated dance scene from “All That Jazz”, and as the tallest girl I was all the way in the back of the group, behind everyone else. I’ve never been a great dancer, so that was OK with me, but my height meant that there was nowhere to hide if I made a mistake. The stage was very small, and the choreography required “big arms and legs”, which meant that we had to be extra-careful about placement of our limbs so that we didn’t whack or kick each other during the scene.
We spent all day learning the steps until we each knew our parts. Then we tried the whole scene “half-time”, which means at half the actual speed of the music, and it went fine. But once we sped up to real time, everything got twisted, especially me! Somehow I lost count of my steps and my position, and ended up in the very center of the group with everyone’s arms and legs crossing and whirring in front of me. I froze completely, hoping that the floor would open up and swallow me whole. Right then I heard Claudia mercifully call out, “CUT!”. She told us to take a break, and gathered us around her.
“Look,” she told us, “this is going to happen to all of you at some point in your stage career: you know the steps and you start out fine, but something goes wrong, you end up in the wrong place, and you get completely stuck, just like Alicia was.” I was so glad she didn’t make fun of me, and even let me keep some dignity. “Just remember,” she continued, “if you freeze up it’s game over. The scene has to go on, and so does the show. When we make a big mistake we get embarrassed, and then we start praying for magical help, as if a helicopter is going to fly in and lift us up and out of the scene. But here’s the thing: you don’t need a way out. You need a way through.”
Claudia ordered us back onstage, exactly as we had just been, and took my position in the group, right in the very center. She started the scene again, and demonstrated how to improvise movements and steps that quickly got her back in the right position. She used her vast knowledge of dance to move herself through, and everyone finished the scene perfectly. It was amazing!
I’ve never forgotten Claudia’s example, because it applies to so many situations that come up in our career. Don’t get me wrong: there are times when we actually DO need to leave a bad situation (for example: you should never put up with being abused, harassed, or demeaned in your workplace!). But sometimes, if we’ve made a big work mistake or had a failure of some kind, we can feel powerless and long for rescue. That’s when I remind my clients to use what they know, and get help with what they don’t. Each of us has a unique set of skills, knowledge and wisdom that we are constantly adding to and drawing from. Our ability to articulate these things when we get in a jam is a Power Skill, one that should be actively cultivated. Freezing up will get you nowhere! If you can rally your confidence and speak up for yourself when you're under pressure, you can move through whatever situation may come your way.
Finding your Power Voice can help you articulate your skills, knowledge and wisdom so you can take a big leap forward in your career. Click around my website for my private packages and group trainings, or email me for more info: alicia@aliciadara.com
(BTW: my teacher’s name was Claudia Asbury, and the New York Times once did a profile of her which you can read right HERE.)