3 Simple Tips I Believe Help | Coping With Nerves When Performing

3 Simple Tips I Believe Help | Coping With Nerves When Performing 

Nerves about performing. Everyone gets nervous, it's a natural response. I can be a calm person but at the same time I can be a fairly nervous person too and tend worry a lot over the smallest of things. It's who I am and its always been my own way of coping since I was young: worry lots then find out that everything was fine and hey you survived. However I am learning to be calmer and not worry too much over things and this will improve as I get older. It will improve with time, with experience of multiple situations or surroundings and gain confidence from these experiences.

Same applies for nerves before a performance. I love to perform, despite the fact that I can get stressed easily, similarly to anyone else who would most likely feel nervous before going on stage or performing too. I have taken part in quite a few dance shows, school drama productions and even summer workshops finishing with a production after just five days. So here are my tips to make sure that nerves don't get the better of us.

I have struggled to concentrate with leaps in dance.
I just couldn't stop thinking about how to do it but the day
this was taken, I was calm and just thought go for it and I
managed this leap!  Photography
by Georgina Bradley

1.  Go for it. What I mean by this is just try your best, go for it and do what you need to to put on a great show or performance. You never know, you may perform even better than you did in the weeks of rehearsing leading up to the performance. I know I did. In rehearsals for my dance schools summer show, I was in the grande finale and had to do pirouettes when I had only been doing Pointe work for a few months. Pressure. I kept messing up in lessons or getting it one day and not the next. But on the night of the show when I had to do three pirouettes in the time space of roughly five seconds, remember to smile, bring my foot round to get to my finished position then run to the line before the fire works went off. You know what, I did it perfectly! :) When I went off stage my dance teacher told me that I was great and said well done. So go for it and try your best :) And it makes me glad I moved away in time before the Catherine wheels went off at the front stage. No joke they had these!
2. When performing don't over think things. It may appear odd me saying this but honestly, keep a cool head and do what you got to do. Over thinking will stress you out. This will put your concentration off. When I preformed in my old schools Christmas production I struggled with my lines. A lot of these lines were hard to get correct, it all for some reason jumbled up in my head. All the words seemed like tongue twisters. However, when I kept calm and didn't over think what I was meant to say, a few days before the performance I managed all my lines! Not easy when you're on stage pretty much the whole time, narrating the performance through your character. 
   
3. Have confidence in what your doing. I know you may be thinking "It's easy to say that but hard to have confidence" and I agree. Confidence isn't something that you develop over night, but you can help influence how long it takes. For me, getting stuck into different experiences such as being in productions helped and I would just think "Just do it otherwise you never know what could happen". For me personally, travelling to a college far away was another thing that built my confidence however unusual this may seem for confidence building. Having to get two buses there and back allowed me to feel confident in myself and become more independent. And if you struggle with confidence, I'm not saying the only way to raise confidence is to go to a college far away. No. I am proving my point that confidence will develop as you get older and as you experience more things. So basically just go for things you want to do, don't hold back because you're worried about peoples opinions or failure. The greatest inventors discovered things by not backing down. That's something worth
   remembering :) 

There you go. My small yet simple tips to help with nerves when performing. Once you hit the stage or the floor just go for it, don't hold back and this persistence to carry on without letting yourself feel nervous will help you when performing. Nerves are natural and they want to stay minimal in our life to be sure they don't affect our performance :) Hope this is useful information :) 

Happy dancing!

Yours truly,

Caris