The Genius Freeze

By Doug Shapiro

This one is for You with the big vision. You with the brilliant ideas of how to move forward in your career. You with the big picture of all of the possibilities. You that are so keenly aware of the multitude of possibilities that you choose to do none of them and defrost the freezer.

I'm sure you defrosted the freezer well.

I'm also sure that you weren't exactly fulfilling your destiny to bring emotional catharsis to an audience through your work at that moment.

Right now, your genius is freezing you up like that chilly appliance and it's time to transform those big ideas into tangible action. I'm not telling you to get your head out of the clouds. I'm encouraging you to embrace that dreamer, that Entrepreneur, and use them as a guide for focus.

An important conversation I have with my clients is about their core values. If you could choose just two that direct most of your choices, what would they be? Love? Family? Religion? Influence? Power? Money? Truth?

Once these two values have been named, you can start using them to guide your important decisions.

Example One:

You've chosen Family and Money for your core values.

You're offered a job with a popular theme park. Do you take it?

Look to your values:

Family: Many families save up for ten years in order to be able to experience this one special day together and you have the honor and privilege to bring them a fresh and joyful experience six times a day.

Money: Theme Park usually pays better than a summer-stock job.

Take the job!

Example Two:

You've chosen Religion and Influence as your core values.

You're offered an audition for a high-profile Guns-n-Glory film. Do you take it?

Look to your values:

Religion: There's that whole "Thou Shalt Not Kill" thing and the script is glorifying violence.

Influence: You strive to be a role model for kids through your actions.

This job is not for you. Take a deep breath and, because influence is important to you, recommend a talented friend who will thrive in that job. Then you both come out looking good.

Another tool in using your Entrepreneur to guide your action choices is to create a very specific 20-year goal, then use that vision to gauge whether or not a current action will be likely to lead you there.

Example:

Your long-term vision is, "I am the go-to dramatic movie character actor for complete transformation. I bring fantastic 'Aha!' moments to my audiences when they realize I'm the same actor in this film that played such a wildly different character in that other film. I have homes in both Los Angeles and Brooklyn with a supportive spouse that travels with me."

Today you have some money set aside and three excellent classes, highly recommended by friends, have been presented to you:

• Music Theater audition class
• Dialect workshop
• On-camera commercial class

Which of these classes is most likely to successfully move you towards that varied dramatic movie career? My money would be on the dialects class.

So, Savvy Actor, what is your long-term vision? What values burn so strongly in you that there is no choice but to bring your work to the masses? There are many paths on the road to success, so rather than succumb to "Genius Freeze, " let your values and vision be your guide towards action.

Now choose.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Doug_Shapiro

Why Should You Bother With Vocal Warm Ups?

By Tony OHora

Do I Really Need To Do Vocal Warmups?

In short - Yes! There are well over 100 muscles that contribute to the function of the human voice - and possibly more if you are overdoing it. Gentle warmups in the form of physical stretches and low energy vocalising help to get the blood flowing and supply those muscles with the necessary oxygen to function at their most efficient. Just think about it - if you were an athlete (and I'm not saying you're not) picture the scene as you prepare for the Olympic final of the 100 metre dash. You wouldn't even consider casually positioning yourself in the starting blocks after having had a good sit down to get yourself ready would you? The same applies for the voice. No matter how long the forthcoming performance is going to last, whether it's just one song or a 90 minute set, you need to do your vocal warm up exercises.

How much is enough?

Ideally, you want to just get all of the vocal components to experience a bit of motion and interaction. So, some light stretching of the body should get the skeletal muscular system awake, gentle neck rolls and funny face pulling in the form of exaggerated mouth opening and closing accompanied by some jaw extensions should help to limber up the facial and neck muscles. Sticking your tongue out and waggling it about a bit will help release any tension there also. Personally, I like to do a few jumping jacks (or star jumps) right before going onstage just to get the overall energy level up - it can be useful to get the heart rate going as this helps with any onset of adrenaline or nerves. Vocal warm ups can consist of some gentle humming, sirening and short, quick scales in the comfort of your range. Once again, we are just looking to link up the interaction of the muscles and get the breath flowing.

If time is an issue (which it often is) then a simple 10 minute vocal workout will be sufficient. I have broken this down into a suggested format at the end of this article.

I want to save my good notes!

I often hear this cop out from singers who 'don't want to waste any of my good notes by doing vocal warm ups!' This really does make me chuckle. Firstly, it's a really bad mental approach to think that some of your notes are only available on some subscription or credit system and that you must save them until you absolutely need them. This is the speaking equivalent of not being able to be polite in the evening because you've used up all of your pleases and thank yous earlier in the day. The result of this approach is that the audience gets to hear you do your vocal warmups throughout the first few songs of your performance. Please heed my advice, take the time to do them in private before you go on stage.

Often, time or available space is a limiting factor when it comes to warming up. It can be a bit embarrassing to be heard making strange mating call sounds in the props cupboard or in the support band's trailer! Lose your inhibitions when it comes to this issue. You are going to do your vocal warmups and you don't care who hears you.

Ideally, you want to carry out your warm up routine inside the 30 minute window prior to your performance. If that's not going to be possible at a particular gig then try to plan some kind of vocal practice session into your day. Believe me, you will feel the benefits later.

What Vocal Warm Up Exercises Should I Do?

Remember, the goal of of warming up the voice is simply to get blood flowing to the muscles and to link up the various mechanisms. All of the vocal exercises should be carried out in a gentle manner - try to get into the sensation of what I call 'happy singing'. You know, when you are (unusually) in a great mood, strolling along and your voice is just humming freely much to the joy of passers-by... (I hope that I'm not alone in this)

10 Minute Vocal Warm Up Schedule

Stretching - 2 minutes

Breathing - 2 minutes

Sirens - 3 minutes

Quick scales - 3 minutes

My next article will contain the specific vocal warm ups you need to do

For information about online singing lessons please visit: http://www.vocalpower.co.uk/vocal-lessons-online/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tony_OHora

Ballet Is An Art Not A Contest

By Matthew Reinschmidt

For some years now there has been gathering attention and even some degree of notoriety surrounding the biggest Ballet competitions such as Youth American Grand Prix (YAGP) and the International Ballet Competition (IBC) which at first might seem like a good thing - to coin a Hollywood phrase, 'the only thing worse than bad (or inaccurate) publicity is no publicity'. But there is something else at stake here and it is no small thing.

Along with this seeming upward trend of publicity for Ballet because of YAGP and IBC and other competitive dance shows and contests, there has been a precipitous decline and even removal of arts education from public and even many private schools. On the face of it these two seem unrelated except that the average age of a competitor at the major Ballet competitions - 14 - is precisely the same age as the students in middle school and high school who are stepping off into the void of no education as to what the arts are, no application of how to practice any of them for their original intent (which is creativity not prize winning) and this comes on the heels of an elementary experience which for nearly all students, including anyone participating in YAGP or IBC, etc., which has shown a scary fall off in creative thinking and imagination development during the elementary education process.

Those of us who are priviledged to work in Arts and Ballet are all aware of these trends among child through youth aged students. Unfortunately, including the people who run YAGP and the IBC and all those TV dance competition shows and so forth, there has been a major move to turn the arts into some kind of contest sport for the sake of ratings. Exactly what this is supposed to do or who this is supposed to benefit is very unclear because other than the TV channels who air these programs and the organizational bodies of the YAGP and the IBC making money off of the very high fees charged for these events and advertising revenue, the art form of Ballet receives nothing in return but a warping and even a deliberate manipulation into a vehicle to create revenue for the sake of creating revenue instead of the real purpose of the arts: to explore the human condition, to present new ideas and concepts, and to tell compelling stories. Who wants to grow up and train for 10+ years as an artist to be an profitable property for a TV station to sell ads by - with little to none of that money coming to you? Who wants to grow up and train for 10+ years as an artist to spend $4,000 or more each year in competition fees to the YAGP for the sake of possibly getting a professional contract when you can still now, and always in the past did that by first becoming a good dancer in a competent ballet program then auditioning directly for a professional company?

Professional companies still do almost all their hiring by the live audition. So, for any student wishing to be employed by Boston Ballet or Houston Ballet or Pacific Northwest Ballet, the YAGP and IBC are utterly NOT essential. Somehow a hood has been pulled over everyone's eyes such that people think if they spend thousands and thousands of extra dollars doing YAGP, IBC or other competitions that their student will somehow be put in a great position to be hired by a professional company - that is just flat out wrong. What has happened is a distortion of the art form of ballet into somekind of contest sport where the end-all-be-all is the quest for awesome technique. That sort of pursuit is neat but nearly useless should you wish to make a compelling Juliet or a tragic Giselle. Especially considering that nearly all of those 14 year olds who achieve robotic perfection in their technique will burn out and be done with ballet before they even graduate high school rendering all that effort useless to the future of ballet, but very lucrative to the organizers of the YAGP, the IBC, and so forth.

Ballet has always been an art form where a longer career span can be possible - women can viably perform into their early 40's, men into their mid-30's - as opposed to Gymnastics wherein there is almost no such thing as a 20 year old Olympian, usually not even an 18 year old Olympian due to the ultra high, severely traumatic injury rate. But now, as more and more of these YAGP type competition circles run on, a nearly equivalent equally bothersome attrition among young dancers will occur only instead of lifelong crippling injuries they simply quit the art form due to burnout. But not before shelling out tons of cash.

Obviously competition itself is a healthy thing and for sure Ballet is VERY competitive already simply because you have thousands of dancers all over the world constantly seeking to get into the best dozen or so ballet companies and from there that level of competition continues right on down to regional professional ballet companies Milwaukee Ballet or Tulsa Ballet. So there never was any lack of competitiveness in Ballet to begin with - in fact, far from it. But now, over and above that type of healthy competition that makes people want to improve their technique in order to get into the company they like as a professional dancer, the contest sport type of competition has been wedged into ballet the only purpose of which can be to make money for the organizers - those types of competitions do not help the art form advance at all (due to that high burn out rate among young contestants), and they are utterly unnecessary for anyone who wants to pursue professional dance work.

It would be truly helpful to Ballet and the Arts if the organizers of the YAGP, the IBC, and other competitions would realize the golden opportunity they have to reinvigorate the sensibility and enjoyment of the performing arts as something other than a mere vehicle for someone else's judgement as to who wins blue ribbons, something more intuitive than a contest sport, and as something other than a means for the organizers to score very large sums of money through endless types of competition fees. Or, let's put it in another way: a ballet dancer is someone who must first enjoy the artistic, creative process because that is what the art is still built upon, and is someone who also enjoys pursuing their own technique not just for mechanical perfection like 7 pirouettes, but emotional conveyance, story telling, and being interesting to watch while working on stage. These competitions do exactly what George Lucas so prophetically warned about concerning his own work with Star Wars: "... a special effect by itself is uninteresting without a compelling story to go with it."

Pirouettes and saut de basques are awesome special effects but they are not nearly enough by themselves to make Ballet compelling as an art form. If this focus on contest sport continues unabated then we will have lots of Jedi-like 14 year olds in Ballet who burn out and quit long before they are mature enough to tell compelling stories, and that would be a real, profound shame and a stunning waste of money, time and effort.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Matthew_Reinschmidt