The Dance (Musical Auditions)

When auditioning for musicals, more is involved than just learning a song; you also have to perform a choreographed dance. Usually, the dances are designed by the show's choreographer, so you do not need to come with a dance prepared. While you may not always need to learn your own dance, though, you still have to make sure you are ready to perform a rigorous physical activity. Dance is an important part of musical auditions, but since you have no knowledge of the actual dance until auditions have started, it can be difficult to prepare.

The most useful way to immediately prepare for the dance portion of an audition is to do some stretches before the actual dance. Stretching helps to loosen the muscles that will be used during the dance, so that your limbs bend and extend farther and easier. Another form of preparation, which takes much more planning, is to practice dancing beyond the audition. If you can get into a dancing class, or just find a group of people who enjoy dancing, you will be much more prepared. Dancing classes may be more involved than the average auditioning student can afford, however. Should classes be too inconvenient, and stretching insufficient, you can also examine the dances performed in previous performances of the relevant musical (Joosten, 2010). While your performance will not use the same moves (hopefully), it still helps to see what style of dance to expect. If you would like to read more about dancing for auditions, Michael Joosten covers what has just been said, and much more, in the book Dance and Choreography.

Also, just because you aren't a professional dancer doesn't mean you can’t audition for musicals. A musical calls for actors of all talents, so even if you feel that your dancing skill is sub-par, you can still be cast. An example of this comes from one of my personal experiences. I auditioned for two musicals a couple of years ago, and despite an unimpressive dancing performance, I was cast as a dancer in both shows. I also was cast as a non-dancing character in another musical, despite the show having many dance numbers. You should always be willing to audition for a musical, even when that musical requires talents that you feel you don’t have.

Citation: Joosten, M. (2010). Dance and choreography. (1st ed.). New York, NY: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Gumx-mkjp4QC&oi=fnd&pg=PA4&dq=musical auditions dance&ots=XaNh_3kaAd&sig=z72vwvZ993g2pLtbN_NGJYKQad8