Monday, September 24, 2012

Developing Great Stage Presence

Developing great stage presence mostly comes with years of experience performing in front of an audience. 

As I will say here and a million more times practice is what will give you confidence and confidence leads to a great stage persona. 

One of the best things you can do to develop stage presence is to watch and study belly dancers that exude stage presence. Here are some to watch: Delilah, Dalia Carella, Amaya, Katia and Alexandra King.  

You'll notice that they can make the most simple moves so amazingly interesting!  You'll also notice it is their personality shining through their performance.  

And this is one exercise you can work on... get your personality to show up in your performance. 

Practice "moods" for performances.  Dynamic, shy, silly, seductive, aloof, charming, outrageous,,, you get the idea.  Be sure to practice in front of a mirror or tape yourself.  Often times you can practice a mood and find out it's not translating to what you thing it is. You don't want your audience to misinterpret your mood. 

Be careful about that sexy or seductive look, often it just looks like you are pissed off.  Practice that look in a mirror. 

In all performances - smile!  Unless of course you're doing a specific theater piece where it would break character.  You can't beat your million dollar smile!

I would highly recommend Star Power with Amaya DVD to help with your stage presence.  Click Here to check it out. 


I'll write more about stage presence, as it is one of main factors to becoming a star in belly dance. 
Delilah defines great stage presence
Photo from the 2nd Awards of Belly Dance

4 comments:

Hadia said...

It is important to have stage presence because the show will ruin for just that important thing. I'm an oriental dance artist and I'm teaching classes in belly dancing.

Nyla Crystal said...

I absolutely agree with you. The most enjoyable performances I have seen are full of stage presence. Just last month I took a workshop with Raqia Hassan and I was impressed how quickly she could go from telling a funny story, to showing tortured emotion in a dance combination, and back to joking around. Belly dancers who struggle with stage presence should take classes not only in technique, but also in acting.

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