Understudying: From An ENB First Soloist
Dear dancers and parents,
This week, the dancer I've been coaching the longest — since she was 12 years old! — is sharing what she has learned about understudying. Julia Conway is a First Solist with the English National Ballet Company. She joined the company in 2017 and has moved up through the ranks, being promoted every two years or less. (You can read more about her here.)
If you have ever found yourself wondering how to approach understudying in a better way, read what Julia has to say; I think you'll learn a lot. Enjoy!
Hello, I’m Julia Conway. I’m a first soloist with English National Ballet. I want to share with you something that has proven to be a constant in my career: Understudying.
Many of my major opportunities have been a result of understudying - ballets where I was not originally cast but found myself onstage in costume and makeup before the curtain went up. From Bluebird in my first season to Gulnare in Le Corsaire, Clara/Sugarplum in the Nutcracker, Raymonda, and just a couple of months ago the principal role in Theme and Variations.
Dancing these roles has been some of my best experiences onstage and I’m very grateful to have been given the chance. But despite this, I’ll be honest, understanding is very difficult! Both physically and mentally, it puts you in a place of uncertainty: balancing two different possibilities of either stepping into the role or staying on the sidelines. If you are a control freak like me, this is a nightmare!
I have often asked myself the question, ‘How attached should I become to this role?’ I am a sensitive person and I try to protect myself from disappointment. This is dangerous as it can lead to hiding in the back and feeling defeated when no longer called to rehearsals. I naturally tend to shield my ego by telling myself that it’s better not to waste my time on a role I will not perform.
This is the wrong approach.
When you act this way, you may as well not even be understudying the role! You are cheating yourself out of everything you can gain by being present and engaged. To stay actively engaged in the process, I stop focusing on the fact that I’m “only the understudy” and think about how learning this role will improve my dancing. Maybe it makes me work on a step that I find difficult or shows me the importance of artistry alongside the technique. Just by being in the room with experienced dancers and coaches, I will most likely hear new corrections and interpretations that I can apply to myself.
If you try this approach, this newfound knowledge will ensure that you are prepared if you need to step into the role; even if you don’t end up performing it, look at what you just added to your hypothetical tool belt! You can carry what you learned into your classwork and other roles and maybe you will even be cast the next time the ballet comes around.
With this mindset, understudying is a win-win! No matter the outcome, you have grown and learned new skills.
The final bit of advice I would like to give you is to stay prepared right up until the end of the process. Just recently I made the mistake of thinking it was all over when we got to the theatre week. I ended up performing a principal role with four hours' notice! I didn’t have good pointe shoes and I was an emotional mess.
That experience has taught me a valuable lesson: that anything can happen and when you are ready for it, you will save yourself a lot of trouble. Like the famous saying, ‘The show must go on.' It couldn’t be more true.
Can you imagine having to perform a principal role with four hours' notice?!?! Talk about stressful. But Julia did it. In part, because she's a professional and she has had to step into many roles on short notice, and also because her mental fitness is off the charts (even if she says she was a mess!)
If you want to build your mental fitness skills around being an understudy or anything else you find challenging right now, you can also work with me, just like Julia. It's easy peasy to get started: just set up a free phone call to meet each other and see how my work might help you. Feel free to schedule it here.
Merde to all of you with winter performances!
Elizabeth
