INTRODUCTION
At the start of first year, I had been self taught and had a limited understanding of technique within acting though song, stylised singing, and dancing. I took a strong liking to the Golden Age style and techniques associated with it and This will include my development in acting through song to display my acting skills in “is’nt this a lovely day” from Irving Berlins “Top Hat” (1935), vibrato and legit singing technique in “Younger than Springtime” from Rodgers and Hammerstine’s “South Pacific” (1951) and Cole Porters “Easy to Love” from “Anything goes” (1934), and my tap technique with timesteps. I am going to use Rolfe’s “What, so What, now What” (2001) reflection model throughout this portfolio why analysing my progress.
TAP DANCE
At the start of the year, tap dance was a style of dance I had never been exposed to and the volume of the style made it difficult to learn and develop. Developing tap dancing is crucial skill for my professional career as in the future I wish to work in Golden Age musicals and tap is common in a lot of musicals from this time period, including one of my dreams shows, Top Hat. Top Hat consists of numerous high energy Tap numbers for the ensemble and the male lead which require high stamina and developed tap dancing skill. Attached is a snippet of the musical number “Puttin’ on the Ritz” (Irving Berlin, 1935) from Top Hat.
The attached document displays my early attempts at the first time step I was taught. I made multiple mistakes while practising. Firstly, at 0:01 while shuffling my ankle is flexed and stiffened. It is possible to shuffle with a flexed foot but it increases the risk of injury due to the pressure on the ankle striking the floor and it would prevent me from increasing my speed to reach the high energy style of dance in the attachment above.
Next, at 0:05 I am not fully committing to transferring my weight to my other foot when hopping. Not fully committing my weight will reduce the speed I can dance at as I will spend more time attempting to regain my balance which forces me out of time. This would also prevent me from developing the timestep into doubles and triples because if my weight is not on the right foot it will prevent me from adding the extra flaps and shuffles.
Finally, throughout the entire video my arms are kept up by my side and are tense. This is a bad habit which caused my whole body to be tense. My whole body needs to be relaxed and my core needs to be engaged to increase the speed and to make the dances feel more smooth.
Following this lesson, I aimed to tackle the flexed feet and relaxation of my body issue as it was most likely to lead to injury. I took some stretches from my dance and conditioning lessons, with a focus on my ankles and hips, and created a stretching routine which aimed to stretch and then relax my joint to improve not only my flexibility but to increase their strength. This impacted my Tap Dance because the increased strength in my joints allowed me to feel more comfortable when chancing my weight placement. The increased flexibility in my ankles also impacted my tap dance as my shuffle became more consistent and the tension in my body disappeared when dancing. I also began to practice tap dance for half an hour every weekend to prevent my body from tensing up so my body would get comfortable in this style allowing me to relax my upper body. This allowed me to increase my speed more and feel more confident in weight placement.
The document on the left displays the effect these changes had. At 0:02 seconds, my arms are no longer in one fixed position which allowed me to relax my back to reduce the tension in my body allowing for a more effortless look when dancing. At 0:04 seconds, I manage to do a clear triple timestep by adding an extra shuffle. Originally, this would not have been possible as my foot needed to be completely relaxed to create the pullback sound. The additional stretching removed the tension in my ankle allowing me to gain more speed and place more taps into the timestep. At 0:06 seconds, I land the hop on the balls of my feet. this would not have been possible beforehand because I was not fully committing my weight onto the other foot as I did not have the flexibility or joint strength to confidently commit my weight. After adding the stretching, my ankle joints have become a lot more elastic and stronger allowing me to shift my body weight with more ease allowing me to increase the speed when tapping.
In the future, I will continue to stretch and strengthen my hip and ankle joints so I can continue to increase my speed when dancing. By investing some more time and increasing the difficulty once it gets easier, it will allow me to start developing more tricks and more difficult tap moves such as pull-backs and wings. Furthermore, I will also continue to practice tap dance for a minimum of 30 minutes on weekends and throughout summer I will practice 30 minutes a day so I do not loose the skills I have developed in my first year.
LEGIT SINGING
Being self taught I had never been exposed to legit singing training before and did not know how to tackle developing it. A strong legit singing technique is required for my professional career as I aspire to be in more Golden Age style shows as I believe they are more well suited for me and I enjoy them a lot more. An example of a musical which requires a strong legit voice is Rodgers and Hammersteins South Pacific as it was composed in the height of the Golden Age, its defined by its strong use of vibrato and the legit style. Attached below is a live clip of Younger than Springtime from South Pacific demonstrating this vocal technique. A strong legit is also required for a strong contemporary voice as it builds a strong foundation for vocal health and healthy technique with belting and breath control. This idea is reinforced by professional singing teacher Meta Powell as she states “someone serious about training classically to get the ultimate efficiency in their voice would benefit the most.” (Powell, 2014).
Attached is an audio clip of my first attempts of singing in a legit style to the song Easy to Love. This song is less legit sounding but was used to assist in slowly developing my legit tone. Multiple mistakes were made in this audio. At 0:07 I hold a high note on the word “I’m” and my throat is closed off. This is an unhealthy habit to have as it led to me straining my neck and tightening my vocal folds making it difficult for air to pass through preventing me from sustaining higher notes.
At 0:23, I sustain another high note on the word “Hear” and am not using any vibrato which needs to be used in this song as vibrato is required feature in golden age musicals as it is one of its most defining traits as it is featured in almost every ballad in this era.
After, the first thing I chose to develop was my airflow. I started doing more vocal exercises given to me by my teacher specifically focusing on increasing airflow through my vocal folds and relaxing and tightening my core when singing. Attached is my notes on different vocal exercises I used. I did these exercises for 10 minutes every day to build up the habit of allowing myself to relax at the ending phrases to let more air into my lungs in a natural way which prevented me from straining my neck while singing. These vocal exercises concentrated on the activation and relaxation of my core while singing to encourage me to relax my body while singing. This would allow me to increase more airflow making the higher notes come out with more ease without straining my neck. I also changed the vowel I was singing the note on which made the note come out a lot stronger and with more ease. Changing the vowel made me strain my neck less and further allowed me to relax into the notes, preventing me from damaging my vocal folds while singing while also letting me develop my vibrato.
I the tackled my lack of vibrato issue. My singing teacher gave me some exercises to use to develop my vibrato. This can also be seen on the attached document where “Ghost Noises” is mentioned. I incorporated this exercise into my vocal warmups so that I could practice singing with vibrato in all the songs is was working on. I did this because I wanted vibrato to feel become a habit I had more control over which overall gives me more control over my voice. This also increases the strength of my TA and CT muscles allowing me to hold notes longer and with a lot less effort making me able to sing longer.
Attached is audio of me singing Younger than Springtime. At 0:15, I hold a small high note with more confidence and ease. This would not have been possible before as I struggled to relax more core while singing preventing airflow from easily passing. After doing the exercises, the activation and relaxation of my core became easier allowing more airflow, decreasing the strain on my neck allowing for higher notes to be hit with more ease. Also, I used an “Ah” vowel to open my vocal folds more to create a heavier legit sound which also made the note come out a lot easier which created a warmer sound the song requires. At 0:17 to the end, my vibrato is now stronger after implementing the exercises. Before, this would not have been possible because of the lack of strength in my CT and TA muscles. Through doing the vibrato exercise, they have gotten stronger allowing me to control my vibrato more and sustain it for a longer period of time.
In future, I am going to continue to use these exercises in my warmups so that I do not forget the basics with technique as I am prone to forgetting them. By doing this, my vocal strength will increase at a faster rate as I will always be familiar with the basics of vocal technique meaning I wont have to constantly recap them allowing me to learn more advanced material. This is crucial as I need the vocal stamina and strength to perform 8 shows a week consistently and by maintaining strong vocal health, it will make this a lot more manageable.
ACTING THROUGH SONG
I had never been exposed to acting techniques before my training started and the wide variety of them was overwhelming at first. Acting choices can change heavily depending on the style of the music, the time period and the objective of the piece and a developed understanding of which choices to make is required to make a strong and convincing performance as a character. Male characters in golden age musicals commonly have charismatic and traditionally masculine traits due to the time period when it was written and being able to embody these traits while acting is crucial to make me more employable in Golden Age productions.
Attached is a short clip of performing isn’t it a lovely day from Irving Berlins Top Hat. Numerous acting choices are questionable in this performance. At 0:01 seconds in, my posture is not correct for the style of song. This is a romantic ballad sang to the love interest of the show and the song requires confident, masculine posture. In the video I am seen swaying and not standing confidently in one position and it makes my portrayal of the character weak and uninterested in the scene leading to an uninteresting and unconvincing performance.
At 0:10, my head is looking upwards and I have no expression in my face. I did not have an understanding of the character I was playing, what his objectives and current situation was in this song. This led to the lack of emotion and clueless looking around in the performance. This makes the image of the character I am playing unclear to the audience and does not convey the love and romantic imagery of the song making it uninteresting to the audience.
After, I developed it in my own time using numerous techniques I learned in performance project and Acting movement lectures. The “Laban Efforts” (Laban, 1971) and Uta Hagens “9 Questions” (1973). Using the 9 Questions technique which involves answering the following 9 questions regarding the scene:
- “Who am I” (1973)
- “What time is it” (1973)
- “Where am I” (1973)
- “What surrounds me” (1973)
- “What are the given circumstances” (1973)
- “What are my relationships” (1973)
- “What is my objective” (1973)
- “What is in my obstacle” (1973)
- “How do I get what I want” (1973)
Attached is my answers to the 9 Questions. This technique is very effective for me as it allows me to fully understand what the characters objectives are and how to get them while working around the obstacles. “Jerry Travers” (Berlin, 1935) is a confident and charming character and by understanding that his objective in this scene is to charm Dale Tremont, the love interest, it would dramatically alter my movement choices and what words I emphasise while singing. This altered my performance of the song as it gave me more information on stage to play with leading me to make bigger acting choices creating the confident Golden Age male lead role I am aiming for. One of the notes I got was that my body was far too tense while performing and that I need to relax and move my body more. I used the Laban efforts to address this. This technique attaches verbs to different movement qualities and provides me with a clearer image as to how the character moves and physically behaves on stage. Looking into the character of Jerry Travers his charming personality and his background as a dancer led me to believe he has a “Gliding” (Laban, 1971) movement style because of his confident leading man posture and walk. This altered my performance as it encouraged me to move around the space more giving me more acting choices I can make as I have more room.
Attached is my performance after making these changes. Throughout the video, my objective to charm the love interest is clearer. At 0:11 my posture is much more relaxed and the swaying from the previous video is completely gone. By applying the Laban effort of Gliding to my character it created the more relaxed and confident physicality I was aiming for. This makes the performance stronger as the the character is more clear to the audience and his physicality is matching how he feels.
At 0:20, I am looking towards the top of the room. After answering the 9 questions, I have a more clear objective and understand that I am attempting to joke with and charm the love interest. This allowed me to play around with my movement and objective placement more to achieve this goal to create a more playful environment. I have a more confident stance because of this creating the masculine stance I was aiming for.
In future, I am going continue using these two techniques with all the characters I play. I struggle to become my character a lot when acting and typically feel like I am acting instead of being a character. These techniques allow me to understand a characters motivations, objectives and all the basic information I need to know before I can develop it further to be audition ready. I will do this by applying the 9 questions to every song and monologue I bring to auditions so I have a clear goal in the room. Furthermore, I will continue to explore the Laban efforts and other similar techniques. Embodying a characters physicality and emotion has always been an issue for me; by attaching a quality to the movement it allows me to create and feel the emotion the character is playing more efficiently which in turn makes my performances more convincing and genuine.
CONCLUSION
My first year of training has been very effective for me. My lack of knowledge at the start of the year on legit singing, acting choices in songs and in tap dancing made me a blank slate and allowed me to flourish and develop these skills at a rapid rate. This is important because my preference towards Golden Age musicals and my goal to be in West End revivals of them. All these skills are required to be developed to a high standard to be in such shows and first year has provided me with the means to confidently develop these more in my own time to get closer to this high standard improving my future career in musical theatre.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Berlin, I. (1935) Top Hat. RKO Radio Pictures. [Accessed 27/April/2026].
- Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D. and Jasper, M. (2001) Critical Reflection for Nursing and the Helping professions: a user’s Guide. Palgrave Macmillan. [Accessed 27/April/2026].
- GreatPerformers1 (2025) ‘YOUNGER THAN SPRINGTIME’ Live WILLIAM TABBERT from ‘SOUTH PACIFIC’ ORIGNAL BROADWAY CAST. YouTube. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLAkTtDlgYA [Accessed 28 Apr. 2026].
- Hammerstein, O., Logan, J. and Rodgers, R. (2009) South Pacific. Concord Theatricals.
- Porter, C. (1934) Anything Goes . Harms. Inc. [Accessed 27/April/2026].
- Uta Hagen & Haskel Frankel (1973) Respect for Acting. New York: Macmillan. [Accessed 27/April/2026].
- Thornton, S. (1971) Laban’s Theory of Movement. Boston : Plays. [Accessed 27/April/2026].
- West End Live (2026) Top Hat: West End Live 2012 – Puttin on the Ritz. Youtu.be. Available online: https://youtu.be/QfmbNs3s5UE?si=c7pRQluvpsxENb1s [Accessed 6 May 2026].
- Powell, M. (2014) Transform Your Singing Technique – Let Me Help You! Casta Diva. Available online: https://castadiva.co.uk/how-can-i-help-you-with-your-singing-technique/ [Accessed 27/April/2026].
