By Alexander Mousa (25102189)
Introduction
My journey at Leeds Conservatoire, from a progress point of view, has been quite positive. I feel I have improved in some areas more than others, but that’s normal. Before I came to university, I had some training in dance and singing; however, I have progressed more in this one year than in all my previous training.
In this portfolio, I will be delving into more detail across different categories of Musical Theatre, as well as the different classes and my progress within them. I will also be approaching my reflection using the Boud Reflection Model, where I will discuss where I was at the start of the year, where I am now, and where I want to be by the end of this year.
Something my teacher, Claire Eden, encouraged us to start was a Personal Development Plan (PDP) to track our progress and goals, which has been extremely helpful; I have uploaded mine below.
Voice
The first aspect of my voice I am going to talk about is singing. My voice before university was strong but didn’t have the control and versatility that I wanted it to have. One of my main goals was to achieve that by the end of Year 1. However, with the Year 1 singing categories being predominantly Legit and pre-1965 traditional styles, I struggled a lot because I wasn’t used to singing in that style, but it definitely shaped my voice and gave me much more control. Another huge goal I had was to improve my ability to sight read sheet music and learn songs faster which I had never done any sight reading before university but now it’s improved tons; it still isn’t perfect but it is a much better foundation than I was at before.
I have uploaded a video of me singing one of my first songs this year, “This World Will Remember Me” from Bonnie and Clyde.
As you can see from this video, I had a clear lack of control in my voice while also trying to maintain power and energy. Something that I also struggle with when performing in Acting Through Song (ATS) class is not being very free with my body and being quite still; this is why I was moving around and being quite silly when performing that song. I was given feedback to act through it and enjoy it a bit more, so I experimented with this.
I will now upload a clip from a slightly more recent ATS class where I sing “Anthem” from Chess, and even though this song wasn’t right for me, it was a really valuable learning curve and a clear point of progression within my training at Leeds Conservatoire. I believe that when I sang “Anthem,” my voice was a lot stronger and had more depth behind it, as for most of my first year I have been trying to improve my onset and glottalise it a bit more so that I have that depth and quality in my voice when singing.
I will now speak a little bit about my goals within my PDP in terms of a vocal standpoint. One of my goals at the start of the year was to have a stronger and more controlled vibrato by the end of the year. I’ll be honest, it hasn’t really come in until a few weeks ago, where I have actually felt my vibrato becoming slightly more controllable instead of shaky and random.
This has been difficult from a confidence perspective within my singing, as I have always believed that you had to have a strong, powerful vibrato, which isn’t necessarily wrong, but when I stopped forcing it, it definitely came through a lot easier, as I wasn’t trying to force my vocal cords to do something they couldn’t do. I definitely want my vibrato to keep improving and getting smoother and easier; this is a long-term goal, but by third year I would hope to have a much cleaner, more controlled vibrato.
Another one of my goals within singing was making sure that, when I wanted to, I was singing with a glottal onset. This was mostly when I was in my chest voice, but it is still helpful if I want a powerful falsetto sound. I also needed to work on my pitch matching on my lower notes because sometimes, when I would sing lower notes, I would go slightly flat because I was dropping my jaw or some other small reason I didn’t realise, so I did a lot of practice around vowel sounds and where I needed to sing from in my mouth to get the notes.
Here is a picture of a diagram we used in one of our vocal tech classes to practice hitting the right note with the right vowel and experimenting with different vowels if we couldn’t hit the note etc.
This chart was actually really insightful and helpful for hitting difficult notes. I enjoyed experimenting with this and looking through my songs, processing why it makes sense that it feels easier on certain vowels and how I would adapt the original vowel to make it slightly easier, whether that be where I am singing it from in my mouth or how I am singing the vowel. I also found it quite interesting that, by definition, there was actually a chart showing which vowel you should use depending on how high or low the note was.
Research from the singing and acting handbook suggests that the performer should be as content with who their character is as who they are as a person, that’s how well you must know your character, “As a performer you have the direct responsibility for the relationship between your character’s music, text, and movement at any moment of the performance” – (De and Skilbeck, 2000). It also speaks about discipline you need to be a performer, such as Relaxation and how to properly rest and I will take this into consideration and apply it into my daily routine by finding ways that I can get better rest as a performer. Another discipline is Fitness, Flexibility and Control but not just physically but mental Flexibility and Fitness in being able to mentally have multiple things to learn at once. This to me is a really interesting concept and I am going to take this into my training for when I am stressed and I will slowly try to learn and do small things two at a time before letting everything build up in order to improve this skill. I think this will be really beneficial to my voice as I believe rest is the best thing you can do for your voice so I think figuring out how to to rest my voice while not doing nothing will be incredibly helpful within my training and career as a performer.
We also have accents classes here at Leeds Conservatoire; these have been really fun and interesting. I have loved learning accents and experimenting with them to see what works. This is similar to what I’ve just been talking about with vowels because every accent is spoken from a different part of the mouth. For example, the first one we learnt was RP, or Received Pronunciation, which is a very formal dialect of English. This accent is very heightened, spoken in the top and front of the mouth, and delivered quite smoothly.
However, in comparison, Yorkshire, which was the second accent we learnt, is very dark and spoken at the back of the mouth, especially on the vowel “u”. Another feature was the “l” sounds, as RP has quite light Ls, whereas Yorkshire has quite dark Ls. Personally, I struggled with RP quite a lot, as I am not very familiar with speaking from the top of my mouth. On the other hand, Yorkshire felt very natural and easy to do, as I am from Yorkshire, so it definitely felt much more comfortable. I do enjoy accents, though, and hope to learn more in the future. In class, we are now moving on to Scottish, which is quite exciting.
Dance
My dance journey throughout my first year at Leeds Conservatoire has been exceptional. I feel I have progressed massively, and I am really proud of the progress I have achieved. Before coming to university, I had some training at a dance college called “CAPA College” for two years and also just over two years at a performing academy called “TBL Academy”.
So, essentially, I had quite a bit more dance training than some of my friends. Albeit, I still wouldn’t really call myself a “dancer.” As much as I feel I have improved, I probably am good enough to call myself a dancer, but that is just a lack of confidence. However, it is building, and my confidence within dance has improved a lot this year. I still get nervous performing solo, but I don’t get as nervous as I used to. That’s just my journey: “Little progress is better than no progress at all” – Maxwell, J.C. (2007). I am very proud of the progress I have made this year.
Now I am going to talk about ballet and my goals in dance. One of my many goals was turning my feet out more; however, not just turning them out, but turning them out from my knees instead of my feet, as this can be very tempting to do because it is easier and requires less strength. My ballet classes this year have taught me so much about pliés and getting deeper in them whilst also maintaining my turnout as best as I can, or going into a third instead of a fifth to ensure my technique is closer to perfect before attempting a perfect fifth, as it is much harder and requires much more flexibility, strength, and endurance. A dance teacher from the book, “The Broadway Theatre Project Handbook”, suggests to “Encourage students to be extremely open and more informed. Be a blank canvas. Be a self-thinker.” – Melissa Thodos. I think this quote is really beautiful as it is speaking about contemporary dance in the book but you can apply it to every dance style, even ballet. Obviously, there’s technique and ballet is a bit more strict but the performance aspect of anything is always the MOST important thing, as we are performers. A triple threat is a performer in my opinion therefore you wouldn’t call a triple threat a singer or a dancer or an actor because they should be equally amazing at all three.
Another goal I had within dance was to generally perform more, smile more, and enjoy it more whilst dancing. I feel like this goal has been successful, as I have learnt that it is okay to get things wrong, especially during training. It is better to get things wrong and learn now rather than on a professional job. My long-term goal for the future would ideally be to make dance look easy, both technically and in my facial expression while I’m performing, but like I said, small progress over no progress at all.
In dance, I really enjoy turning, and another goal of mine was to improve my turning, but most of all my spotting, as this was a major issue holding my turns back. Here is a recent video of me doing a double pirouette. It could be better, but it is better than it was at the start of the year.
Now I will talk mainly about Jazz Rep and Tech for this section. I really enjoy Jazz class, and throughout the year we have learnt quite a few enjoyable dances. These include “The Nicest Kids in Town” from Hairspray, “Dead Ringer for Love” from Bat Out of Hell, and many more. Here is a clip of me performing the Hairspray dance.
I feel like I have improved in Jazz Rep to an extent, but much more in Jazz Tech, as that is what focuses on the specifics. However, I am in Year 1, so even small improvements are great.
Now I am going to talk a bit about our Jazz Tech class and what we do. Most of the time, we practice exercises to improve our technique, whether that involves traveling from the corner of the room and performing a sequence that includes multiple exercises, or focusing specifically on one exercise. I have uploaded a video below of one of our tech exercises for our end of year assessments.
In this last section, I will be talking about Tap and how I have improved. I had done a little bit of tap before Leeds, but I feel so much more confident in it now. I’m no “Bill Bojangles”, but I am better than I was, so I am proud.
Tap is probably the dance style I find most difficult because I’ve done so little of it, and it feels the most unfamiliar to me as it is so different compared to other dance styles. I just need more practice when learning a tap routine. I will upload a video of myself doing the “Shim Sham”; this is a very well known tap dance in the tap world.
Something in tap dance that I never really struggled with, was time steps. In the tap I had done previously at college, we only covered single time steps, but now I can do singles, doubles, and triples pretty consistently, and sometimes even with a break, which I never knew how to do before.
In the future, I want to be able to do time steps consistently with breaks, because although I can do them, I also want to be able to say the steps while I perform them, which I find really difficult, especially when adding the break too.
Acting
So, in terms of an acting perspective, my main goal all year has been to be more truthful when portraying certain characters and in the way that I play them. I feel that this skill has improved massively, and I have improved a lot as an actor. However, I do still have some other goals within acting, some of them being learning to make myself cry. This would allow me to portray certain emotions throughout ATS classes, as well as in general acting classes and any kind of performance. Another goal of mine is to improve my sight reading from an acting perspective, meaning being able to look at a line, then look up and say it, instead of continuing to look down at the paper.
We also looked at one of Uta Hagen’s techniques in one of our acting classes with Sarah. This was to teach us about exploring different characters’ goals and objectives. We had to walk into the classroom in character, and she would also give us prompts such as “Where has your character been?” and “Where are you going” – (Hagen, n.d.). For example, a scenario could be that you have just been to the supermarket, you are putting your groceries away, and then you are going to the gym. However, we had to create our own situations. When I did it, my character had just gone on stage to sing a solo, realised my zipper on my jeans was down, and then ran off stage. Personally, this exercise was interesting because it showed all the different ways people could approach entering a stage and choose something unique to do, and it was quite fun.
Something else we did for our assessments last term was create our own characters and full backstories for them, then act as them waiting for a flight in a classroom, which we used as an airport. This was really enjoyable because everyone was so focused and fully embodying their characters. We also did a task where we went into Leeds as our characters and interacted with people, and they genuinely believed us. This was really fun. This work followed one of Stella Adler’s concepts, which focuses on creating characters and stories from imagination rather than emotional recall. This was really helpful and a new and interesting way to create and develop characters.
We also completed a project where we were split into groups and assigned roles to perform the play Miss Julie in the modern style of Katie Mitchell. This was really interesting because she was one of the first practitioners to introduce and use foley artists live for sound effects, as well as incorporating live theatre within theatre, where the performance is also projected above the stage. In our group, I chose to direct, as I had never directed before. We also had a foley artist who created all the sound effects live using physical objects, two actors, and two camera operators who filmed the performance so it could be projected onto a larger screen for the audience.
This was a really interesting experience, and I really enjoyed it. I did find directing quite difficult, as I have never taken on such a significant leadership role before, but it was a great learning experience and an important step in my journey as a performer. I also did a lot of work to support the foley artist, providing as much guidance as possible. I will upload a video showing the camera work and how we performed it for the audience.
I will now upload a video of my foley artist creating the water sound live for the performance as the actors perform it.
Now I will upload all the pictures below of the research and guidance I prepared in advance for my foley artist.
Conclusion
In summary, Year 1 has been incredible and gone by so fast; there is still so much more to learn, yet I think I have come so far, improved and learned so much already. I definitely still have things to improve on but that’s why I’m still in training. I want to focus on Dance this next year to solidify it as we have more vocal classes than dance, I also believe that once my dance is improved my performance on a whole will improve with it and it will give me more flexibility within my performances.
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Bibliography
De, T. and Skilbeck, N. (2000). The Singing and Acting Handbook. Psychology Press. [Accessed 5th May 2026]
Hagen, U. (n.d.). Uta Hagen’s Object Exercise #1 PHYSICAL DESTINATION. [online] Available at: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5697a49725981d4c96887601/t/5758bdbdab48deeba35df22c/1465433535334/%231-Physical+Destination+Ex.pdf. [Accessed 10th May 2026].
Maxwell, J.C. (2007). Failing Forward. Harpercollins Leadership. [Accessed 10 May 2026].
McWaters, D. (2009). Musical Theatre Training. University Press of Florida. [Accessed 8th May 2026]
