Throughout this portfolio, I will aim to reflect on my development over the year by highlighting my improvement of specific skills, alongside areas that I aim to develop further through my second and third years of the course. My main focus has been on strengthening my singing voice to perform in multiple styles to a high standard, in addition to elements of my dance training, to provide a well-rounded, strong performance. My motivation for this improvement has been driven by becoming as versatile and adaptable as possible as a performer to expand my career possibilities once I graduate.
The industry, more than ever, requires the Musical Theatre singer to have fluency between various styles (Flynn, 2022), and so since September, an area that I have focused my attention on is the development of my voice, particularly in legit singing, by working to strengthen my use of head voice. I have always considered myself more of a chest-voice singer, but have strived to improve my head voice to successfully perform classical sounding songs from legit and golden age style eras. This is important to me because many of the musicals I consider myself to be suitable for are those where the female voice requires a much more classical sound. Although this specific sound was very prominent in the musicals written before the 1960’s, it is still required for roles in some contemporary musicals (Pauley, 2021) and as I have learnt this year in our voice classes with Aaron Newland-Bentley and Scott Harrison, while the classical sound is necessary on its own, it is also the foundation of other styles of singing. Therefore, to increase my employability and the extent of variety to my vocal skills, it was crucial to my training that I improve this. At the beginning of the year, while I had a good understanding of classical technique and a range that reached soprano registers easily, my head voice was comparatively weak and powerless compared to that of my chest voice, which made changing registers unnatural and obvious. My weakness was that I did not fully understand the technicality of utilising my head voice, so I set out to research this and found that the classical sounding head voice that I was striving to achieve ‘uses rounder vowels, a high soft palate, tilted thyroid cartilage and typically thinner folds’ (Anonymous, n.d). I have ensured to employ these technical changes in my singing lessons and song technique classes, as well as experimenting with the use of airflow to ensure a brighter, less breathy sound in my own practice. This improved my resonance and resolved the issue I was facing with my head voice sounding weak, and it also allowed me to appreciate changing my quality depending on the character of the song. Another issue that challenged my head voice was that I always seemed to have mucus in my throat, making my tone unclear and vibrato difficult to achieve, but in my reading of So You Want To Sing Musical Theatre, I discovered that the key to tackling this is hydration. The writer says, ‘with adequate hydration and consistency of mucus, the effort to produce voice is less and your vocal folds are better protected from injury’ (Leborgne, 2022), and so I focused on ensuring I was drinking sufficient water before and after singing practice and lessons. Furthermore, I have continued to improve my technique in these ways by tackling songs from pre-1960 and through the golden age that challenge me to put technical exercises into practice. Over the course of this year, my head voice has become stronger with a more classical tone along with an increased range, but I would definitely like to develop this further over the next two years by continuing to tackle difficult songs and completing vocal exercises that employ this part of my voice.
In this video from my first time getting up in Acting Through Song class, you can hear that there is an obvious ‘flip’ into my head voice and demonstrates how I struggled with smoothly changing vocal registers. This emphasises the weakness of my head voice in comparison to my chest voice and makes the notes that sit higher in my range sound quieter and less supported.
This video is from a few months later in Repetoire class, where I am singing in my head voice, but it sounds much stronger and equal to that of my chest voice. I am employing a speech-like quality and this shows how, through my aforementioned technical practice, I was able to achieve a head voice I was much more confident with that sounded more supported and that I was able to sing in louder.
Another area that has been a focal point of my practice has been creating a healthier mix-belt sound in songs that require a high chest voice. I have found that as I have gotten older and my voice has matured, I have found it more difficult to reach higher notes in a strong chest-sounding sound. Therefore, I have focused on practising the skill of implementing a more mixed sound to create a sustainable, healthy and powerful vocal quality. Personally, I believe this is integral to the industry for female-identifying voices due to the demanding material of contemporary musicals alongside new material being released, which is becoming increasingly harder, and so it was important to me that I focused on developing my voice to match these standards. At the beginning of the year, I was able to sing with a strong chest voice, however, I felt that it wasn’t sustainable, as my voice got tired easily and sometimes had a shout-like quality to it, which I didn’t like. To help this, I have worked on producing a more mixed voice that employs elements of my chest and head voice to create a healthy and supported sound by practising and working on songs that sit around the break between my two vocal registers. Also, I went through videos of my singing and pinpointed specific physical characteristics that I was doing that might have impacted my voice by making it sound more strained. These involved closing vowels rather than opening vowels on hard notes, tensing my shoulders and raising my chin, which would put more strain on my larynx, so my practice involved reversing these habits. To help my understanding of combating this, I read Shaun Aquiline’s Musical Theatre for the Female Voice, where she talks about two types of tension: static and dynamic. She says that you will tense your jaw and shoulders when you are not employing the right muscles to support the sound, and so tension is a result of ‘absence of the right support’ (Aquilina, 2022). I found exercises to help improve my technique to reduce tension and also found that there are several issues that make it harder to mix between chest voice and head voice, or ‘smoothing out the gear changes’ as Gillyanne Kayes describes it. These are; constriction, volume, effort levels, changes in vocal fold mass and changes in height of layrnx’ and to tackle them, she suggests straightening and lengthening the back of the neck at difficult points while sirening and looking in the mirror while doing exercises to ensure the jaw is opened very widely at extreme ends of your range (Kayes, 2000). I made sure that I employed these tips in my practice and ensured there was a mirror accessible in my singing lessons to watch out for these bad habits. The final thing I struggled with was finding the part of my voice that my mix sits in and how to access the correct sound, so to aid what I had already been introduced to in our Song technique classes, I decided to carry out some research on the type of vocal modes and the science behind singing. I read an article that suggested that by ‘holding exactly the same resonance shape and changing from modal to falsetto’, you will achieve the correct sound for what your mixed voice should be (Anonymous, 2022), so I tried this technique out in practice. By making these small changes, I am now able to produce a healthier sound and experiment with different tonal qualities to achieve different sounds. I feel like while I have improved this skill, it can be quite hit or miss, and my voice can fluctuate in being able to easily find my mix sound and so I will continue to work on this within my singing lessons and in my practice.
This video shows me singing the end of ‘As Long As He Needs Me’ from Oliver, a section that employs a high belt, during my solo practice. You can see the tension that I have previously mentioned in that my chin and shoulders are raised, I am leaning back and singing with my jaw fairly closed. It demonstrates all the issues I was struggling with physically that tightened everything around my voice and vocal muscles that was contributing to a struggled and strained belt sound. Outside classes, I ensured I was watching these videos out and catching myself out where I could see I was doing this, making a conscious effort to not do the same again.
This video was taken a few months later in an Acting Through Song class where I was performing ‘When the Music Played’ from Doctor Zhivago. This song is fairly similar in difficulty of range to the previous video, but you can see much less tension in my body, my chin and shoulders are not as raised and instead of leaning back, I am leaning slightly forward. In comparison to the last video, this shows the progression of my physical and vocal technique through my practice and research to create a healthier mixed-belt sound.
Since the beginning of the year, I have set myself the goal of improving my overall performance within dance routines to utilise more character and facial expressions in order to provide a more engaging and enjoyable performance. I started the course with many years of technical training, but my lack of performance always let me down, which came from a fear of making mistakes and a lack of confidence. This has always been something I’ve been conscious of, as I am aware that auditions in the industry usually begin with a dance round that moves very quickly. As a result, with a technical understanding already, I wanted to focus my improvement on conveying emotions and revealing character within dance routines and class exercises. Over the year I have read Foundations for Performance Training: Skills for the Actor-Dancer, to apply my acting skills to my dance and the writer talks about how by conveying energy and emotion, you take your dance technique to a level of artistry which I strongly believe is what makes a standard dancer into a musical theatre performer as you can portray a much more powerful performance (Harker, 2022). She goes on to talk about how you must work to free yourself from the weight of insecurities to ensure you are the expressive artist you are meant to be, as well as developing your strength, endurance and flexibility, which for me was the obvious factor limiting my performances. Within my dance classes, I took advantage of the brave environment and supportive peers to work on completely expressing myself and not being afraid to make a fool of myself. It was on these days, when I was not afraid to make mistakes, that I ended up giving my best performance. It is important to me that to be successful in dance auditions, you must combine technique with performance, and so I needed to improve my pick-up speed to enhance my overall performance to stand out in auditions, especially those for Musical Theatre shows. Something that I read that I believed to be very true was that when you dance, ‘every time you step onto the stage, you will be charged with the task of capturing and holding the audience’s attention while helping them understand the story’ (Harris, 2016) which is most important in musicals where the dance is an extension of the story being told. Where I struggled with this was navigating ways of portraying characters and performing choreography in a way that is ‘consistent with the personalities of the unique characters’ (Harris, 2016) because during my training, dance teachers have indicated that you will simply know how to perform and it is not something you can teach. One thing that helped me with tackling this was a section from Get the Callback; the Art of Auditioning for Musical Theatre, which simply states that you should ‘act everything,’ and so I began to approach dances in similar ways that I would approach a song I was singing (Flom, 2016). I began to focus on the character’s objectives and reasons for dancing, which allowed me to pinpoint specific details to produce a more refined, believable performance. Over the course of the year, I would say that I have definitely been successful in achieving this and that not only can I technically achieve the repertoire we have covered, but that I am capable of performing it to a good standard also. Through our repertoire classes with Damien Poole, I have been able to expand my ability to portray different characters, and throughout the next two years, I will continue to do this to increase my versatility to different styles and characters through dance.
This video was taken during a Commercial class and demonstrates how, despite dancing the choreography set correctly and being technically good, there is little in terms of character and performance going on which limits and takes away from the overall performance. I felt like this really limited my performance despite being technically correct and was something I wanted to improve and focus my training on.
This video was taken in a Choreography class, working ‘You Don’t Even Know It’ from Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Despite facing the back of the room for some of this video, you can see that I am embracing more of a character in my performance, using facial expressions to portray a more engaging performance.
Although the focus of my dance has been on performance, I have also focused my development on specific aspects of my dance technique to become more impressive and clean, specifically my pirouette turns. On joining the course, I was able to execute a single pirouette but wanted to set myself the challenge of achieving a consistent, clean double pirouette by the end of the year. This was important to me because it exemplifies technical ability and precision in an audition setting and would make me stand out as a dancer in comparison to others with less technical training. I read an article that interviewed Broadway dancer Jane Lanier, who received a Tony nomination, and she said that she would rather have a clean single than a messy double but would expect a double pirouette from an experienced dancer (Lanier, 2019). As someone who wouldn’t consider themself a ‘dancer’, for me this was a personal goal I set out to achieve this year in my training to boost my confidence and improve my technique both in classes and auditions. I have been practising this skill across my dance classes, both in Jazz and Ballet, by challenging myself to implement double pirouettes when faced with turns in exercises, unless specifically asked to keep it as a single pirouette. Furthermore, I have practised this in my solo practice in studios by completing static and moving exercises that employ double pirouettes. I have most definitely noticed significant improvement in my turns, and while it is not always completely consistent, I can execute a clean double pirouette within exercises and routines. I want to continue to develop this further to become more precise in the pirouettes I can achieve now, as well as increase the difficulty by tackling triple pirouettes over the next two years.
The next few videos display how my pirouettes have improved over this year, from a messy single pirouette to a strong and consistent double pirouette. This first video displays how I was able to perform a clean single pirouette back in October, at the beginning of the year. It was strong, clean and consistent but I believed it put my performance at a medium-level standard compared to a dancer who could do multiple pirouettes and was something I wanted to challenge myself in.
This was my first recorded attempt at a double pirouette in February. It was messy and comparatively worse than my previous single pirouette.
This video taken in a Ballet class only a few weeks later, demonstrates how with practice, I was able to achieve a clean double pirouette. Although there are still technical issues I could smooth out, overall, it is a strong double pirouette and exemplifies my improvement of this skill over the year.
In conclusion, I believe that I have developed my skillset drastically over this year and am a much more versatile performer, however, I would say that I could have implemented more solo practice and drilling of specific exercises both in dance and singing throughout the year to improve my consistency and precision. While I have achieved many goals I set for myself in September throughout the year, I hope that in the near future, I will master these aforementioned skills and focus on other aspects of my training, such as my physical flexibility. For now, I will continue to focus on these attributes of my performance to become more confident in myself and to be able to successfully perform a range of musical theatre material.
Bibliography:
Anonymous. (n.d). What Are the Different Types of Musical Theatre Singing. The Inside Voice. Available online: https://www.ensembleschools.com/the-inside-voice/what-are-the-different-types-of-musical-theatre-singing/ (Accessed 10/04/25)
Anonymous. (2022). Modal, falsetto and Everything in Between? Vocal Process. Available online: https://vocalprocess.co.uk/modal-falsetto-everything-between/ (Accessed 10/05/24)
Aquilina, S. (2022). Musical Theatre for the Female Voice; the Sensation, Sound, and Science, of Singing. Routledge Publishing. p. 10.
Flom, J. (2016). Get the Callback: The Art of Auditioning for Musical Theatre. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 18.
Flynn, A. (2002). So You Want To Sing Musical Theatre; A Guide for Performers. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, p. 45.
Harker, C. (2022). Foundations for Performance Training: Skills for the Actor-Dancer. Taylor & Francis Group. p. 124 and p. 125
Harris, D. (2016). Beginning Musical Theatre Dance. Human Kinetics Australia. p. 3 and p. 5.
Kayes, G. (2000). Singing and the Actor. A & C Black. p. 9 and p. 50.
Lanier, J. (2019). Get Ready to Dance: Preparing for Musical Theatre College Auditions. CS Music. Available online: https://www.csmusic.net/content/articles/get-ready-to-dance/ (Accessed 11/04/25)
Leborgne, W. (2022). So You Want To Sing Musical Theatre; A Guide for Performers. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, p. 92.
Pauley, K. (2021). Legit Singing in Musical Theatre. Celtic Star. Available online: https://www.celticstar.com/post/legit-singing-in-musical-theatre (Accessed 10/04/25)
