Throughout this portfolio I aim to demonstrate my progress as a musical theatre student in my first year at Leeds Conservatoire. I will achieve this by displaying the development I have made in each discipline as well as my mental development that goes along side this both as a human and performer. Before auditioning and being accepted into Leeds Conservatoire I had little to none Musical Theatre training experience, this has meant that I have been very aware of my development due to the feeling of being behind in my training compared to my other classmates. At the beginning of the year, I made individual goals for each of the disciplines, that I felt were achievable to balance alongside moving away from home and meeting new people. As my time at Leeds Conservatoire progressed, I managed to create mini goals throughout the year in order to feel satisfied with my individual progress.

In dance, the goal I created for myself at the start of the year was to improve my stamina and pick up speed. I wanted to improve my stamina in order to feel confident I could dance through a whole song as I would need to be able to do when going into the professional industry. Throughout the year so far, I subconsciously set mini goals every class depending on my ability that lesson and my knowledge of the style.

Jazz rep is the dance lesson I have the closest previous experience to out of all of the dance styles. What helped my development and learning for this lesson was how much I enjoyed the class due to the exciting routines. This was where we were exposed to real songs in the industry which is where the excitement most likely came from. The feeling of realness and the reminder of why we are training. At the beginning of the year, we did short easy dances that initially seemed to focus on pick up speed. For example, ‘What’s up Duroc?’ from Shrek the musical.

As you can see from the video, I am at the back furthest away from the camera due to my lack of confidence. This lack of confidence initially came from me feeling like I was surrounded by people with higher skill sets and more experience in training and dance as a whole. This dance specifically didn’t focus much on stamina but precision, which I found quite difficult due to me not being used to places my body that swiftly into specific places. We then moved onto dances where it was required to move your body more meaning I found these easier than the sharp movements I struggled with. For example we did  ‘No Way’ From SIX the musical , this dance included multiple body rolls and hair flicks which I found more of a natural movement for my body. As I progressed I found myself improving in confidence as well as ability and I then started taking myself to the front of the classes as you can see in the videos. In dance, I personally saw a huge personal improvement in pick up speed and dance quality, was  ‘The More we Dance’ from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. I practiced this a many of times outside and I practiced with and without heels in order to nail the dance.

I was then able to dance the full routine full out in my heels, I then was picked for the mock recall when performing it to Damion. Another dance I saw improvement in, particularly when working towards my goal of improving my stamina was ‘Dead ringer for love’ from Bat out of Hell. We were faced with the challenge of performing and dancing the whole song. I managed to achieve this in the lesson, whereas at the start of the year I could barely make it through the jazz warm up.

However, I am hoping to improve further and I aim to complete the whole dance full out and be able to attempt it again. The next goal I am working on is to improve my precision and accuracy overall in every dance as I believe this is what will help me get recalls when entering the industry as well as continuing to develop on my stamina and pick up speed.In order to do this I was breaking down dances in my own time, working on details slowly before speeding the routine back up to normal speed but with the improvements I’ve made on my own work.

Jazz tech was initially a huge challenge due to the intense cardio we do as a warm-up, whereas now I am capable of achieving this without a struggle. The core strength I developed in other classes such as body conditioning were really vital in my development in Jazz Tech due to the amount of core strength and balance that is required in order to achieve a controlled turn or kick. An individual goal of mine was to improve my turns as I am not a great turner and spotting was also a challenge, I researched more into this a found broken down versions of how to pirouette and found that spotting is crucial as ‘picking a spot to high or low will effect your balance and make it harder to turn’ (radancefittness, 2022) . This allowed me to target my mistakes and achieve cleaner turns through accurately spotting.

I went to local ballet classes for about a year when I was very young, however these classes were mainly running around the room with a piece of cloth. Therefore I had no real ballet experience before coming to the conservatoire. This is one of the lessons I was most excited for as I was excited to feel like a “real” dancer. During the training I’ve received here, I have massively improved in both my practical ballet skills and my knowledge of ballet as a whole. I am now aware that Ballet is thought of as the key to learning the fundamentals of dance such as balance, stamina and strength. On wider research I secured my thoughts about this as balance taught in ballet ‘supports so many movements in all forms of dance, from jumps and turns and even portraying still movements’ ( O’kelly 2023). However, rather early on in the year I developed shin splints which I found out through research to be ‘medial tibial stress syndrome’ and how ‘exercise increases blood flow to the muscles, causing the muscles to expand’ (Bress, 2023). This meant I had to start paying more attention to my warm ups and warm downs between dance classes in order to try and prevent them from getting worse or coming back once they’d gone. I found the exercise where I pushed against the wall and lunged with the heels touching the floor most helpful as it targeted my calf area as it stretched out the tibialis anterior and my tibialis posterior muscles. I also began to wear leg warmers to help, as I am now aware of keeping my muscles healthy in and out of class, since wearing these leg warmers I have be able to prevent the shin splints coming back meaning I am able to keep improving my skills. A significant part of ballet is the french language and being aware of linking the french words to the dance move or position. I therefore came up with multiple sayings to help me learn them, for example ‘À Terre’ means on the ground and I remember this by knowing that ‘pomme de terre’ means potato or ‘apple of the ground’. This helps me to remember that the french means on the ground and therefore the ballet move or position should be touching the ground. My target for this lesson was to simply learn the basics of Ballet enough to hold a routines together as well as learning slightly more advanced steps. I managed to achieve this by spending extra time outside of lessons going over the routines and practicing significant steps in the routines. Overall, my next target is to focus on presentation and performance of my ballet now I have learn the basics. This will help my development and confidence in ballet as I enter second year. I will do this by filming ,myself outside of lessons in order to observe weather my performance choices were correct out not.

In self reflection I have made the least amount of progress in tap. I had zero experience in tap before joining in September and unfortunately I have found this the most challenging academic part of my journey so far. Learning the rhythms in tap was also something I struggled with and this was something I had to work on outside of lessons by taking the time to improvise tap to different rhythms like quarter notes, triplets and eighth notes. I also found relaxing my ankles rather difficult as I would tense up when trying too hard and concentrating. This means I am missing sounds and forcing others. However, I have still managed to learn crucial steps in tap such as single, double and triple time steps as well as learning the shim sham. I have managed to achieve pull backs however this did take a while and a lot of staying behind after lessons to perfect. One main challenge I found for tap was finding the motivation to practice as I really struggled and I had to gradually build up that determination to therefore see results. I partly achieved my goals for tap, yet I will keep on working on it through repetition as I still need to gain familiarity in where the sounds are on the shoe and how to successfully make them confidently.  

Since starting back in January we have had commercial lessons. This is the style of dance I see most in the musicals I hope to one day be performing in, for example ‘&Juliet’. These were the lessons I felt most confident in as the movement required seemed to come quite naturally to me, especially the isolations. Tracking my progress for this has therefore been difficult due to the small amount of time we have had these lessons for but an obvious noticeable improvement is the knowledge of dance steps that fit under the commercial umbrella. In this video we do dance moves like the ‘Bart Simpson’ (DZRCKS, 2024).  During these lessons I felt confident and the lessons felt freeing as I could move my body in ways that you can’t in Ballet and Jazz as they require alignment and accurate placement of the body. I look forward to keep working on my commercial skills as I believe they will be helpful for my future in the industry.

Overall, from September to now, I have seen massive improvements in my dance technique as I have a good understanding of the mechanics and history of dance. My pick up speed has majorly improved due to learning new dances week in and week out. I have learnt how to take care of my body to avoid injuries as well as how to recover from injuries in the quickest and healthiest way possible. And lastly my stamina has gotten a lot better and I have full confidence that this will result in me successfully completing a full length dance routine setting me up to further improvement in my stamina ready for the industry. To further improve my stamina I have been going for runs in the mornings or evenings every other day. I have also lead a mini running club within my class, this will continue in order to keep that improvement going.

Moving onto my progress and development in my vocal and singing skills, I have had no previous experience with singing lessons before coming to Leeds Conservitore. I therefore believed I was a clean slate to begin developing my voice yet I later found out that I had to reverse bad habits i’d developed over the years. My biggest focus for improvement was the balancing of my head voice and my chest voice. I originally had a very unbalanced chest voice meaning I had a pulled chest voice which ‘creates too much muscular effort, which causes the vocal chords to come together with excessive force’ (Henry, J. 2023) I would be shouting, pushing and straining when singing higher beltier notes. This could lead to nodules which can develop on the vocal folds after ‘repeatedly misusing or overusing your voice’ (Cleveland Clinic, 2019). This was a shock to the system and I lost a lot of confidence as I began losing what I thought was my range, even through it was unhealthy. To balance out my chest voice and head voice I needed to work on my breath control and I did vocal exercises in and outside of lessons like the one in this video. This helps me control the amount of breath and voice I use as well as improving my vocal stamina.

At the beginning of the year I wanted to find a more classical style of singing in my voice with a legit sound as this was something I thought was a huge weakness of mine. At the start of the year I began singing ‘If I Loved you’ from Carousel, as it was a song I was familiar with and enjoyed listening to. I lacked stamina and resistance in my voice therefore the sound I was making was breathy, uncontrolled and unsupported. This again links to my unbalanced head and chest voice. During this time I was also working on the song ‘always true to you in my fashion’ from Kiss me Kate and I was trying to mix the end note however this was not possible to due the unbalanced head voice. A dream role of mine in the professional industry would be Eliza in ‘My Fair Lady’ which means finding a legit sound and mastering that, is something I am really working on. In order to do that I am keeping up my breath control exercises and no longer straining my voice with big belty songs in order to keep my voice helping so I can keep progressing.

For my development in acting at the beginning of the year I wasn’t sure how or what I wanted to improve on or change, however once we stared working on Meisner I focused on being true and honest with myself in a performance environment which meant not putting up a guard or a front and just being the realest version or me, as Meisner is to live truthfully through a given set of circumstances. During the start of our Meisner journey we were all still getting to know eachother as a class and I believe this meant we all initially held back and were too polite, as time went by we all saw improvement with our work and we managed to focus less on ourselves but on the person information of us. Suzi and I took a turn of the repetition off essential behaviours, this resulted in me feeling emotional as I didn’t push away the urge to cry and therefore felt so connected in the task and this was a huge milestone in my development as an actor as I was able to connect so much with the other person genuinely. Something else that helped with this was the activity ‘slaps’ in a Meisner lesson, this left us no choice but to show a genuine reaction to our partner, helping us understand the real task and motivation of the Meisner technique. Therefore as an actor I have unlocked a new and improved way or acting which is key to my further development and has already helped my see drastic improvements since September.

Another way in which I have improved my acting, is now having a strategy and thought process when approaching acting through song. Before I would wing it and hope for the best, this had worked for me in the past as I believe I have a good sense of what works and what doesn’t work on the spot, yet I feel not only more prepared and therefore less anxious when performing, but I also feel like the work I produce is of a higher quality and is more specific and detailed. I have accessed this knowledge through actor and text lessons along with my acting through song classes. In these lessons we worked on creating or working out our characters objectives and super objectives as well as actioning, uniting and circles of attention. Using these specific techniques have allowed me to explore my character to a deeper level helping to achieve a more detailed and well thought out performance. When annotating my music and lyrics I begin by uniting my work as this helps to separate feelings and therefore characters objectives, you can see how I’ve done this in this photo of my annotations for one of my assessment songs ‘ On my Own’ from Les Miserable. In this video I am practically showing my actioning and used of circles of attention which I have written down in the photo shown here. I can clearly acknowledge here that I have made a vast improvement in my acting as well as my confidence in acting as a whole. This will be vital when preparing for industry auditions in the future as well as auditions within the conservatoire.

In conclusion, after having basically no experience in musical theatre training, I am finishing first year with the crucial knowledge of basics, fundamentals and how I am going to keep achieving my goals. I am more than satisfied with my improvement this year and I aim to not limit myself and to learn everything I can about every style of dance, singing and acting in order to widen my range of possible work when leaving the conservatoire. In reflection I could have started working on my stamina physically and vocally earlier in the year, yet I was also balancing moving away from home and learning to live independently so that may not have been truly achievable.

BIBLIOGRAPHY –

radancefitness (2020). Trick Tip: Jazz Turns. [online] RADanceFitness. Available at: https://radancefitness.com/2020/06/10/trick-tip-jazz-turns/. [Accessed 6th May 2025]

Joanne O’Kelly School of Dance. (2023). Ballet is the foundation of all dance. [online] Available at: https://www.joanneokellyschoolofdance.com.au/blog/classical-ballet-is-the-foundation-of-all-dance. [accsessed 6th May 2025]

Bress, S. (2023). Tips For Preventing and Managing Shin Splints. [online] Dance Magazine. Available at: https://dancemagazine.com/treating-shin-splints/#gsc.tab=0 [Accessed 6 May 2025].

DZRCKS. (2024) HOW TO: BART SIMPSON Available at: https//youtu.be?2hA8XcCfSrS?si=8IBFa88Dah6nSdTP [Accessed 6 May 2025].

Henny, J (2023) John Henny vocal studio. What is a pulled chest voice and how to fix it: John Henny. Available at: https://johnhenny.com/what-is-pulled-chest-voice/ [Accessed 6th May 2025)  

Cleveland Clinic (2019). Vocal Cord Lesions (Nodules, Polyps and Cysts) | Cleveland Clinic. [online] Cleveland Clinic. Available at: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/15424-vocal-cord-lesions-nodules-polyps-and-cysts [Accessed 7th May]