Kristin Silvestro and Professor Pam Musil, Dance

As a modern dance major at Brigham Young University and a frequent stage performer I have always been interested in learning about the full potential of the body and how to call upon it as needed. As performing artists, dancers are constantly training themselves to reach an optimal level of performance every time they are on stage. What does it take to reach a “peak performance” or enter “the zone” as many researchers in the athletic field call it? While there are obviously physiological implications to consider when evaluating peak performance, I would like to focus on the frequently overlooked psychological implications. Because dancers are generally uneducated concerning the welfare of their psychological state as performers, they frequently neglect to cater to needs such as adequate sleep, optimal health, emotional stability, and financial settlement. As a dancer, I can vouch that there is a direct correlation between the increase of unnecessary stress, which comes from unbalanced psychological situations, and a decrease in performance level.

I began my research by giving a written survey to one hundred performers on the various dance companies at Brigham Young University including Theatre Ballet, Ballet Showcase, Kinnect, Dancer’s Company, Dancensemble, and the International Folk Dance Ensemble. In these surveys, the performers were asked to answer questions that evaluated their perceived stress levels as they pertained to various indicators of psychological “staleness.” They also answered questions pertaining to their perceived performance in their most recent concert. My expectations were that those who rated their stress levels as high would tend to show lower ratings in their performances. While I understood that the research conducted was based solely on the opinions of the dancers, I did not anticipate the unusual results that unfolded upon examining the data.

Being a student performer myself and understanding the demanding schedule of a company, I was not surprised to see that there were several psychological issues that were causing stress on the dancers. Sixty-five percent of the performers were taking between fifteen and twenty-one credits during the semester surveyed, with only 1-2 of those credits being linked with their company work. Forty-seven percent of those surveyed currently had a job, and thirty-three percent of those employed worked twenty hours or more a week. Looking at the two weeks before their most recent performance, fifty-three percent rated their quality of sleep as poorer than usual, fifty-two percent had more trouble than usual concentrating in both their academic and dance classes, and forty-three percent said their emotional well being was lower than average. Finally, finances proved to be burdensome, with sixty percent claiming to be experiencing notable stress due to their current situations.

What did surprise me, however, was the way the dancers rated their own performances. With the stress levels as high as they were it was expected that the dancers would not perform as well as they had desired. This did not seem to be the case at all. While over thirty percent were involved in at least four hours of physical activity a day (dancing and non-dancing), fifty-six percent rated their energy level during the show as higher than usual. And although these dancers showed all the signs of psychological weariness, only nine percent had trouble concentrating during the performance. In fact, fifty-one percent claimed their concentration was better than usual during their time on stage.

There are several possible explanations to the results given, an obvious one being that psychological stresses do not influence dancers as was originally suggested. Another may be that adrenaline factors are playing a larger role in dancers’ performances than I realized. Perhaps the thrill of performing has the power to override all psychological stresses when a dancer goes under the lights. However, I think that these results could be mostly attributed to flaws in the method of research. Most of the performers were surveyed within a week or two of performing in hopes that their memory would still be fresh and an honest evaluation would be recorded. This proved to be helpful for the questions regarding psychological issues. The performers were capable of evaluating their own lives and judging where they stood on a stress scale, however the actual performances were much more difficult to examine. How does one evaluate a physical performance?

The method that I used in my survey, self-perception, has the potential for many flaws, the most significant one being the inconsistency of hindsight. Situations that at the time seem devastating may not appear quite as threatening when looked back upon. Likewise, an experience that was originally minute in its significance can grow as time goes on. The time of year the survey was given was also a likely influence. All of the performers were given the surveys at the end of the semester after their final performance of the season. It is quite probable that they were feeling a stress release having finished a major commitment and thus answered more positively than at an earlier time in the semester. Were I to do this again, I would conduct the same survey with the same dancers within two days after a performance and repeat the process several times throughout the season. One survey at the end of the semester simply was not enough.

While the results of my research may not have been what I expected, the patterns that revealed themselves through examination of the data allowed me to formulate several new hypotheses regarding psychological issues for performing artists. Along with continuing my research on this particular topic, I would like to begin exploring these other hypotheses in hopes of bringing a greater awareness of dance training methods to the companies at Brigham Young University