You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
I often tell this to my students when they ask me about auditions. When all of your dreams are hanging on the decisions of someone else it can be a daunting experience to head out into audition season. Yet it is this very process that can change your life in an instant.
Life changing opportunities are best approached with specific preparation. With limited time, what will elicit the best outcomes? What can you do as a developing young artist to give yourself the best chance at success and what should we avoid? To answer these questions I want to take you back to a story from my childhood.
As a young boy I did countless auditions for tv commercials and film with very limited success. I remember my first audition around the age of 7 to get an agent and then the subsequent and seemingly endless search for tv work. I didn’t get much but what I didn’t realise at the time was that my place wasn’t in film, it was in dance.
Fast forward a few years and I went to my very first audition experience for The Rock School summer program. In the United States, summer programs were the pathway to entrance into year round programs. I remember being quite nervous and unsure when the number was pinned to my chest, and I have flashbacks to the looks on the faces of the audition panel who would be deciding my fate.
That first audition lead to others including the Kirov Academy of Ballet in Washington, DC where I ended up going the summer of 1999. I remember the thrill that overcame me when I left that audition and the director came up to me and in her thick Russian accent said “very good boy, little Baryshnikov.” Auditioning was always a whirlwind lending to emotions of excitement, apprehension, and nervousness. Opportunities rested on my ability to live up to the undisclosed expectations of people I had never met.
What I had going for me was a coach who believed in me and parents who would give me anything I needed to be successful, I just needed to dance my heart out.
Auditions became a way of life for the rest of my time as a dancer, which ended up being a career that spanned 3 continents with The Vienna State Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and The Queensland Ballet.
From my first company audition with The Royal Danish Ballet in 2004 to the numerous internal audition processes once I was dancing professionally with choreographers choosing who would dance their ballets, auditions never stopped.
These days there is an added layer of difficulty with video auditions being the starting point for most schools and companies. This is where many dancers fall down right off the bat. We train for years for live performance, yet our first exposure to schools and potential employers is through the dim filter of a camera lens.
My biggest piece of advice here is this: break through the camera.
When filming, you must give 10 times the energy you would normally feel is suitable for classwork. A ballet school director recently reminded me that audition panels have often been in the studio all day before sitting down to watch hundreds of submissions. If you don’t jump off the screen and demand attention, others will.
This is where it becomes absolutely essential that you know, and play to, your strengths as a dancer and work with someone on creating your video that can help you to do that as well.
Filming videos can be daunting especially if you start to make mistakes during the filming. A wobble in a pirouette on the first attempt in a combination may lead to stumbles elsewhere in your second take, and while you might fix those stumbles in the 3rd take you fall out of the finishing pose. It can be a battle of diminishing returns and that’s why focusing on perfection will only hinder your process. This is where the focus should be on presenting your unique qualities as a dancer.
One of the biggest challenges we all face as dancers is creating in reality the picture we see in our minds. Have you ever danced and filmed a combination thinking it felt and looked amazing only to watch it back and cringe because your feeling didn’t match the playback? Making reality match the image in your head can take time and it’s why I recommend all dancers utilise the technology we have on hand to self coach.
Huge caveat here though, make sure you are being constructive and not destructive in your self criticism. Instead of watching yourself with a negative internal dialogue, reframe your inner voice to ask questions. A simple “what would make that look how I want it to?” will always lead to better results than “why do I look so terrible?”
Once you’ve put the video together, it’s time to find the places you want to apply for. This may seem obvious to some, but my advice is always to look for schools that teach the way you feel fit you and for companies where the dancers resemble you in build or movement quality and dance repertoire you want to dance.
Whether we like it or not, when starting out many of the decisions around choosing dancers come down to how well you fit into the established framework of a school or company. This is why I say “you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.”
A no from a application is not a rejection of your dancing as much as it’s the school or company telling you that the fit isn’t right. “No” is an opportunity for awareness that somewhere else is actually going to be a better fit.
You will hear “no” a lot on your journey to becoming the artist you want to be. This is not a rejection as much as it is an opportunity to learn. It’s also where we develop resilience.
Have you ever thought about why we enter the studio each day, repeat the same sequence of combinations, and practice for many years? Its because discipline, perseverance and resilience define our ability to thrive in the incredibly competitive dance world.
I often will advocate for my dancers to go to the gym as well, to lift weights. In a recent gym session with one of my dancers, she pushed through a mental limitation and lifted weight she didn’t think possible for an amount of repetitions she had never done before. This seemingly non dance breakthrough created a internal mindset shift from “I don’t know if I can do that” to “I can do what I set my mind to do.”
When it comes to auditioning it is exactly this mindset we need to have when we enter the studio. When you are on display it can be hard to focus on details, musicality, learning new choreography all while attempting to break through to the audition panel if, inside, you’re silently wondering if you’re good enough. This is why it’s absolutely essential that we train to do challenging things so that when a new challenge is presented we approach it with excitement instead of apprehension.
So what should you focus on in your next audition?
The little details that the teacher asks for. If they ask for arms or musicality that are different to what you are used to, remove the autopilot and adapt.
Focus on your body language. Work on keeping yourself positive and engaged. Crossed arms, slumped posture, even negative facial expressions can limit your ability to be perceived favourably.
Perhaps most importantly, understand that your audition begins from the first email you send. The way you communicate, the attention to detail in your video and the audition requirements, how you walk though the door of the studio, how you interact with other dancers at the audition, everything is being watched and taken into consideration.
As you enter audition season, remember this: You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
I wish you luck, but more importantly I want you to learn. Learn from the challenges that present themselves and apply the lessons you learn so that you become the artist you dream of becoming.
That is how careers are built. Not from one moment of selection, but from many moments of persistence.
Practice for many years. 
-Shane Wuerthner
This article is featured in the April Issue of Dance Australia