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studio. Our students appear in action before them, and at other times
before some neighborhood or church benefit audience. They are properly
dressed for their part, and their makeup is right when they go "behind
the footlights" for their first professional performance--all of which
gives the necessary self-confidence that carries the dancer through
the trying ordeal of a first appearance.

STAGE FRIGHT--WHAT IT IS AND HOW TO OVERCOME IT

When you step out upon the stage to do your turn for the first time,
you will be very grateful to me for having instilled into your mind
the necessity for doing your work over and over till it has become
second nature to you. You will thank me, too, for the long series of
foundation work, limbering and stretching exercises, that you have
gone through, that have kept you from being muscle-bound, given you
confidence as well as ability, and left you without fear of not being
able to go through with what you have undertaken. This and the
knowledge that your costume and makeup are perfect, are of the
greatest help in begetting that confidence that overcomes the danger
of stage fright, not only on a first but also on all subsequent
appearances. Knowing that you look right is half the battle; the other
half is the certainty that you know what you are about to do and know
it perfectly.

Stage fright is the uncontrollable fear of an audience. It is the
result of excessive nervousness. The orator, the actor and the singer
experience this dread more often than does the dancer or the
instrumental musician. The mouth becomes dry and the throat contracts
as the speaker or singer attempts to get his voice across the
footlights and out to the audience. One's voice becomes faint and
unnatural, weak and uncontrollable. Those who afterwards have become
the world's great actors and singers have many of them been overcome
with stage fright, and even left the stage on a first appearance.
Richard Mansfield was one of these. He fainted from stage fright at
his first appearance, yet he afterwards became one of the greatest
dramatic stars in the world.

The stage dancer does not have this difficulty with her voice, and if
trained right while acquiring her art should never be subjected to the
bugaboo of fear. But I am going to lay down some general rules here
for the prevention and control of stage fright that will give you
confidence and also serve to instruct you how to act if the worst does
happen a