nd nervousness gets the best of you. In chorus work, of
course, there is little danger. Your mates will carry you along if you
miss a step or break your routine, and you'll soon get back all right.
In solo work, don't try to look at your audience nor single out any
individuals. Don't glue your gaze on the orchestra leader, though he
alone is the audience of which you have any right to be at all
conscious. He and his baton are your friends and are giving you your
tempo. Be aware of them incidentally but not conspicuously, and forget
the rest of the folks in front entirely. Forget yourself, forget
everything but the music that fills your ears, and let your dancing
absorb you completely. Radiate an air of conscious certainty in all
you do. Smile. Look happy. Your dance is a good one and you know how
to do it Well. You know you do. Pretty soon a ripple of applause
starts. It grows and fills that big half-dark place down there before
you. That is a tonic. Your stage fright or your fear of it is gone for
good. Your audience has accepted you. Now you glow with the happiness
that is yours by every right. Applause is to you and your art as the
shower and the sun are to the flowers. You live on it. Without it you
are a failure.

Suppose you had let your fear master you. Suppose you had quit cold,
got cold feet, let yourself be scared out of your wits, and not braved
the thing you feared. That would have been a calamity. Your promising
career would have ended before it began, after all your expenditure of
time and money for lessons. Don't let anything scare you. Go on when
your turn comes. Keep going. No matter what happens, don't give
up--keep right on till you get your nerve back.

I saw a young singer come out in front of a large audience once, get
her cue from the orchestra, and stop dead. She looked out over the
crowded auditorium. The leader held his baton suspended in air.
"Wait," she said. "I've forgotten it." The audience was dead silent,
understanding just what had happened, and very sympathetic. The
orchestra leader spoke a single word to her.

"Oh, yes!" she smiled, and her voice swelled out into the song she had
so nearly forgotten.

Did she get a hand? I'll say she did, and a couple of encores and a
press notice next morning that told all about it, and her career was
launched. She had presence of mind and control of herself. Cultivate
this by first gaining perfect control of every muscle in your body, by
persist