044: 'What Makes a Great Performer? With Tom English'

[Music] Welcome to the Shapes in Motion podcast. We're your host, Sarah Perry and Steven Moynihan. And each episode will be sharing the inspiration and inside knowledge we've gained from over a collective 50 years in the performance industry. We'll also be bringing you a range of inspiring insightful conversations from some of the best-loved movers and makers in our field. Together, we will celebrate and share our mutual love of acting, dance, choreography and all things movement. Though if you're a mover, maker or industry shaker, you're definitely in the right place. On with the show. The essence of performance for me is storytelling. I think the stories that move people the most to the ones that are told with the degree of lived experience. And so when we're young often, I think we try to approximate that. Often people can feel like they have to show up as they already know what to do and can lead people to be quite unsure of themselves but with a cloak of certainty, which I think is really hard to do good work. In today's episode, I'm joined by artistic director and lecturer with expertise in performance psychology and training methodologies, Tom English. We talk about his work with Punch-Shrunk and Wim Van De Keebos, leading first-anime Terenova and his research into dance science, neuroscience, mindfulness and performance psychology. All well exploring one big question. What makes a great performer? Happy listening. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Shapes in Motion Podcast. And today I'm joined by artistic director and lecturer with expertise in performance psychology and training methodologies, Tom English. Hi Tom, how are things? Good, thank you. It's a real pleasure to be here today. Talk to you guys. I'm a big fan of the podcast. Thank you. It's so great to have you. I was actually thinking because we are both alumni of London Contemporary Dance School. I thought it might be a really nice start to well talk to that where you started your training because you actually did a foundation at Romber and then went to London Contemporary Dance School and then did a master's Trinity Lab. I'm really curious to how you found your way into dance and your experience through various institutions with dance education. Yeah, I think it's an interesting narrative really when I look back on it. I'm in my mid-30s now and I think I found my way into dance. It was around the time when the Billy Elliot film had just come out and there was still this social stigma around boys dancing, especially where I grew up. And I was also playing a lot of sports. I was playing football and rugby and that's that it. And for some reason at a young age, I think I just had so much energy all the time that my parents just wanted to find things for me to do almost every day after school. And my sister was doing some ballet classes and we also had some great community dance classes run by a woman called Cecilia McFarlane, called Oxford Youth Dance. This was in East Oxford. And so I found myself probably from the age of about five until I left home at 16, just doing every activity that I could possibly do after school every day. And over the years that kind of refined more and more into football and dance every day of the week I'd be doing one or the other. And when I was about 14, 13 or 14, the cat scheme had just been launched. The Centre for Advanced Training scheme had just been launched. There was a pilot year at Swindon Dance. And one of my dance teachers said, "Oh, Tommy might like this, runs every Saturday." So I went to my first ever audition at the age of 13 and I got accepted into the pilot year of this cat scheme programme. There was just eight or nine of us that year. And so I started going to Swindon every Saturday on the train and doing dance training that more represented the contemporary dance training that we're more familiar with in institutions. So like, cunning and classes, floorwork, ballet. It was all a bit more serious than a community dance that I've been doing at home, which is more of a social setting. And then again, the same thing happened, which has teachers from there said, "Oh, you know, you might be interested in doing some vocational training, you might be interested in training full time." I don't think I'd ever really considered it as a career option. But I had this feeling of the idea of moving to London at that age and just getting out from my hometown and seeing the big wide world was quite a bit exciting. And I think I was always quite done with school. I was done with being sat in a classroom and I was relatively bright, so I didn't have to put in much effort at school to get by. But I wasn't excelling in any academic area. I just was sort of getting on with that, waiting for the school day to end so I could get out and move my body. So again, I auditioned at 16 for Rumba and I got in, even though I didn't have a great deal of classical technique and I was built more for sprinting than ballet. But I think a couple of the teachers there enjoyed, I remember I spoke to them a few years later, they said, "They enjoyed the way I moved through space." Which I think is a way of saying that I was quick and I could jump. And so, yeah, the 16 I moved to London started at Rumba. Now what I didn't know at the time was that I was born with a congenital condition in my ankle bones, where one of my joints, one of the most important joints was shock absorption. It's called the subtailer joint, was slowly fusing together. The bones were slowly joining. And I'd had a few sports injuries to a football, which I hadn't really known, would do to this condition. One in particular where the tendons got so tight that they pulled off a little chunk of bone from the bottom of the ankle joint. And while I was training at Rumba, we were doing full days, lots of jumping, very athletic movement development across the first year. And I was just waking up every day with very swollen ankles, excruciating to walk. And it became quite clear after about nine months or so that something wasn't right. And so the fantastic team at Rumba, the physiotherapy and osteopathy team sent me for some scans on my ankles and this condition was revealed. And the initial prognosis was that I'd probably never be able to dance for a career or do any sort of sports. And that they would operate to remove the joint in the bones, but that would just be so that I could still get around. But Peter Dunlevy, who was working at Rumba at the time, I believe still does, who's a very experienced osteopath and said, "You should give it a try first before you accept that as truth. See what happens." And so it's a cut along middle section of the story out, which is where I had the operation, tried to come back to training. It didn't go very well the first time. It took then an extended period of time off when I wasn't sure if I would come back to dancing. During that time off, I worked quite extensively as a labourer on the river in Oxford. We had these long boats called Punts and we were building the boats and then punting people on the river. So this very physical worked quite long days. And because I wasn't thinking about my ankles, my legs actually got quite strong again, lots of lifting and kind of long days on my feet. I saved up a lot of money through this and then I fulfilled a lifelong dream of mine, which was to travel. It was probably 18 at this point and traveled across East and South Africa and then also in South America. Wow. And had just the most formative experience and I was very hungry to learn about different movement practices. And so I was learning traditional dances in Uganda, traditional running techniques in South Africa. And I came to Brazil and was studying capoeira in Rio de Janeiro for I think two or three months. Often training on the beach in the sand, it was just so different to the dance technique styles that I'd learned prior to that. And along the whole, I found that I sort of started to move a bit differently, slightly more grounded way. I got very strong amount of body because I'd spent so much time on crutches after the operations. And I started to explore more acrobatic movement and floorwork and just found that I wasn't having any of the inflammation or any of the swelling anymore. It sort of repattened the movements that there was less biomechanical strain on the ankles. And I decided to return to my training at that point. I realized, okay, maybe this is possible. Maybe I can do this. Maybe my body can take it. But instead of going back to Rambai, I decided to go to London contemporary dance school where the training was at the time considered less classical and there were more techniques around like floorwork, improvisation, partnering, etc. So yeah, I returned to the place. I'll see the S. And from then until now, I would say that's the moment when my career as a performer kind of started because within about eight months of going back, I already was offered my first job as a performer with punch strength. Wow. So somehow this sort of meandering route through the education, lots of uncertainty, a lot of time on the sidelines watching my peers train and develop and graduate. It took me five years to do the two years of training. But I think by the end of it, I'd found a really unique and individual way of moving and approaching movement, which then once I found myself back in London, it didn't take long for me to stay notice of that and for it to kind of capture the imagination of some choreographers and directors as well, which was very exciting. Yeah. I'm always very curious because I started at London Contabuit Dance School at 21, so I was a few years older than I'd say. The majority of the year were probably just out of a secondary school. I'm always very curious to, you know, it's dance is often seen as such a young person's thing. I'm always curious to people who come to the training a little bit older and what that means in terms of emotional maturity and ownership and independence of learning, I guess also. I mean, it's an impossible question, but do you feel having that time away change your outlook on how you wanted to be in an institution for dance? I think so. And I think often when we're young, I'm going to generalize here, young people are often very impressed by virtuosic movements. They want to learn tricks and to have the highest leg and the pointiest feet to be able to hold the hand stand for longer. And it's not that that necessarily goes away as people get older, it's always fun to have skills. But I think that the essence of performance for me is storytelling. And I think the stories that move people the most are the ones that are told were the degree of lived experience. And so when we're young often, I think we try to approximate that the weight that comes to that lived experience. And we can mysticise what makes a good performer and try to replicate the way that they speak or the way that the character walks or dances. And I work a lot with dancers and actors and with young actors, for example, that they'll kind of act like what they think magnetic or charismatic is. Perhaps misunderstanding that that often just becomes to someone's essence, that lived experience is carried in the way they speak, the way they move. And you can't really artificially create that. And so my view is that when we're young, it's a really great time to develop the technical skills that later on in life can support that storytelling. So developing your capacity for skillful movement, athletic movement for a vocal range or psychological flexibility for playfulness. Without the pressure of needing to be good as a performer, it's something that I say a lot when I'm teaching, when a performer is trying to be good or trying to be interesting, it becomes quite self-conscious. They're aware that they're being seen and interpreted and they're trying to fulfill what they think the audience might want. But in the moments that we can let go of needing to be good or interesting, or to do it right, and instead get interested in whatever we're doing, if it's an improvisation task, if it's a story we're telling, if it's an action between characters on the stage. There's some of those moments that we invest in the curiosity of the moment that performance starts to emerge, the sort of performance that moves an audience or transports an audience starts to emerge. And it's very difficult because a lot of dance training historically has been treated almost like you might train an athlete. And the implication being that if you just get that higher leg or that flexibility or that higher jump or that extra turn or that step, that then you'll be a great performer. And I think that it's hard to support artists in transitioning from that kind of approach, which maybe is well-intentioned, but then can lead to a lot of dissatisfaction when people spend all this time training and then it comes time to perform. And it's a challenge to create performances these days, which really engage audiences in the age of information. So I think it's an exciting challenge, but certainly I think that to the point of the question, that lived experience is really invaluable. And finding also spaces for people to develop their confidence in sharing their lived experience, whether it's this role or interpretive. And it's also a really important part of that training development. So just coming back to something that you talked to a little bit earlier about, you know, working with various directors and choreographers, you've worked across so many mediums and dance, theater, and film, and music. I was wondering kind of with that portfolio career, what do you feel like or how you've developed as a collaborator? Because I feel like collaboration is just so important to work in the industry. Yes, I had some really fantastic teachers early on in my development who instilled this principle of a beginner's mind into the way that they approached training and pediculture. And I really felt very liberated by that idea. And I think that served me really well in that every time that my career has moved to a new area with unfamiliar aspects that often people can feel like they have to show up as they already know what to do. And that's really scary, I think. And can lead people to be quite unsure of them selves, but with a cloak of certainty, which I think is really hard to do good work when you're unsure of yourself, but trying to pretend that you are. And so I had some really good role models who just modeled the approach of being really honest when you don't know what something is or what something means. And I've had the luxury of two or three times throughout my career, taking a break to do something completely new. I took time out in 2017 to study acting at Oxford School of Drama under one year, of course. This was because I was starting to work a lot in those mediums and with actors and I wanted to understand their craft more. And in that environment, I'd already been working with Punch Drunk, I'd already been working with Wimbanda Cabas. And I had to go in and just be like a child again and have the movement teacher, I remember I was doing a movement assessment and the movement teacher afterwards said, is that it? He was expecting, you know, me, the movement artist, the dancer to come with something special. And I just didn't really get the task and it was deeply humbling, but in a way that I found very exciting, very liberating. And I try and bring that energy into new projects as well. And I think when you ask artist questions about their craft, they're always excited to answer, I think, in the right moment. If it's a genuine question, like, oh, you know, you mentioned this technical term, can you tell me what that is? I don't actually know. And it crafts people are normally really excited to talk in detail about their art. And so finding the right moment to ask those questions and then that's a great process for learning those things. I think nowadays that the norm for artists and contemporary performance is to work across lots of different mediums, lots of different contexts with lots of different collaborators. And we can't be expected to know everything about every medium. So I think developing that capacity to ask, to talk, to converse. And then also to truly appreciate the depth of other people's expertise. So if you know that someone's role is to compose the music or light the scene, it's developing that sort of trust and appreciation that you're getting to witness their performance as well. And they might not be the performer on the stage, but their craft is just as intricate. And they spent just as much time training. And I think that the in the directing work that I do, that's the most joyful part is you can put together a team who you know are just going to kind of live in their role. And that you can give them gentle guidance and sort of oversight of the process. But you're trusting people to just really own and find kind of authenticity in their area. And that then it builds this collective endeavor that for me is the biggest joy in being an artist in general is that collaborative aspect of it. It's such a nice reminder, like, about not feeling that you have to know everything about everything. And I think that it just takes the pressure off. I think sometimes there's just this massive pressure to go into every scenario knowing everything about everything. But there's also, as you were saying, which is true, it also gives, I guess, respect to the expertise of somebody else. And it's not that you can't learn from other people, but you had just giving yourself space to maybe feel uncomfortable and that's okay, but it's also a space of learning. I'm very curious in terms of talking about uncomfortable spaces about working within immersive work, because it is such a different dynamic of where the audience is and where the performer is. And you've worked, as you mentioned, with Punch Drunk. How did that change your outlook towards, I guess, body and space and relation to the audience? Yeah, it really transforms my whole understanding of performance and what it can be. My first job out of training was a show called The Drown Man, which was a huge immersive spectacle in London, 400,000 square foot building, 100 plus rooms and a roaming audience. And when that's your first job, it can be hard to go back to performing in their sort of end-on theatre set up. I think it really did sort of set my expectations in a little bit of a strange way in terms of just how connected you can feel to an audience. And so I found that afterwards whenever I was working in more traditional theatrical set-up, I'd always be suggesting, "Oh, why don't we go into the audience at this point?" Or, "We can jump up to stage." But I think now with the way that we have such access to media, music, films, TV and also dance and movement and often we can see it in any waking moment we can have access to these things. I think that more and more audiences will start to turn towards experiences that are multi-sensory and spatially dynamic. And by that I mean things where you actually have to explore physically the world, that it's not sort of brought to you to your eyes and your hands, but that you have to go and walk or move through the spaces. You're smelling different scents, seeing different sights, choosing your vantage point. And Punch Shanks work and the formula behind the mask shows that Punch Shanks runs just creates that space so beautifully, I think. And as a young performer, you also learn the fragility of the audience in those settings. Because you're kind of encouraged to be discombobulated. You put a mask on the audience and then you put them in these dark spaces with lots of sound and sight smells. And initially it can be easy to get bit annoyed with the audience if they're in the way or not watching or chatting or holding someone's hand whatever it might be. But actually most of that just speaks to the fragility of the state they're in. They're in this uncertain space. By design we want them to feel a little bit on edge in an exciting way. And so it was also learning to give a lot of grace to the audience. And to sort of think deeply about how to try to engineer their experience, but leave as much uncertainty as possible so that there are this sort of journey through the performance. But it's not just random, they're not just left to wander around and get bored. There is some engineering to it, but we want everyone to have a deep sense of exploration. Like you could just sort of go out of your house now and have a real adventure, a very visceral adventure. So really it changed the whole way that I approach performance. I was very, very privileged, a young age to have those experiences with Punch Drunken. And for a time to work with them a few times across my career, it was astonishing really. I find this so interesting. I think it was Peter Brook talked about the responsibility of the audience. And it's so interesting to hear you talk about that about not only their freedom, but also what they bring in terms of I guess their presence and how the performers and the audience not only are in physical proximity, but also I guess sharing an emotional stage in a way and how those two things influence each other. I know you've done a lot of studies. I was wondering if you could talk more towards your studies at Oxford or with Dan Science, neuroscience, mindfulness, performance psychology, which I'm sure is all wrapped up with every moment of Punch Drunk as well. Yeah, I got really interested in cognitive science in my mid-20s and I've just been trying to find different ways to approach that from a performance psychology perspective, from mindfulness, based meditation approaches. And it's a big part of my teaching, which is not just looking at performance as a physical act, but also trying to deeply understand the cognitive processes, the thought processes that we go through as performers, how we can be in pre-performative states, such as performance anxiety, self-consciousness, and then how that transitions into performative states where we truly lose ourself in the performance and how different that can be for different performers. And with Punch Drunk, all of the imaginative work is done for the performer because you're really not on a stage, you know, with the drown man, we had a whole town, there was a whole, Tevin, there was a whole trailer part with trees, you know, it was real. And the sights, the smells, the sounds, all of that imaginative work was kind of created in real life for the performer and the audience. And so that was kind of a space of drilling down into the specificities of the characters arc. But then moving to other performance contexts afterwards, and also working in some very, very stripped-back performance settings, where there's no set, no music, just the performer. I got very interested in how we can create that imaginative world for the audience. And I would simplify it that if it's real for the performer, if they're truly tasting, sensing, experiencing an imagined world, that that has this transmission effect and that somehow the audience can feel it too. As soon as it becomes demonstrative, like I'm trying to show you that there's a big building in front of me, then it becomes make believe. And I think screen actors in particular have an incredible skill for this, because very often they're on a closed set, the cameras close up, and they're doing incredibly detailed imaginative work, not just of what they're seeing and living in the present moment, but then also what they're recalling, imagining for the future. And the eyes just transmit it with such clarity. I really think you can't fake that process. And one of the joys of cognitive science is that we've developed these ways of mapping brain activity to the point where you could scan a performer and act as brain and see which areas of the brain are lighting up in these different moments. And so in a way you could sort of know if someone's faking it or if they're genuinely recalling this imagined memory or catastrophizing about an imagined future. For me, what's great about that is it demystifies what being a good performer is about, that it's as simple as developing tools to immerse yourself in either real or imagined situations and to develop tools to be able to transcend the barriers to that such a self-consciousness, performance anxiety. And all of those tools already exist because that's what people have been teaching for thousands of years, hundreds of years, last decades. It's all the same processes. It exercises tools, practices that ground the performer in the present moment in their senses and then create a capacity for the performers in pulses to manifest into action without that doubt of is this the right choice? Am I doing the right thing? Am I good? Are the audience going to enjoy it? This self-conscious experience. So it's my favorite thing to kind of geek out on what's really the mechanisms that underlie these different performance states and then a challenge for me is translating that into the classroom for performers in a way that doesn't feel too scientific or too technical that keeps the sense of mystery that artistry and performance I think needs. I think if it becomes too scientific it becomes a bit stale. So yeah, trying to find balance for that. That's my challenge at the moment. Absolutely. How do you communicate something? I think it's even with a huge bank of knowledge. It's also understanding the person who's receiving it at the other end and depending on the day, depending on the week, people can receive the information and do a lot more with it. It really depends and also recognising that. Curious about how that influenced your work as an artistic director with your company Ferris Annamy Tarnova? I guess working as an artistic director and also the studies that you've done with neuroscience, like how those two things are, did one come first or do you think they've always been interlinks? They co-erose pretty much simultaneously because for me, I don't know when it started. I just, at some points, started to always wonder why. I wonder why we're like that. I wonder why humans are like this. And I could be watching a film and be like, it's strange that humans make films. I wonder why we do that. I wonder why it's satisfied. Taking this broad view of human evolution and I find it quite joyful to apply it to all the different things that we do. And so for me, as a performer, performance was one of the main ones. Why do we go and sit down as a group and watch people pretend to be other people? It's strange. Why do we sit down and watch people move their bodies rhythmically to music? Why do we make music? You know, just these questions that we don't have any secure answers on, but there's really beautiful anthropological theories around. So through that process, I always found it really inspiring when teachers approached it from that broad perspective. Not from like, okay, we're going to learn the specific technique today, but what is dance? Why do we dance? What does it fulfill? What do you get from it? What does it give to the audience? And so when I started teaching that was kind of the approach that I was building. And with pharithanami, that's the sort of space to explore human function and artistry from a really, really broad perspective, from like an evolutionary perspective in terms of when did these things originate? Why do they show up in every society that's ever existed on earth, dance, music, theatre, storytelling? What function do they serve? Must they somehow be essential if they keep showing up in this way? My view, yes they are. And so pharithanami has been a really beautiful space for that quite untethered exploration, a sort of practice as research where we get performers and movers and artists and thinkers together in studio spaces and just explore and research, firstly human function, and then storytelling, movement, performance. With no specific thesis, no hypothesis that we're trying to prove, but more discursive approach of then reflecting, it becomes a big open source exercise and just talking about, like we are now, talking about performance. And so those two parts of my work just went hand in hand, really. And I'm not performing so much now, but I do perform a bit, and I actually start playing music, so I'm doing some very small and secret gigs in my local coffee shop. And it continues to be this space for me to research those things in my own body and in my own mind. We can get so bogged down in whether what we're doing is good and whether people like it, I get it. But for me, the question is always, why do I need to do this? Not as though it's a bad thing, but just that of genuine curiosity. Why does making music or dance or theatre fulfill something in me, even when it's a private performance, even when it's a secret point, even when it's just for me? And listening to other people's answers to those questions as well, and just realizing that beautiful complexity of human idiosyncrasy, some people, it might be for a really clear reason that might be more interpersonal. Some people might be trying to reach someone through their art, some people it might be a way of making sense of how this is the world. So I think you get the sense, I just love asking these questions and creating space for young people too as well. One thing I'll say is that a lot of young people care really, really deeply about art, but they're often still in this evolutionary phase of it's not cool to care. Late teenage hood, there's this kind of shift in the brain, we get much more self-conscious, much more awkward, our body changes, and our mind changes quite rapidly. And so this dual system of it's not cool to care, but they also start to develop the sense of self and their hobbies and their artistic taste. And so that you see young people often care really, really deeply about their art, but have this social brain that's saying, don't let anyone know, keep your secret. And so most of my work at the moment that's saying the university context where it's people who are coming towards the end of their neurological puberty period around the age of 22, 24 is to try and give them some courage to care deeply and to be unashamed about how much they care. Whatever it is they care about, I don't think art discriminates, and I personally don't think the good art exists, but I think the connected art exists, truthful art, exists, courageous art exists. So that age is so challenging for young performers. They don't have that lived experience that we spoke about, which might add weight to their performative techniques. They might still be awkward and fearful of owning the things that they're passionate about. And you know, if I'm thinking more poetically, that's the right of right of passage for the performers, well, I think we don't want to skip those steps, but we just want to support students so that they don't lose motivation and kind of stop being an artist just because things aren't easy to begin with, that they understand that it's part of the process and that time will bring experience and experience will bring weight and that age will bring a bit more of, you know, not giving a, I don't know if I'm allowed to swear or not, but not giving an S. No, absolutely. I remember actually talking to a few years after I graduated talking to one of the teachers at London Condepter-Dan School, and she talked to something very similar about the challenge of, I guess every year you have a new cohort of encouraging people to really invest in the kind of uncertainty or unknown of things, you know, but I think maybe particularly with dance, you're, I think up until maybe a vocational training, professional training, it's a lot of repetition and you're told you're really good because you replicate very well what somebody else has shown you. And I think there's a massive shift then when you go into a professional training context of trying to turn that into ownership and have an opinion and have difference of opinions to other people and not feel like that there's a right and wrong in that. So I just, yeah, I just remember her talking about that being a challenge of, you know, with each year a new cohort of like really encouraging people to kind of coming back to what you were talking about earlier about maybe sitting in an uncomfortable place. I was wondering coming back to education again, but you were part of the team who made the MA in Performance at London Condepter-Dan School. I was wondering why and maybe what you think was kind of missing from the kind of education that made you want to create a new course? Yeah, it's a great question. The main intention behind the creation of the new MA in Performance was trying to update the training in terms of the professional facing aspects of education. So we did a lot of focus groups and gathered feedback from portfolio freelance artists and also artists who've been working in companies or choreographers. And the feedback was that there's a lot of really great dancers, solid technique, move well, that generally speaking their understanding of what the industry is really like was quite limited. And the industry has changed so much over the last 10 years, that along the last 20 years. And so with this program, we have kind of two train tracks. One is the artistic development. And in that space we're kind of continuing the really excellent work that conservatized in the UK I've been doing over the last 50 years in preparing performers. And then the second train track is the professional skills, how to manage a career, what it means to be a portfolio artist. Many young people don't know what that term means, that it's about building a capacity for different roles in different performance media that sometimes you might be a performer, sometimes you might be a dramaturg or a rehearsal director. You might create a portfolio of work that's in a digital space and short films. You might have a portfolio of work that's in a live space in theatrical productions. And that it will often range between different artistic genres, which might sometimes be contemporary dance, but you might end up working in an opera for a while or in a film or on a television series. All of these spaces need dance. And so with the MA, really building those skills into the curriculum. And this is a professional facing program. So it's less of an academic facing program. We have those courses too at the place. But it's looking at those career relevant skills. Also have to have to write funding applications, how to organize residences, how to collect feedback on an R&D period. These skills which you can learn on the job. But if you have had your first experience with them, it just takes some of that fear away. What we're trying to smooth out is the hesitation moment when young artists an opportunity emerges and they hesitate because they go, I don't know how to write an application. I don't know how to email this agent. I don't know how to do an audition where I have to sing a song or use my voice. Just to remove that hesitation moment so that then they feel equipped to just get put themselves out there. When you put yourself out there, things will happen. The main determinant in a performance success is, I don't think that the talent I say in it in Verta commas, I think it's their longevity. I think it's their capacity to stay involved in the scene in whatever way. Perform a supporting artist, whatever it might be. But that that will lead to a career in the arts. Because if you are around and you care deeply, people will need you at some point. And the longer you've been around, the more people will need that expertise. So that's why we see people start to get quite busy around the like 10 year mark typically. But if you're saying to someone, strap in because the first 10 years, you're being asked to keep showing up, but you're not yielding much in return. It's a hard sell. And in a way, that does have a function of forcing young artists to really consider, are they doing it for the right reason? Because if they're doing it for instant success or reputation, it's going to be tough statistically speaking. Now there's much more persists on working with young people to really understand that performance psychologists work with young footballers for example because of the 40-50,000 schoolboy footballers at any point in time in the academy in the UK of tiny tiny tiny percentage of those who will end up playing in the Premier League for example with dance with acting is statistically speaking pretty pretty similar for every young dancer who has their mind set on a very finite goal we'll call this end gaming statistically speaking yes we want them to chase their dreams we want them to be ambitious but we prefer our students to identify what it is about that company or that choreographer that they are connected with and then to work about building that in their career irrespective of whether it's with that specific company or in their own work or with other other artists and for there to be a sort of realism that is ultimately quite liberating I think but I use the metaphor of like a book with multiple chapters for young artists it can feel like having to close that chapter of being in the kind of limitless streamer the parents saying you can be anyone you want to be and saying okay well now I'm trained I want to be an artist but what does that mean in a in a professional context in this mature industry where my ambitious child lecturers have a great deal of value but my capacity for pragmatism will also be essential building that career let's try to find that balance it's not easy that's so amazing to hear I feel like I'm learning so much Tom if I could ask you one last question and this is a very big one is what do you think makes a good performer because we've talked about being a performer so much today but I'm curious to yeah what elements do you think make a good performer whatever that means yes a beautiful question that's really hard to answer maybe impossible I would say but you know I think you you particularly think so well I'm very curious of your answer I think that for me there's a lot that we speak about in psychology around this idea of self actualization of creating space for authenticity and when you find your space your art your people that individuals can live in a kind of unapologetic way an authentic way a connected way that everything they do is dripping with truth I don't teach you at drama school who would encourage us to pump the truth he would say you've got to pump the truth and if someone was doing so he'd say they've got the truth on tap which I loved that's great so I think it's very hard as a young person probably to hear that and think how do I achieve that my view to give a sort of metaphorical description is that that's not about putting more things on top of yourself sometimes we approach training and education as though I'm going to get things to put on me knowledge skills and that's you know that's a virtuous process but for me at a certain point the process inverts and at that point it's about starting to let go and to see what's left see what's stuck and that each day you can let go of something that's not serving you that you don't need in your performance that that is an obstacle or a barrier to find something eventually hopefully that feels really truthful and really authentic we work with young artists on these like different philosophical frameworks about to view development this idea of growth I say in a verse of commerce implies that we're growing but in different philosophical frameworks one could argue that development is about letting go simplifying finding essence and that's in our language as well to find what's essential for example so for any young performers listening I'd say that's that's the moment of trying to discern when you've done your loading of new things new ideas new techniques and it's always nice to revisit new things as well but also to think about when you feel ready how you start to kind of shed and let go and see what's left one of my teachers and movement teachers said you have to see what's come out in the wash like you're painting a piece of fabric with all these paints when you're learning and training but that's not ready to go on stage you have to put it in the washing machine and then when you take it out everything that's there will be deep in the fabric it'll be embodied and truthful hopefully so you have to see what comes out in the wash and I like that that's so lovely it's so well put Tom it's been an absolute joy hearing you speak today and sharing all your experience with me and everyone who's listening before I let you go where can we find you so socials website the cafe you play your music at if you want to share that that's a secret but for the work that I do at the place on a contemporary dance school advice just looking at the places website you can see the teacher bios and course information for the work that I do as director of ferrous animator and over and you can find us on Instagram you can also find our website and if you're interested in getting in contact with me directly about any of the things that we spoke about then I'm always open to receiving emails you can find that on the places website or on the ferrous animator website as well fantastic we'll put all that information into the show notes but Tom thank you so much for coming on it's been so wonderful to talk to you and I would love you to come back another time just continue the conversation I feel like we've barely scratched the surface but until you're back again have a great day and I will talk to you very very soon take care thank you so much thank you bye thank you so much for listening and being part of our growing shapes in motion community we truly value your time and support to stay connected follow us on instagram at shapesin motion at seroperry movement and at st moinahan don't forget to check out the shapesin motion website for the latest news and to sign up for our newsletter if you enjoyed this episode please take a moment to 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