When your role is to be part of the background—less center stage, more scenery—it can sometimes feel like what you do onstage doesn’t matter all that much. But it’s actually an essential role: These dancers can set the tone, help move the story forward, and give the audience something rich and layered to look at. “Learning how to blend in, how to listen and respond, how to shape the space around you, embody the energy of the group—all of that’s equally as important as standing out,” says Kiyon Ross, associate artistic director of Pacific Northwest Ballet. Mastering these skills can help dancers learn how to build a character and interact with other performers authentically onstage, he adds, so that whether or not you’re in the spotlight, you can give the richest performance possible.
Stay Engaged (but Contained)
Alberto Blanco, a faculty member at Sarasota Ballet School, suggests thinking about being engaged emotionally but restrained energetically when you’re part of the background. “You can be giving 100 percent to the character, but not overshadowing anybody,” Blanco says. Then, once you are dancing center stage again, you can dial your energy back up to 100 percent.
Exactly how big you move, however, depends on what’s happening in the plot. “If someone falls down or there’s this big reveal moment, then maybe those reactions want to be larger and more expressive,” Ross says. “But if it’s a more intimate moment, your movements are a little smaller so as not to detract from what we want the focus to be.”
There are even moments where relative stillness is called for. “For example, in Giselle’s mad scene, there is very minimal movement in the background, as it’s a somber scene where the focus is meant to be fully placed on her,” says Boston Ballet II dancer Natalia Cardona. Yet the dancers never completely stop moving: “For the most part, even dramatic scenes like this are meant to come off as natural and human, so we are never completely frozen,” she says.
Don’t get so caught up in your own internal storyline that you forget where you are onstage. Blanco finds younger dancers in particular sometimes lack spatial awareness. “Kids don’t realize that they’re perhaps in a clump or hiding somebody else,” he says. He suggests practicing using your peripheral vision to fill the floor space in class so that it’s second nature once you’re performing.
Only Connect
You have the power to direct the focus of the audience with where your eyes are looking, so be strategic about it. “Is this a moment where you should be looking at the principal couple that are dancing?” Ross asks. Or, if it’s just a general scene-setting crowd moment, consider looking more directly at other background dancers.
Cardona says her relationship to the audience shifts when she’s in the background. “Although I never lose my link with the audience, I focus more on interacting with other dancers and my surroundings when I’m in the background,” she says. “And I make more of an effort to connect with the audience when it’s time to dance center stage.”
Be Creative
Even when you are one of many villagers in the back of the stage, defining who your character is and how they fit into the scene will help you respond more authentically to the main action taking place. “Sometimes I even tell dancers to put a name to their character and to find a task, like doing business with another villager,” says Blanco. “That helps them be more natural in their reactions.”
One of the benefits of being part of the background is that, often, many of your movement choices are left up to you. Embrace the opportunity to improvise. “To keep it alive and keep it interesting, try different things each time you’re onstage so that it remains fresh for you,” Ross suggests.
Choreographing Background Movement
Musical theater choreographer Stephanie Klemons says she uses background dancers to emotionally amplify particular moments for the audience. But how? She makes sure that any choreography she gives performers in these moments matches whatever the characters are singing about. “If a lyric is meant to cut and drive forward, you’ll see the movement is very linear and everyone’s hitting the same arm, versus more sinewy, sensual vocals where you’ll have people that are moving softly, freestyle,” Klemons says.
She’s also careful to distinguish between more realistic and more stylized moments. For instance, if background performers are meant to be patrons in a nightclub milling around like real people, she keeps all movement natural and humanistic, rather than using more abstract choreography. And, importantly, she makes sure dancers know which of those two things they’re doing when.
