Nine Rules for a Professional Performance by Camille Hill © 1987 Discovery Dance Group

1. (#1 Because it is the most important!) You must always be totally prepared to dance. No distractions, forget everything but what you are about to do!

2. Keep your body in good technical & physical condition. Maintain proper placement at all times so that your body is always centered, balanced and under control so that you are always able to show strength in both dynamic movement and dramatic intensity.

3. Be aware of others on stage and their relationship to you. Feel their movements and conveyed feelings. (No unauthorized solos please... you are not alone on stage when others are dancing beside you!).

4. Maintain body directions and formations... stay with your fellow dancers.

5. Listen to the music... feel the music in your body... let your body make the music... become the music!

6. Maintain eye focus and communicate with your fellow dancers and the audience.

7. Totally immerse yourself in what you are dancing... relax, let it happen... be the character or feeling you are portraying.

8. Do every rehearsal as though it is a performance! Don't do anything you wouldn't want to do in a performance (pulling at costume, brushing hair from face, etc.) or you just may repeat it during a performance! Develop good stage habits before you go on stage, discipline yourself!

9. Never stop, no matter what happens! Be prepared to adjust for others. There has never been a perfect performance! Practice recovering from mishaps, especially lifts and other contact movements with other dancers.

Camille Hill (1910–1987)

Total Dance contains Love, Vitality and Serenity and is made up of Theory, Technique and Theatre.

Freedom of movement comes from complete mastery of the body, but there can be no freedom without discipline...

Some of us in Dance are always concerned about "steps", Camille Hill was once asked what she thought were the most important "steps" in Dance. Camille smiled and answered:

You're too concerned about steps, individual steps are just isolated events that mean nothing until you choreograph them into a Journey through Life or Dance.

There is no wrong "style or type" of Dance, only bad technique. Dancers who have studied under a teacher who tells them a particular style of Dance is wrong or bad, have been misled by their teacher. Only Technique can be bad, not style.

Show me a room of Mirror-Dancers and I'll show you a group who will panic on stage, because the only reflections they will see will be in the cold eyes of a dissatisfied audience!

Mimic Dancing or Imitative Movement only teaches a student how to mimic or imitate, and he or she will repeat the mistakes of those they copy. On the whole I would much rather teach a total novice then try to undo all the bad mimicry of a student who has used only his or her eyes to learn movement. Sadly, that is how most Dance is taught in the world, just by observation and imitation, and like most imitations, it's usually not quite the real thing."

(www.discoverydancegroup.org/webdoc03.htm)