Time to make running your show easier

Every year I run a retreat called Encore. Over two days, we focus entirely on helping you make more money on your show, feel less stressed, and get more organised. We take that show and elevate it into a full production, the kind that leaves people thinking, “what did I just watch?”

Shows are my favourite part of this job. After 24 years of running my own dance school, it’s the part I’ve got down to its finest detail. So let’s talk about child management within a show, specifically, teaching techniques during class time so that when your students step into a strange theatre environment, they’re not lost, and neither are your chaperones.

I train these three techniques into my classes well before show time, and then bring the chaperones up to speed closer to the date, so that everyone, children, assistants and chaperones alike, knows exactly what they’re doing and why.

Here’s the reason this matters so much. When you get into that theatre, as the producer of your show, you’re still the teacher. The buck stops with you. Everything falls on your shoulders unless you’ve prepared properly in advance.

At my Encore retreat, I always tell people your aim on show day is to not have a job. They look at me like I’ve lost the plot. What I mean is this: if you’ve delegated everything, and trained everyone, children, assistants, chaperones, teachers, to the point where they already know what they’re doing, then by the time you walk into that theatre, the children know which wing they’re going in, the chaperones have a running order in hand, and nobody needs to ask you, “which wing are they in?”

That question sounds small, maybe a minute of your time. But multiply it by 20 classes or 20 dancers, and suddenly that’s 20 minutes gone, on top of the physical time it takes to move a group of 20 children from the wrong wing to the right one. In a theatre where technicians are on the clock, that time matters. Your job on show day should be limited to the top level calls: “I like that light, but can we try a different colour?” “That one, thank you.” “We’ve got a problem, we’ve tried this and that, what do you think?” That’s it.

Here are the three techniques that get you there.

1. Elephant Counting

Teach every child, from your littlest to your oldest, to hold their final position for a count of three elephants before they leave the stage. One elephant, two elephants, three elephants.

This trains them to hold their last position properly, because you never know in advance whether you’ll have a slow fade or a sharp blackout on the lights. If it’s a three second fade and the children start moving too soon, thinking the dance is over, the moment is broken. With all the adrenaline of performing, it’s easy for a child to finish and immediately celebrate, “yay, I did it!”, before the lights have actually gone down. Train the count in from early on, and it becomes automatic by show time.

2. Rehearse Your Ons and Offs

This is exactly why a meeting in the theatre itself, ideally one or two, is so important. You need to know precisely how many wings you’re working with, whether that’s three, four or five, so you can train your students accordingly. “You’re in the middle wing.” “You’re in the top wing.”

Mark it out physically if it helps. I always have reams of electrical tape in my bag for exactly this reason, it comes off easily and doesn’t damage flooring. Number the wings on the floor, one, two, three, and use those same numbers back in your regular classroom weeks in advance, rather than terms like downstage, mid stage or upstage. On our last show, we numbered the wings this way and it worked brilliantly.

By the time your students reach the theatre, the same numbers are marked on the floor there too. They walk up, see “wing one,” and know exactly where they’re going, no hesitation, no asking. Chaperones do the same, checking their sheet, seeing “wing one,” and guiding accordingly. It makes for a far calmer, more manageable show backstage.

3. Colour Coded Marking

The third technique is electrical tape, in every colour you can find. If you saw our stage floor, it looks like a cacophony of colour, all of it purposeful.

The trick is consistency. Use the same colour and the same mark in class for a couple of weeks before the show. Say you’ve got a senior dance that opens in a triangle formation at the back of the stage, and you already know you’ve requested a lighting special, a spotlight or a shaped beam, with the rest of the stage dark, maybe with a touch of side light, which I love. The first child in that formation needs to stand at a very specific point so they’re caught in the light rather than lost in the dark.

Mark that spot with a cross, a T shape, a plus sign, whatever works for you. I use crosses because they’re simple. Say it’s a red cross. Use that same red cross in class from the start, so that when your students are rehearsing their entrances from wing two or three, they already know to look for the red cross and know that whoever finds it first sets the position for everyone else to build around.

That first child becomes the anchor, setting the tone for the whole formation, instead of everyone shuffling into place and realising too late that they’re in the wrong spot and pushing each other around to compensate.

Practise it in advance, the crosses on the floor, the numbers on the wings, the elephant counting, and by the time you’re standing in that theatre, everything runs noticeably smoother.

Check out ENCORE here