Most people might be familiar with this famous intro to one of the most popular dance sequences from the song ‘I hope I get it’ in the 1975 musical A Chorus Line. A staple of my childhood and adolescence in the 1980s, particularly after the film with Michael Douglas came out in 1985, this joined a collective of dance inspired favourite movies such as Fame (1980), Flashdance (1983), Staying Alive (1983), Footloose (1984), White Nights (1985), and Dirty Dancing (1987) to name a few. As an aspiring ballerina, it didn’t matter that these films showcased a range of dance genres aside from ballet, or focused on ‘normal’ people challenging belief systems through dancing. It mattered that they enabled me to peek into what happened behind the curtain, off the stage, in the studio or at an audition – to see the inner workings of what life in the performing arts might look like.
Reflecting back on those movies now through the lens of an ex-professional ballet dancer turned psychologist, I can see that many of the challenges faced by those characters within their storylines, are still experienced by performing artists today. The relentless daily training routine, the regular experience of rejection, sacrificing your personal life and/or time with family and friends for the sake of your ‘art’, dealing with injuries, exploring gender identity, worrying about whether I am good enough, fit enough, thin enough...
What is different is that the application of psychology into the performing arts has developed significantly in the past 30 years, with much thanks owed to the field of sport and exercise psychology and the adaptation of this into performance domains. The focus has clearly shifted to supporting performers to enhance their performance through looking after both their physical and mental health and wellbeing, and perhaps if those ‘80s movies were re-filmed today, there would be mention of how important the mental side of performance is, or even a performance psychologist character in the storyline!
How I became a ‘dance’ psychologist
The idea about applying psychology into the performing arts, or specifically dance, came about for me when I was in my graduating year at The Australian Ballet School back in the early 1990s. I had experienced an injury – a partially torn tendon in my left foot… or so they thought, as the sports physicians and physios couldn’t quite work out what it was without surgery (which they didn’t think was really required).
What followed was three months of no dancing and trying to keep fit through other means that did not exacerbate my injury, which was difficult. Given this occurred just before the summer holidays it was helpful in one way, but not in others as it meant I commenced the new training year the following January having not done ballet or any form of dance for months, I’d put on weight due to emotional overeating in coping with the associated anxiety and stress, and was experiencing severe challenges to my self-confidence and self-esteem. Not the kind of start to my final graduating year that I had been planning.
While there was no in-house psychological support or assistance at the time, which was pretty standard for all dance-training institutions in the ‘90s, the school was really helpful in locating some health professionals including a psychiatrist who I went along to see. While there were aspects of the session that were of some use, the lack of understanding of an elite performance context in which my challenges were firmly situated was evident – I did not return for a follow-up session. During the ensuing months, I ended up working things out for myself and managed to short-circuit some of the hindering thinking patterns that had become habitual, and my dancing and confidence overall improved.
It was at that point I looked into training in psychology and came across sport and exercise psychology – a newly evolving field, particularly in Australia at that time. And so, the idea was born, sitting on the floor in a dance studio that once I had finished my dance career, I wanted to retrain as a sport and exercise psychologist and apply it to dance.
Following a brief professional career dancing with The Australian Ballet Dancer’s Company and Queensland Ballet, and further challenges with self-esteem and confidence with my dancing (I never really fully recovered back to my pre-injury state of mind), I started the many years of university training including a Masters and Doctorate, to become a registered sport and exercise psychologist.
Along the way, I found it very helpful to utilise the knowledge I had of being a dancer and the typical issues I had faced (alongside those I had seen in my fellow dancers), to inform the focus of research projects (e.g., Fourth year – Coping strategies and stress in adolescent classical ballet dancers; Masters – Trait anxiety and coping strategies among ballet dancers; Doctorate – Psychological screening and injury among elite athletes), alongside identifying placement opportunities that provided me with direct experience in dance settings in addition to sport and counselling contexts.
Practice makes perfect
Heading back out into the world as a performance psychologist, I had a lovely surprise (though one I had secretly hoped for), to discover the high level of interest from dance teachers, schools, companies and even dance magazines regarding the application of psychology to dance – particularly when delivered by an ex-dancer. Initial issues and topics tended to center around self-esteem, performance anxiety, the psychology of injury, perfectionism, dealing with rejection, mental health and eating disorders; and transitioned through to also include things like preparing for success, managing expectations, pre-performance routines, performance profiling, rest and recovery, developing resilience, mastering your destiny, and career transition. There was increasing recognition of how psychology played a critical role in not only being able to dance well, but to live and function well as a human.
While having been a dancer myself helped with establishing credibility and enabled me to draw upon a lived experience when looking to understand the performing arts context, being conscious of ethical considerations around projection or self-disclosure was paramount. This was particularly relevant when I returned to The Australian Ballet School in 2011 as the Head of Student Health and Welfare – the dream job I had hoped I would one day have as the full-time performance psychologist embedded in the organisation. I had left as a student who experienced significant challenges and did not achieve my goals to the level I thought would/was expected to, and returned as a highly experienced professional that wanted to support other dance students not to have to go through the same challenges I had.
Furthermore, it was important to recognise that you do not have to have done certain sports/performing arts or experienced a certain mental health challenge yourself to operate effectively as a psychologist in supporting others. This was an important point that I found I needed to reinforce with dance teachers, parents, and even dancers themselves when needing to refer to, or involve other psychologists in performing arts psychology services.
Rebeginnings QUT Dance – Image by Fiona Cullen
As a supervisor of provisional psychologists and those completing the registrar program in sport and exercise psychology who have an interest and/or are undertaking a placement in the performing arts, I have observed that it is critical that they are guided in their preparation to work in this unique context. This includes ensuring that practitioners learn about the key contextual issues relevant to the art form in question, the key performance issues that population experiences, and that a structured approach to supervisory tasks, experiences and topics is provided to assist in the effective application of psychology into a performing arts setting (Moyle, 2019a).
There was increasing recognition of how psychology played a critical role in not only being able to dance well, but to live and function well as a human
Psychology in the performing arts
When last writing about psychology in the performing arts in InPsych (Moyle, 2012), performance psychology had only recently been formally defined. Since then, broad agreement on a clearer understanding of performance psychology has been demonstrated, with recognition that its focus is on assisting individuals to perform in the upper range of their abilities more consistently. While the field draws significantly on the theoretical and applied foundations of sport and exercise psychology, any psychological approach and/or strategy that promotes high performance can fall under the umbrella of performance psychology (Portenga et al., 2017).
Recognition of the importance of psychology in the performing arts, and broader creative industries and entertainment fields, has grown exponentially in the last five years. More recently, this has also been further reinforced as a result of the broader societal focus on mental health, the lessening of the stigma attached to experiencing psychological and emotional challenges, and the increased awareness of relevant resources and where to go to get help – all of which has been additionally highlighted by key public figures and individuals across multiple sectors sharing their personal stories of their mental health journey.
While performing arts training institutions have increasingly incorporated performance psychology within their curriculums and professional companies established strong psychology referral networks for their artists (Moyle, 2019b), one of the biggest challenges still facing the further integration and embedding of performance psychology is funding.
Performing arts organisations’ first priority is its artistic programming, or ‘putting on the show’. Most are supported through a combination of government funding, commercial income through ticket sales, corporate sponsorships and donors. When times are tough, as they have been in 2020 with COVID-19 and the devastating impacts upon the arts sector (amongst many others), resourcing understandably focuses upon the requirements to get performances up and running. Ironically, it is at these very times that psychological support is critical for the artists, but often it is left to the performers to pay for psychological services or manage through it on their own if they aren’t in a financial position to do so.
Embedding new connections
That is why it is so critical to ensure that we support the development of knowledge and skills in psychology and mental health and wellbeing, within dance students and professionals directly. The earlier we can assist in influencing the level of awareness, understanding, and the actual applied practice of performance psychology by artists, the opportunity we have to work from a preventative versus remedial model increases. Embedding performance psychology within dance training and curriculum, from young dance students through to pre-professional levels, is essential.
Pooling resources and connecting with other elite performance systems (e.g., sport) is another way in which to build upon and share the learnings from similar high performance contexts, recognising the differences around individuals working in a subjective art form such as dance – where how you execute the movement is evaluated, not just what the outcome of the movement achieves. There will always be times at which individuals need to access professional support, but the better equipped dancers are to navigate careers in performing arts in the first instance, the more likely they will be able to effectively deal with the challenges they might face. So, here’s to the dance movies of the future that actually include a performance psychologist in the story… did I mention that I have also done a little bit of acting before too?
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Performing arts psychology associations and organisations