Does Your Band Need A Movement Coach?

Kevin Andrews is a Nashville-based choreographer and movement coach who works with country musicians on their stage presence in addition to such activities as choreographing music videos. He's focusing in on a specific niche but what he's doing is a good example of what a lot of solo acts and bands need. Some artists have difficulty adjusting to the stage imagining that somehow just "being themselves" will make them look "natural." But the stage is anything but a natural place and a movement coach might be just the thing you need.

I found out about Kevin Andrews via an interesting piece he wrote about the top 4 ways country music can compete with pop music performances.

Being a choreographer for hire, he does focus on that element of what country artists can do to up their stage show but also discusses rehearsing the performance on stage and not letting your lighting become a light show. The latter works in other genres but not so well in country music.

In the following video he gets down to some very basic concepts for stage performance:

3 Quick Artist Movement Tips

Andrews says he's worked with such stars as LeAnn Rimes, Big & Rich and Alan Jackson. It would be really interesting to see those interactions but from the article and the video we can see two basic keys:

Maintain an awareness of how you're presenting yourself to your audience so that you're not cutting yourself off with the mic or inadvertently closing off from your audience.

Have some choreographed moves in place that you can draw on at appropriate moments without making your act seem totally choreographed.

Of course the details will differ based on the size of stage and your musical genre but a movement coach or choreographer might be just what you need even if you don't want any dance steps or choreographed material.

Much Of Movement Coaching Isn't About Choreography

Note Andrews' advice in the video about holding the mic on stage with the hand furthest away from the audience so that your arm isn't blocking your upper body from view.

That's not something you choreograph. It's more a habit you develop that you can carry through everything you do onstage. Because the underlying principle is to never turn your back on your audience and when you turn to the side to keep your body open to the audience.

Someone who's trained to view detailed movement can help you with that and point out the moments you're most likely to lose track of the underlying principle. But they'll probably start like Andrews with a very specific and important technique from which you'll learn concepts that you can apply throughout your performance.

Analyzing videos of your performance focusing only on the movement and presentations can also be of help. A trained eye can teach you how to see the details that matter without getting distracted by all the other stuff happening onstage.

Here's A Different Example

Here's a quick example of what an outside eye can do:

I saw a young rapper in Raleigh years ago who had a strong presence on stage and well-developed songs for someone at that level of the game which basically meant he had the potential to go further.

But he had this habit of bending one of his knees in time to the music and following through with his thigh kind of bouncing up into the air. It was a fairly large consistent movement far beyond tapping your foot to the beat. The problem was he was initiating the movement on the beat but visually speaking the movement suggested that the beat occurred when his thigh reached the top of its arc.

That meant his leg always looked like it was behind the beat which he was rapping to in perfect rhythm. It also meant that his stage show was characterized by that one movement.

It's the kind of thing his friends would say doesn't matter and he might reject as an issue because it felt natural.

But when was the last time you saw a pro with a real career distinctly moving in the same offbeat manner through every song?

I can't think of anybody.

[Thumbnail image from cover of Kevin Andrews' Artist Movement: Perfecting Showmanship & Stage Presence.]

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Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch) recently launched DanceLand and is relaunching Crowdfunding For Musicians. Contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.