dealing with competition(427)

Dealing with competition in any form can be difficult. Other people can be ruthless and mean and spread rumors every which way.  Now In head to head sports you can be so mad you literally tackle the guy that you believe has started the rumor, or are your competition. Which is a perfectly fine way to deal with it; let it fuel you.  In show choir and other competitive performing arts we need to be a little more creative.

As you probably would have guessed, tackling someone on stage is a very frowned upon by coaches and many members of the audience. But so is talking about other show choirs badly.  My director makes it a point each year to tell us that we represent not only ourselves but also our show choir and our high school. That doesn’t stop people and performers from other schools from talking bad about us though. They may say things like they don’t like our costumes or that they thought we didn’t sing a certain part right. And when you hear that it is kind of like a blow to the chest, because you have been working your butt off to make a great performance, and all they noticed were the bad things. This is where the competitive nature comes in. You want to turn around and look that guy in the eyes and say “Listen here bud, that was a great performance.” And maybe add a few choice words. But, you can’t. It would reflect badly, and that’s how to get more fuel to the fire.

A way to deal with competition for show choir is to put one hundred percent of your energy into your performance. More than likely there would be a moody or dark song that one could act totally mad at the world, and use the competition to drive that anger. But how do you use anger, during a happy song? Well, I’ll tell you! You obviously can’t let that emotion show on your face, or it would ruin that whole song, which would just make you even angrier, which might ruin another song; it is a cruel cycle really. Well using anger in a happy song just takes a little bit of thought. First, you think how angry they made you, then you think about how good it would feel to get a score better than their group, then you think about how to do that, and then you realize that you have to at least act totally happy to win. And there you go.