🎨 The Ultimate Guide to Developing Your Artistic Voice
Your artistic voice is the personification of your individuality, your soul, and your purpose. It’s what makes you a Brilliant Bellydancer. However, we can sometimes get lost trying to discover it. Here’s how you can ​​develop your artistic voice so that you can stay empowered in your body and creative expression.
Follow your joy
First ask yourself what interests and excites you? This may seem obvious, but I think it is the most important. This doesn't even have to be something within the world of dance! This could be related to ideas, things that you want to learn, conversations that you find yourself getting very animated during topics that you have a lot to speak on, poetry that you love to read, shapes and colors that you love to see, etc! That is so important to define for yourself and it's always gonna be growing and changing and that's what keeps creativity a fluid ever-changing process.
I discuss each tip in the video below, or you can continue to read the full article:
2. Try on the voice of other artists
Write/dance/sing/draw “studies” in their style. Try to copy or become them, even within just a short moment! Of course, you need to give credit to your influences, but if you know and appreciate the art of another person–the voice of another artist–then it's really liberating to try on their voice and allow yourself to ask: “what if I did it like them?”
3. Notice what movements you repeat
Let yourself repeat things, and don’t stress over “being boring.” Value that information and investigate it! What about those movements do you enjoy? Do they feel good? Are they grounding? From there you can start exploring. Maybe you try the move on a different side, or a new tempo, perhaps coming from or connecting to a different move. There are no wrong answers here, especially if you’re staying centered on dancing in ways that bring you joy and have an internal experience.
4. Find ideas (themes) that fascinate you
For example: space, nature, friendship, death, motherhood, society, romantic love, sexual expression…
Again, it’s your experience, and it’s all valid! Create around those themes, and free yourself from terms like “good” and "bad" and think about what you enjoy. What lights you up? What do you like? Highlight the things you're drawn to and once you start to gather those things and see them and do them and present them, then they can become more clear to you, and that is what becomes your artistic voice.
5. What do you want people to feel when they see you dance?
This can be answered generally about your approach or end goal as a dancer, or about a specific piece you’re creating. I often find it helpful to write key adjectives of the tone I am trying to capture in the margin of my choreography notes, like “melancholy,” “contemplative,” etc, and then I experiment with ways to communicate these with my body or facial expressions.
6. Why did you first start to dance?
Your dance journey is exactly that: a journey. Oftentimes we get so caught up in our next goal, show, skill, etc that we forget to check in with why we’re dancing in the first place. It's always helpful to remember what was the first thing that got you excited about dance, because it's more information about what it is that you're interested in. Where was your original interest? I also want to note that iit's okay for your interest to change! If you do look back on your journey and think “that's not at all why I'm interested in it now…” Great! Then you have more information about why you're interested in it *now.* But a lot of times looking back deeper into the very start of things, the very beginning seed can give you a lot of information about what you value as an artist.
When we discussed this inside The Cohesion Collective I was so inspired by all the additional wisdom coming from members! Things like take in different types of art, visit museums, go on hikes, participate in community jams, go to local shows, travel, and ultimately: keep making art.
You’ll hear me say this alot, but it’s true: imperfect, consistent action beats out perfect inaction every time, and that is the only way to develop your artistic voice to continue making art and to complete the artistic cycle over and over, and over again.
If you want to develop your artistic voice and discover what makes YOU a Brilliant Bellydancer, apply to join us inside The Cohesion Collective TODAY. There’s no obligation to join and when you apply you’ll get access to my advanced private training where I explain exactly how I train people to become brilliant bellydancers!
Warmly,
April Rose and The Cohesion Collective Team 🌹
Become a Brilliant Bellydancer
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