Being 18 now and all that, I thought I’d share my Drama/Dance school audition experiences. The first one I attended being Bird College in Sidcup, Kent.
Overall, this audition was really really calm, in fact I don’t think I was even that nervous when it came to it. This was probably because of how prepared I was and how I had already familiarised myself with the building when I attended the Summer School in August (which I must say was a blast and would totally recommend). Even then the teachers and student helpers made the entire experience a really helpful, friendly and fun one. To be fair the most nerve-racking part to the audition was the physio check-up that I had to do first. It was only nerve-racking because I had to be in my bra and pants when they checked me (as well the fact that I may have said on my application that I was a couple of kilograms lighter than I was on the day), but otherwise it really wasn’t that bad and it really sounds a lot worse than it actually is. In fact the woman who checked me was really lovely and asked me questions like “so where have you come from today?” and “do you have any plans for the weekend?” which really made me feel at ease. She simply checked my posture, flexibility and natural turnout, let me put my clothes back on, weighed me and measured my height and within 5 minutes I was out. It really is not anything to worry about.
I feel like within the 9 hours I was at the audition I was left to sit and wait around for about 50% of the time. I was just glad I brought food and I had a few friends who were there that I had made at the Summer School. Between my physio check-up and my turn to go in and perform my song and monologue, I think I might have waited at least 30 minutes. When my time came, I was escorted upstairs to a small music room where I warmed up with 3 other girls (one of which turned out to be one of my friend at college’s best friend) and waited for my turn. When I went in there I gave my sheet music to the pianist and set the tempo and I went straight into my monologue. I did a monologue from the tragic comedy ‘Eigengrau’ by Penelope Skinner which usually got quite a few laughs out of the audience, however the panel of 2 didn’t laugh so much and concentrated on writing down all their notes on me instead. Feeling a little more nervous as you naturally would do, I sung my song which actually went really well. We then moved onto the ‘interview’ which literally consisted of 3 questions; “Why Bird?”, “Where else are you auditioning?” and “What will you do if you get in everywhere?” (which I personally found very odd especially as later on I discovered that question was not asked to anyone else). As you can probably tell the questions were rather easy to answer (P.S. if you are asked where your top choice is always say the name of the school you are at). Once that was done I simply went back to waiting around…
Finally! After what felt like a lifetime and running 30 minutes late, my group were about to begin the dance call. First off, we did a ‘health and safety warmup’ that we weren’t being judged on, it mainly consisted of running round in circles to be fair. We then moved on to the warmup routine which was easy enough. It was there in the audition to show the level of technique and flexibility you had so it was exactly what you would find yourself doing in your standard Jazz technique class. My group then moved on to learning the easiest Ballet combination I have ever done in my life…EVER. It was set to an orchestral version of the song ‘Tonight’ from ‘West Side Story.’ I feel like the key to this short sequence was to not only get the actual combo right but to really act through the movement and perform, which I surprisingly noticed hardly anyone was doing. The last 2 routines we did were a Commercial Jazz dance and a Musical Theatre Jazz dance to ‘Everybody’s Talking About Jamie.’ The Commercial routine was a little harder to pick up, but obviously the fact that I do Commercial the least out of all the styles of dance was a big part of the reason why. The movements we learnt weren’t that hard but it was just really fast. The Musical Theatre Jazz routine on the other hand was really repetitive and easy enough to pick up. If I can stress anything in this post it is the fact that you NEED to perform and act when you are doing the routine, because they can always teach you the steps but they can’t teach you how to perform. Later on, both the of routines were performed in smaller groups in front of a panel at the end of the call which in total lasted 3 hours… I was really exhausted afterwards but I felt it went really well. I treated myself to an entire bag of dried fruit, nuts and grapes, and then a delicious takeaway (highly recommend doing this after every audition no matter how well or how horribly it goes)!
I now have to wait about 2 weeks for a letter to come through my door saying whether or not I have been given a place! Fingers crossed!
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