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The musical theatre and jazz dance industry has grown into a vast business providing an array of jobs. From choreographers and dance captains, to the less recognized dancers and performers, without whom the industry couldn’t run without. Having learnt the hard way, Dance Lecturer Lester Holmes, currently residing in the Maryland area, tells all from how he went from teased teenager to Broadway star.

 

It was Holmes’ opinionated outlook on how dance is taught within the higher educational system which first attracted me to interviewing him and wanting to know more. Holmes graduated from Southern Illinois University with a theatre art major and travelled straight to New York, where he studied acting, dancing and singing; during his first year, he danced with the renowned Mount Laurel Regional Ballet Company. He then taught in Florence, Italy for four years and upon his return to the United States, he took over a previously-owned dance studio. Holmes is presently teaching masterclasses in the Washington DC and Baltimore areas and is a proud faculty member of well-esteemed colleges Goucher College and Towson University.

 

The audition world has always been a place of blood, sweat and tears and Holmes’s first experience verifies this completely. Holmes explained how a first audition experience will stick with a performer for life. ‘Dancers need to learn more about the audition experience. Resumés and headshots are a must and you do not learn these things in higher educational institutions’. The experience was a lot more memorable for Holmes, however, as his mother had in fact hidden the call back letter for his first audition. After finding this, he did in fact have the opportunity to join rehearsals later on in the choreographic process which resulted in the choreographer calling him by a number, and having a very nasty approach towards him. Nevertheless, Holmes’s optimistic attitude arose in this telling and he stated how he learnt from this gruelling first audition experience – ‘it was the reason why to this day I have a more sensitive and nurturing approach to people that need more help or who aren’t as advanced as others in their training.’ Being prepared and not taking anything to heart in the audition experience are the wise words he now passes on to the dancers he trains.

 

Performers worldwide know how demanding and discriminating the industry is to work in; in fact, Holmes chose to leave the world of performing because it was, at times, ‘ruthless, hard to figure out, and definitely unfair.’ Although he does count himself lucky for his fantastic performing career, he found there wasn’t always ‘a rhyme or a reason for it’. He believed it was particularly unfair, which was against his philosophy on life, and not just in dance. ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know’ – this phrase has been passed around the industry for centuries and when asked whether he agreed Holmes simply nodded. He highlighted contacts as one of the most important factors in your career as a dancer or performer; without them, he commented, you are simply lost. Holmes wishes that people would become more aware of respecting the performer or dancer in the job. ‘They don’t know all the hard work that goes into it, so I feel like the dancers get short-changed’. According to Holmes, actors and singers receive far more respect than dancers and usually a better salary too. Even major principal dancers for worldwide companies are receiving minimal salaries compared to the athletes who receive millions per day. ‘It just goes to show that somewhere along the line, priorities and the sense of fair play gets all screwed up!’

 

A terrific example of this ridicule can be found in Holmes’s account of the worst job he undertook in the industry. Working for a show that was due to tour around Mexico, things fell flat when the producer ran out of money, which led to the dancers (including Holmes) to be stuck in a small, foreign town with no money and no passport to escape, as the broke producer had kept hold of them! To this day, Holmes states ‘the producer of the show still owes me $1600 and is now a very successful producer in Las Vegas!’ I was quick to encourage him to track him down!

 

It’s been twenty-five years since Holmes left his career in performing and he was quick to explain how much the industry has changed since then. There is far more competition nowadays and he feels that younger people have far more awareness and many more opportunities offered to them. Singing and dancing and the performing arts have become so mainstream because of television and the media, and parents seem much more supportive and encouraging towards their children pursuing their passion as a career. Being a male dancer has become a lot more acceptable to society and the public, which Holmes feels would have made his life a lot easier. The levels of athleticism and technical ability shown in dancers today are far above what dancers were like auditioning with him. However, he believes that finding a well-trained dancer and well-trained singer is rare and that due to production finances, the industry has definitely reduced the amount of performers hired. This results in having to be especially talented and versatile and the competition becoming increasingly high as the years progress - ‘it is becoming increasingly tough.’

 

Within my short experience of the dance world, I have found that jazz dance and musical theatre are not considered as important as techniques such as ballet and modern in education. Holmes agrees that it is not fair to the student to initiate this attitude. ‘Teachers are supposed to be there to prepare the student for the professional world and the professional world consists largely, actually, predominantly of the musical theatre and jazz genre.’ It is therefore important, however colleges have the tendency to look down upon these specific genres and we both agree that they’re doing their students a great disservice. Egos, Holmes asserts, is the main motive for this.

 

The dance world is constantly changing and if a student wants to join the professional world, Holmes believes, higher educational institutions need to do more to keep up with it. He understood the importance of such techniques such as modern and ballet, but could not work out why jazz and musical theatre training were not made compulsory and placed high on the syllabus. For a performer, the decision to choose whether to train and audition directly after high school or to take the other route of studying at a college is extremely hard. Holmes believes that the years between ages 18 and 23 contain a lot of opportunities which you cannot achieve during college. On the other hand, there are some fantastic colleges out there that provide great training, however they provide little professional experience which you could gain training independently in cities such as New York. ‘In the end, no one cares what kind of degree you have or even if you have a degree, no one cares. I think colleges should try a little harder to not be so ingrained.

 

I finished the interview by asking for advice for all the dancers and performers out there who like myself, find Holmes truly inspirational for making it so far in the industry from having had no peer support. Holmes believes that determination is key in a performer. Correcting and training yourself in the studio is one of the most valuable skills to have. It is a free environment and makes you as a performer unique and individual to a lot of the other formally-trained dancers out there. I will leave you with his main words of advice which we should all take with us through not just dance but life. ‘As a performer, keep the passion of what you do. It’s essential in what you do and who you are.’

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