Stage Fright? ...Now?

I am two weeks away from tap dancing in an established music festival which could draw up to 450 people. I am high enough in the billing that my name actually appears on the poster that's plastered around town and circulating social media. As far as I know, nobody has tap danced in this festival before.

 

I am rather terrified.

 

This is strange for me. Even as a kid, I never got stage fright. As I waited backstage for my first ever dance recital performance, I waited for the nerves to show up, but they never did. Twenty-five years of performing and they never have.

 

I've tap danced in front of bigger crowds than this. But usually those performances are in darkened theatres with audiences who came fully expecting to see dance. An outdoor mostly-folk music festival that's marketed to a somewhat faith-based and generally older audience is NOT the same thing. When I submitted my proposal, I half-expected to be laughed out of their email inbox. Instead, they offered me a slot.

 

I have spent literal months agonising over which songs to use. They had to be pieces I either already knew or could memorise thoroughly enough to perform comfortably (which limited my options severely), and they had to be accessible for an audience that has almost certainly never seen tap dance before and is at this event for the acoustic guitar music.

The day before the performers were publicly announced, I finally settled on my final set list.

 

I'm starting them off simple, with some classic, upbeat Michael Card. Then we're moving to a similarly upbeat-sounding Steve Scott (but with more pensive lyrics). After that, there is the obligatory DA song, which will make absolutely no sense to anybody in the entire audience (but the tap dancing sounds cool), and then I'll hit them with the biggest risk -- an NF song. Like an honest-to-goodness rap song (*clutches pearls*). It's a huge risk, given the target audience, but my choreography for that song is absolutely show-stopping. I cannot follow that with anything else currently in my repertoire. I have to end off with this one.

 

I keep reminding myself that I have spent my entire adult life launching myself off artistic cliffs... and surviving. I keep reminding myself how so many people look at the barriers I've pushed back on and how they've called me courageous, with a blush of awe in their voices. I keep reminding myself of all the other faith-based audiences I've accosted with my art and how many of them actually loved what I did, even though it was (*gasp!*) dance. I remember how my most recent tap dance performance (in Newsies) brought down the house every single time.

I can do this. I have done this.

 

But I'm still terrified.