Taking care of the artist offstage

Graphic by Easton Clark, Photo Editor

One of Chapman’s homecoming week masterclasses, “Strategies for Being a Healthy Artist,” offered a breakdown on the importance of health and wellness needed for both artists and performers to stay physically and mentally sane. 

Taught by professor and dance department chair Robin Kish, who has a background in performance art medicine, the masterclass centered around how artists can thrive physically, mentally and financially while maintaining their creative journey. 

“A performing arts major is more than just being on stage,” Kish said.

While working mainly with dancers and musicians, Kish said that even if you are involved in film and are holding a camera or equipment for long periods of time, health and wellness are a part of that art field too. 

Commonly starting at a young age, from learning how to touch your toes in beginning dance classes to playing “Hot Cross Buns” on the trumpet, the performance mentality is cultivated from the very start. Since day one, performing artists are trained on critical thinking skills and attention to detail, all soft skills that Kish suggests set up soft skills for the job market today. 

She brings up the most burning question asked by parents: what are you going to do with your life and your career as an artist? 

According to Kish, being an artist is multifaceted. In the case of an artist wanting their primary goal to be performing on stage for the rest of their life, Kish advises to acknowledge that the learned skills from this field will help you show up and perform in any career. As an introvert, Kish explains that with her performance background she can still tap into being “on stage” and doing a presentation. 

Everyone is on their own individual timeline, and most importantly, success is not linear. Growth comes from the challenges and craziness along the way. 

“It can side rail us pretty quickly if our perception of success is a straight line, because it's just not the way the world works,” said Kish. 

When it gets rocky, according to Kish, is when we need our support systems, our friends and family. A common issue Kish sees is parents pushing their children too close to their breaking point. 

“We hear about crazy dance moms. If you're not working hard enough, you don't want it. If you're not hurting, you don't want it enough,” said Kish. “The show must go on. You can have a broken foot. It doesn't matter.”

Kish is always looking at language that is in our environment as artists, and recognizing if certain parts are serving or hurting artists. 

In order to achieve intrinsic success, it is important to focus on the why. Why did you start that art form in the first place and what did you initially gain? Was it personal fulfillment, creative satisfaction, meaningful self expression or the joy of creating art just for the sake of it? 

Kish highlights the epiphany that lit the first spark when first started creating art as a child. “You remember when you were a kid and you first played that instrument, or the first dance studio, or that first time you were on the stage for theater, and you were like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to do this,’” Kish said. 

That pure joy and excitement must continue on in personal awareness and personal success, according to Kish. However, over time, it is common to lose sight of that because we get caught up in the day-to-day chaos of things; the rigor, the mental struggles of our art form, those walls that we hit. 

Reminding ourselves of the very beginnings of starting the art form helps combat these mental challenges.

With extrinsic success, it comes from external validation, such as applause or a pat on the back. Social media is a common platform to showcase art externally through posting the success stories of jobs booked. However, what they are not posting are the countless auditions and hours of training that went into that one gig. 

Kish uses an example of an iceberg to share with her dancers the reality of extrinsic success.

“The tip at the very top of what you see is the performance, and that's the out-show, out-facing thing. But the belly of the iceberg that's under the water is all of the work. That's all the energy and all the effort that we've put in that doesn't get recognized externally,” said Kish. “We know it internally. But again, our world is very outward facing, especially because of social media.”

Kish encourages parents to give more thought to their definitions of success that they are sharing with their children. 

“Our kids feel it, and they know how hard they're working and how much they want to live up to our expectations. So I'm always just kind of checking like, ‘Oh, I said that. Maybe I need to rephrase that a little bit.’ It's relooking at our words when we're talking in the arts field,” said Kish.

In looking at the broader world of the arts and physicality, athletes and artists may be more alike than we think. 

“We are better than any Olympic athlete out there, because a swimmer just has to get to the end of the pool the fastest. It doesn't matter their style. They don't have to have emotion. There's no other aspect to it other than getting from point A to point B, right? Team sports, yeah, there's a little nuance, but no one cares what you look like. You're just doing it for a goal,” said Kish. 

Just like athletes, artists need endurance and strength. Dancers by default are in the studio, physically working out. But musicians, actors and any of the film crew — anyone that is behind the scenes — also needs to pay attention to their physical capacity to prevent health issues. 

“By nature, a lot of what we do is repetitive. If you are a musician, most of the time you're working on a piece of music, and then you're told to go practice more,” said Kish. “Actually, more practice is probably doing you more harm, because now we've got wrist issues, we got shoulder issues, we got neck issues, and then the sound isn't coming out the way you want, and then you try even harder, but now things are hurting, so we're overcompensating even more.” 

There needs to be specialized physical therapy that works for all of the small muscle groups, even for those hunched over painting or typing on a computer for hours at a time. For a violinist, Kish suggests that they might as well be a tennis player because of the muscle demand and bone density that is dependent on one side. 

Hearing loss is another issue common in the arts. “Your conductor, your dance teacher, is wanting you to play louder because they're half deaf from being in spaces with music coming at them for years. It's a multifaceted thing in our art form,” said Kish.  

What follows is musculoskeletal pain from repetitive motions, acute and chronic injuries that often go unaddressed and normalized.  

Kish wants artists to be human more than they are an artist. In human everyday life, as Kish explains, we should not be in pain, because when left ignored, that pain is going to get worse and start affecting the longevity of the art form itself. 

“The goal is to keep all our parts. If your trumpet gets squished, you can go buy a new trumpet, right? If your shoulder blows, well, you can get it surgically repaired, but it's never going to be the same,” said Kish. 

There are specialized performing arts medicine people out there, according to Kish. There are people that know what it means to play an instrument that is one-sided, like a violin, or all the impacts of all the musculature in the upper body, the neck and the jaw in playing a trumpet and how singers can better open up their pelvic floor. 

Fatigue and fueling issues are other parts of being an artist. When a performance comes up, it's easy to think that you should perform as much as you can. Kish asked, does a marathon runner run a marathon the day before their run? No. 

There is no offseason for being an artist. Performers are coming from one performance to the next while trying to juggle gigs and assignments if they are in school. Taking mini pauses and mental breaks help prevent burnout before leading to other physical and mental problems. These cycles of feeling overwhelmed are normal. 

Kish suggests finding a balance in your life between your art and something else to fill your bucket, as well as finding community in other artists alike to support one another. 

“Before I retire, I would love to change the mentality of the world of the directors and the rehearsals and the producers and everything — so it's on us as individual artists to be smart about taking care of ourselves,” Kish said. “Yes, I know I'm being told I need to practice more, or I need to rehearse more, but maybe I just need to listen to the music. Maybe I need to think about it mentally versus physically pushing through.”

While it takes a practice in itself, transforming one’s mindset to a more positive and forgiving one will translate through one’s art tremendously. 

“You've got to be a human,” Kish said. “Your humanness is what adds to our art form.”